Portrait of a Jerk

Story Submitted by Melissa:

Justin was one of my fellow students in a painting class. He was very talented and I was both surprised and flattered when he asked to paint my portrait. I hadn't been in a relationship for a while, but I unexpectedly saw him differently from how I had seen most other guys. We flirted and he ended up taking me out to dinner.

We talked a lot about the class, art in general, and each other. Finally, he brought up the portrait.

"I see it as a nude," he said.

"I'm no model," I told him, "I just paint."

He begged, pleaded, and beseeched. I asked him why it couldn't be a portrait of me clothed. "You thought I was pretty enough with my clothes on to ask me in the first place," I reminded him, "So I don't think it'll matter."

He kept asking me, but I wouldn't budge. He became belligerent and said, "Anyone in the class would probably beg me to paint them."

I replied, "Then get someone else from class."

He said, "What if I painted your face but used someone else's body?"

"I don't think I'd be okay with that. Unless you made it clear in the title."

He became silent after that and it made the rest of dinner pretty awkward. I was uncomfortable enough with him possibly picturing me nude. We had planned to stop at the classroom to do some late-night painting, but something told me that that would've been a bad idea.

"We're not going to the studio?" he asked me after dinner.

I lied and said that I was tired. He asked me what my problem was, and I told him that I had been up since six in the morning. He let me go, and I was happy to be away.

The next day, in class, wouldn't you know it, but my most recent canvas went missing. It was a still life of glass objects. I asked around, and the instructor didn't know where it was.

Justin took me aside and said that he "knew who took it" and that he could "get it back" for me if I agreed to pose nude for him.

I told the instructor, and she called Justin aside. Whatever the instructor said must have struck fear into Justin's heart, because shortly thereafter, my canvas miraculously appeared and Justin would barely even look at me again.