Beneath The Skin (A College Obsession Romance) (34 page)

“There aren’t many little kids trick-or-treating in my neighborhood. Just teens raising hell. Nell, look at me, please.”

Nell turns, her eyes suddenly hungry and glowing under the warm, amber streetlamp. “We should fuck.”

Not what I was expecting. “W-What?”

“On this guy’s lawn,” she says, as if making the decision just now. “Right here.”

“No. Nell …”

“I want to feel you fuck me with grass tickling my naked back.”

My mouth goes dry. What has gotten into her? “This is Matthew McManus’s lawn. I … I used to mow it when I was sixteen.”

She grips my chains and pulls them tight, bringing my cuffed wrists to her breasts. “I bet we would’ve made a hot couple back then,” she whispers. “If we went to the same high school, so much would’ve been different. So much would’ve been better. So much …”

I’m distracted by her beautiful tits barely contained by that shirt long enough to really consider having sex with her on this lawn, right here and right now.

“We would’ve owned your school,” she goes on, her voice like silk, seducing me into a state I’d really rather not be in, not on my neighbor Matthew’s damn lawn. “We would have kept all the dumb bitches at bay, the ones who destroyed my work on the bus, the ones who pushed me in the halls, the ones who turned me dark …”

“Nell …”

“You’re my prisoner. You have to do what I say. Agree with me,” she demands quietly, her words like windy daggers in my ears. “Agree with me, Brant.”

“I want to talk about that story.”

She pulls away from me and starts to unbutton her shirt. Right here. In front of the whole world and Matthew and the stray cats in the street I can’t see and possible trick-or-treaters that could walk by at any second. She starts stripping on the lawn.

“Stop,” I tell her, gripping her wrists to stop her even though she’s already halfway out of her shirt.

“I want your dick inside me, Brant. I want it now. What the horny hell’s wrong with you?” she asks sweetly, bringing her full lips closer. “Brant Rudawski never declines an invite into my pussy.”

“Penelope Norman isn’t herself right now.”

Her eyes turn cold. “My name is Nell. Penelope died.”

“No, she didn’t.”

“Penelope died the day Dog died.”

“Nell, baby, please. Let’s talk about this. I didn’t know. Was that really what your dad was like?” I ask suddenly, trying to search her eyes for truths she’s too damn stubborn to reveal. “I didn’t know, Nell. There’s sometimes … so much I think I don’t know about you.”

“I just want you inside me,” she repeats. “On this lawn. Right now.”

“Your father was a drunk,” I push on, determined to get her to talk. “You had a crap childhood. He ran over your—sorry, I don’t have to rehash the whole thing. I just … I didn’t know about any of this. You—”

“Are you even hearing me, Brant? Stop talking about all that shit. I want to
fuck
. I’m speaking your language, aren’t I?”

“Not out here on the street, Nell. Let’s go back to my house at least, alright?”

“I want to chain you to that tree,” she says, seeming to decide it on the spot. “I want to wrap the chains around you and bind you to that tree, naked—Mr. McManus’s tree, on Mr. McManus’s lawn—and I want to do things to you until the sun comes up.”

“Can we … Can we just do it normal for once?” I plead with her. “Why must our sex always be so fucking … crazy and weird and out there?”

In an instant, Nell slaps my hands away, her face wrinkled with hurt. The chains protest only for a moment before silence befalls the whole street.

“I thought you like it that way,” she whispers, deathly quiet.

“I … really just want us to be … in a normal girlfriend-and-boyfriend relationship.”

“I’m anything but fucking
normal
,” she hisses back, as if the word was the most offensive thing ever.

“That’s not what I meant. Of course you are. You’re extraordinary. You’re fascinating. You’re infinitely deep, deeper than I’ll ever be. But Nell … I want … I want something normal. I’ve done the fuck-girls-every-night thing before. I’ve done the weird shit. I’ve done the sex that means nothing. My kind of love has always lasted for hours, but … but not with you.”

Her eyes seem to shake in their sockets. She’s grown so still, she looks like her own latest papier-mâché exhibit—a prison guard caught in some terrible, haunting memory.

Then, finally, she says three words, each of them like a hammer crashing through a glass window. “I’m … not …
normal
.”

“Did you hear what I just said?” I close the distance between us, the chains rattling at my ankles and wrists. “That part about my kind of love for you? That’s what I said. Love. I … I love you, Nell.”

Her eyes well up, yet she makes no effort to cry. She simply stares at me as if she’s seen a ghost. It’s Halloween; maybe she has.

“Nell?”

“I thought …” she starts. One tear betrays her, letting loose from her left eye and drawing a trail down her cheek that glows amber in the stark streetlight. “I thought this was … what you wanted.”

“You
are
what I want.” I swallow. I’m fucking all of this up. I have no idea what to do. I feel like I’ve already lost her somehow. “Can we please go back to my house? Let me better explain all of … all of this. Please? We can chill in my room. Put on some music. Just a little safe space with you and me and no one else. Let’s cuddle under the covers. Make a fucking fort, I don’t care. Just come back with me, please, and let’s talk.”

Her eyes linger on my chest. All of the torture and anguish she carries for her alcoholic father and the tragic loss of her childhood dog and all the horrors she must have clearly witnessed growing up … all of that is slowly being locked within her once again, hidden from me, kept in that heart-shaped vault in her chest. She let it out for only that one brief moment at the party. I watch as she literally closes up in front of me. Even that single rogue tear that escaped seems to disappear without her bothering to wipe it away.

“Camera boy,” she murmurs.

I lift my eyebrows. “I love you, Nell.”

She reaches into her pocket almost gently, then pulls out a key. She starts to undo the cuffs on my wrists. The chain drops to the grass, sliding right out of the cuffs at my ankles.

“I love you,” I repeat to her.

She meets my eyes, then brings my hands up to her lips and offers them a small kiss.

“Nell …” Her lips are so warm. Is she finally ready to come home with me and talk? “You’re so beautiful. Let’s go, alright? Let’s go.”

She presses the key into my palm, then closes my fingers over it. “Goodbye, Brant.”

My stomach drops. “What? No. What are you doing?”

“Undoing your chains. Unlocking your cuffs.” Her unfeeling eyes meet mine, hiding everything behind them expertly, every ounce of hurt, every pinch of anguish. “I’m freeing you, dummy.”

“No, Nell. I don’t want to be freed. I want you. All of you.”

“Hey, not every cop is this forgiving,” she murmurs lightly, despite the cold look in her green eyes. “Especially towards a guy charged with indecent exposure. And really, it was my fault from the beginning. I’m the one who exposed you that day in the art gallery. Indecently.”

“I liked it. I like you.”

“The truth is,
I’m
the indecent one. I’m the monster, Brant. I need my magic chemical.”

“You don’t need anything. You’re perfect just the way you are.”

She turns away and begins to cross the street. Her boots strike the pavement with her every footfall, no matter how gently she walks.

I don’t let her go. I chase after her. “Nell. There was a time—Listen to me, Nell—There was a time when I was really fucking afraid. I was just a kid. I was lost and I couldn’t even approach a girl without wanting to toss my lunch.”

I look down and realize she’s typing into her phone.

“Nell, what are you doing?”

“Don’t worry. I’m getting my friend Minnie to pick me up.”

“Minnie?” I shake my head. “Who’s Minnie?”

“I guess we really don’t know much about each other.” She bites her lip and sits on the curb. “To be fair, Minnie only knows you by the name ‘Captain Big Dong’.”

“Thank you,” I say genuinely, regarding the name, then sit down next to her. “Is she, like, a friend of yours? Or is she a … a sister? Do you
have
a sister?”

A group of young teens emerge out of nowhere. I don’t even pay attention to their costumes or who they are. I just listen as they laugh with each other and turn the corner on the other side of the street. Their bags and buckets of candy rattle as they swing on their arms.

After they fade down the lightless bowels of another street, I go on. “I was saying, when I was a kid, I was a scared little shit. I would have been scared my whole damn life … if it weren’t for someone pulling me out of my own terrified head and pushing me at the girls I was so afraid to talk to.”

She sighs, then relents. “Clayton, you mean?”

“Yeah, right. Him,” I say, encouraged by her participation. “Clayton pulled me out of my shell. He pushed me. Nell, we are so much more than our bodies, so much more than our fears, so much more than our stupid pasts. Don’t be the Brant who stood in corners and ran away from chances and let golden opportunities slip through his fumblin’ fingers. Let me push you out of the dark, Nell.”

“I like the dark,” she replies. “It’s where I live. It’s where I work.”

“Then let me into the dark with you,” I plead, “and don’t just sit there all by your dang self. You don’t have to do this alone.”

Nell props her chin up with a hand, drumming her fingers along her cheek playfully. It’s like I just asked her what brand of cereal she wants for breakfast and she’s letting it turn over in her brain.

“Well, on one hand,” she says softly, “even though I make miserable company, it certainly is nice having you here with me.”

“Yeah?” I urge her, hopeful.

“On the other hand, I’m sorta ready for you to do that thing I’ve been waiting for since we first met.”

“What thing?”

“Leave me. For another girl. Or because you’re bored. Or because I didn’t satisfy every one of your little horny desires. I was afraid at the start that I wouldn’t be able to keep up with your … appetites.”

I should be insulted by that, but instead I try to reassure her. “I’m not leaving you. I don’t want anyone else.”

“No, you misunderstand.” She lifts her face to mine. “I think I
need
you to hurt me. I
need
you to leave me.”

That answer doesn’t quite add up for me. I wrinkle my face, baffled. “What do you mean you
need
me to leave you?”

She leans into my face suddenly, her lips locking onto mine and her tongue teasing into my mouth. All my dumb, brainless blood rushes downwards, stiffening my cock and turning my stomach over like a hot, confused little pancake.

When the kiss ends, she says, “I’m a better artist without you.”

I frown. “The fuck?”

She rubs my thigh, which I suddenly resent. What the fuck did she mean by that? Is that some kind of joke?

“We make each other better,” I argue back. “You inspire me and you show me how to … how to really
see
the world. You’ve done nothing but make me a better artist. Are you saying that I make you a worse one?”

“My work comes from pain,” she tells me softly. “I’ve been so dry, Brant. I can’t even feel the charcoal anymore. I’ve stared at more blank canvases over the past two months than I have all year, not knowing what to do with them. By the time I get an idea, my eyelids are so heavy that I—”

“It’s a dry spell or something,” I interrupt. “Dmitri has them all the time with his writing. It’s an artist’s block. Like writer’s block.”

“I have no concentration. I have no fire.”

“I’m your fucking fire.” Yeah, I’m starting to get mad. The way she’s talking, it makes me feel like the big dumb Brant with a shallow brain and even shallower heart. Every word she utters converts my camera—an artist’s device—into just some toy camera I play with. “None of your canvases are gonna be blank, not with me here. You’re gonna fill those up with all your fuckin’ … all your fuckin’
passion
and shit. I don’t care how dark it is. I don’t care the monsters in your past. You make art out of that, alright? You always …”

Suddenly, I cut off my own words, thinking on all the headless dogs she’d drawn. The ones I saw in her loft. The structures. The sculptures. The canvases.
They weren’t unfinished
, I realize just now. My blood runs cold, tremors chasing their way down my arms as I picture them.

“I think I need some time,” Nell murmurs. “I don’t even really know if I want to break up with you. Maybe I just want to string you along for a bit while I figure myself out. Maybe I just need some time away from you so I can … I don’t know … make some really fucked-up thing.”