A. Walters - Lead Me Not

Twenty minutes later I was standing in a sea of clothing that was about to make my OCD tendencies go into full-on meltdown.

“When did my penis become a freaking vagina? I’m a guy, Aubrey! A guy! I don’t know what the fuck you should wear! I’m all about taking the clothes off. Not putting them on. ” Brooks was talking from his perch on my bed, where he had stretched out, watching my one-woman whirling dervish imitation.

I groaned and finally grabbed a jean skirt that I never wore, mostly because I liked keeping the girlie bits covered when I was out in public, and a black, off-the-shoulder sequined top.

Once I was dressed and had zipped up my knee-high black leather boots, I looked at myself in the mirror and wanted to immediately change back into my jeans and sweatshirt. It’s not as though I was dressed in anything overly dramatic. It was pretty tame by club standards, but it wasn’t me .

I had curled my long blond hair and opted to wear more makeup than usual. I just hoped it was enough, because this was just about all the energy I was willing to expend.

Brooks gave me a low whistle when I finished. His eyes raked me from head to toe, focusing a little too intently on my legs. His face was unnaturally flushed, and I started to think that perhaps this was a really bad idea.

I cleared my throat, and Brooks blinked and looked away, seeming embarrassed. “You look nice,” he said with a smile as his eyes flicked again over my body.

It was times like then that it was hard to forget that he had seen me naked . . . a lot. Our relationship had surprisingly never been uncomfortable. We had transitioned into easy camaraderie seamlessly. But now I felt a strange sort of tension radiating from him that had everything to do with his overactive hormones.

“Thanks,” I mumbled, hurriedly grabbing Renee’s black leather jacket. After putting it on, I gave him a quick once-over, noting he had gone home and changed while I was getting dressed.

He had turned in the khakis and button-down shirt for a fitted pair of jeans and a tight gray shirt with some sort of band logo on the front. He had styled his hair into spikes.

I leaned in closer, peering at his face. “Did you put eyeliner on? Seriously?” I snorted.

Brooks’s shoulders tensed. “It’s about looking the part, Aubrey. Shut up,” he responded tersely.

Guy-liner aside, Brooks looked good. Really good. Hopefully really good would be enough to get inside the club.

I grabbed my purse and followed Brooks out into the hallway. “Do we know where we’re going this time?” I asked as we got into his Honda.

Brooks gave me a grin. “Well, we have to go figure it out,” he answered cryptically.

I cocked my eyebrow in his direction. “Care to explain?” I asked, not in the mood for guessing games.

“We’ve got to go see the picture. Then we can figure out where Compulsion is tonight,” he said, sounding giddy. I could tell Brooks was excited. His enthusiasm was contagious. I couldn’t help but feel a flutter in my stomach as we made our way to the center of town.

“How do you know where the picture is?” I asked. This really did seem like a lot of trouble just to go to a club. What was with the mystery? Why not just hand out flyers?

“I asked around and was told it’s behind the self-service laundry beside the liquor store,” Brooks explained.

“Can’t we just ask where it is? Why do we have to go to the hassle of finding some crappy piece of graffiti for directions?” I asked, knowing I sounded cranky. But the hurdles we were needing to jump to find the club were deflating my already shaky willingness to go out at all.

Brooks clicked his tongue in disapproval. “Aubrey, this is part of the experience. You need to see the picture, then you can find out where it is. And it’s not crappy graffiti. X is an artist, man. His stuff is unbelievable. I’ve heard people saying that galleries have been trying to locate him for the past year, wanting to sell his work. But no one knows who he is. Or how to find him. It just adds to the mystique, you know?”

I scoffed under my breath. “Why in the hell would a gallery want to sell some squiggles spray-painted on a wall? It’s not exactly Monet we’re talking about here.”

Brooks shook his head. “You have so much to learn, young grasshopper. The urban art movement is huge right now. And X has built a reputation as one of the best. He’s only been doing it for the past three years, but if you Google street art , his stuff will be up there with Banksy. He’s awesome!” he said, as though it made perfect sense.

“How do you know it’s a guy? It could be a woman, you know,” I pointed out almost belligerently.

Brooks shrugged. “Who knows? Does it matter?”

“And what sort of name is X?” I mocked.

Brooks gave me a look from the corner of his eye and didn’t bother to respond. Clearly my lack of appreciation for the mysterious X had lost me a considerable number of cool points.

We pulled down a narrow alleyway between two buildings that ended in a small parking lot. There was a group of people standing beside a Dumpster.

Brooks put his car into park and jumped out. “Come on!” he called out to me, hurrying over to the side of the building. There was a large amount of graffiti—your typical gang tags and names.

But that wasn’t what people had flocked here to see.

It was the portrait of a woman on fire that had their attention. It was at least ten feet high and fifteen feet across. It was massive.

“Please explain to me what this has to do with a dance club?” I whispered to Brooks, who had his phone pulled out and was punching numbers into his GPS. He glanced up at me and gave me a distracted smile.

“Not a damned thing, Aubrey,” he replied. I frowned and turned back to the picture. The wind had picked up, bringing with it the rancid smell of old garbage. The small parking lot was disgusting. But the crowd of people couldn’t care less about their surroundings. We were all here for one thing only . . . to find our way to a club that promised things we couldn’t begin to imagine.

I had to admit that the artistry of the graffiti was impressive. I remembered the picture from a few weeks ago, the monstrous hand with people falling from the sky.

That painting had been dark and almost threatening. This one seemed to convey something else entirely.

Longing.

Wanting something you’ve watched from afar.

Desire.

Blatant, unbridled lust.

Somehow, some way, this smattering of paint on a dirty wall conveyed all of these things. And I knew that Brooks was right. That whoever X was, this person was seriously talented.

The picture depicted the side profile of a woman, her long, golden hair licked by bright red flames as they crawled toward her face. You could see only the outline of her nose and jaw, as she was turned away, looking off into the distance.

The rest of her body was done in dark, bold lines that were almost crude and undefined, until you got to her hand. The hand was painted precisely and almost delicately. The fingers were uncurled, the palm was spread open, and from the hand fell lovely, purple blossoms that reminded me of the aster flowers that grew on campus.

The fire at the girl’s feet reached up and seemed to engulf the flowers that were floating to the ground. It was such a contradiction—the power of the fire and the placid gentleness of the flowers. There was a violent sort of possession in the way the flames seemed to devour the petals that fell from the woman’s hand, almost, but not quite, touching her skin, as though they were reaching out for her yet not quite able to reach her. I noticed the characteristic X enmeshed in the red and orange.