Beneath The Skin (A College Obsession Romance) (9 page)

Clayton laughs, and whether it’s at my gestures or he actually caught my words, I don’t know. I guess it doesn’t matter; I laugh too. And for a fleeting second, it’s just like old times.

Then his phone vibrates yet again. He pulls it to his face right away, still laughing, and starts to text.

I look down at my arm, distracted by a crescent scar that still lives there. I got it the day Clayton and I fought as prepubescent twerps, not long before he lost his hearing. We were fighting over a girl. This was back when he thought that the way to show me how to get girls was to take them away from me, each and every one that I ogled.

We’ve come a long way. Or perhaps just traded places.

Or else I’m all alone in this lady-lovin’ conquest.

“Maybe,” I say, knowing full well I’m talking to myself, “I’m still that kid who can’t look a girl properly in the eye. Maybe I’m kidding myself with this whole photography thing. Maybe the more photos I take, the less I actually see.”

Clayton smiles at the text he gets back, then types a hasty response. In the next moment, the server comes by with our food, and with the noise of late night laughter and familial banter engulfing us, we stuff our faces.

NELL

I really didn’t expect him to show up at all. So color me a pale shade of surprised when I find him waiting by the Quad fountain, perched on its stone lip like some romance-tormented college boy bard. The only thing he’s missing is a lute and a song.

Upon my approaching, he turns his head and a charming smile stretches the length of his face, his dimples popping out. I would never admit this outside the confines of my head, but the sight of him sends a nervous flutter of excitement through my body. He is such a pleasant sight. I wouldn’t mind walking up to a hundred different fountains if a guy like that was perched on every single one, awaiting me and smiling the way he does. Where’s his chariot?

“You live in the dormitories?” he asks, wiggling his eyebrows. “Which one’s yours and is your roommate gone?”

And then he goes and ruins it.
“Follow me, camera boy.”

“It’s Brant.”

We continue across the vast parking lot with the sun hugging us every grueling step of the way. He keeps mostly silent, perhaps inspired to shut the hell up after he realizes how utterly unimpressed I am with his incessant need to think with his cock. Until I open up his pants and find a brain in there, I’ll deflect every sweet, sugary word he utters.

No matter how insufferably sexy I find his voice.

“This … is the bad part of town,” he mutters quietly.

“What makes you say that?” I throw back defensively.

“Don’t have to be a genius to, uh … see the part of town we’re in.”

See? You don’t “see” anything, camera boy.

“I had a buddy, Robbie,” he goes on, “and he was mugged over here on his way to a damn Burger King. Had his iPhone stolen too. 50 or 60 gigabytes of porn and music and family pics, all gone forever.”

“Doesn’t that all back up on a
cloud
or something?”

“Backing up his porn? You nuts?”

“I’ve been accused of that before,” I admit coolly, taking a left down Pinemont
when we reach the first crosswalk.

Brant hesitates a second before crossing the street with me, perhaps because I didn’t wait for the light to turn green. I barely even checked to see if a car was coming.

“I’ve been accused of a thing or two myself,” he calls out, then catches up to my side.

“I can’t imagine what,” I return dryly.

“You know, we might have some more engaging conversations if you don’t pretend to know everything about me.”

He thrusts his hands in his pockets as we walk. I presume it’s a defense mechanism because he’s uncomfortable, but it only succeeds in flexing his arms, which does not go unnoticed by me.
Not a good time to get distracted, Nell.

“You can’t say I’m not an artist when you haven’t seen my work,” he goes on. “What if I said the same thing about you? What if I said
you’re
not an artist? How would that make you feel?”

“I’d laugh.”

Brant hisses his own laughter through his teeth. “Yeah? Why would you laugh?”

“If I called you a banana, you’d laugh, wouldn’t you?” I turn my head, drinking in the sight of his bright blue eyes as they wonder the meaning of my words. Then I take a sip of those chiseled arms of his … and that sexy, dimpled smirk. “Because you’re obviously not a banana.”

“No, I’m not,” he agrees.

“So if you really
are
an artist,” I go on, “then you’d laugh when I accused you of not being one. You’d laugh and think of your best photo, the one that blew your mind apart, the one that encapsulates everything you are, even to this very moment. You’d laugh at me.”

He stews on that for a second. Then he faces me and flashes his teeth. “I have a banana in my pants.”

I ignore him and his stupid, childish comments—despite the urge to chuckle and betray my cool demeanor. I think he sees it because he snorts breathily, which very quickly converts my almost-smile into a tightened smirk.

After listening to our footsteps for a measureless amount of time, we take another left onto Abernathy and arrive at the destination. Brant doesn’t say a word as I open the tall front glass doors. The cool air wafts over us like a refreshing spritz of water as we step inside, the doors shutting gently at our backs.

As I cross the brightly lit room, my heels echo loudly off the tile and the art displays and glass walls. When I stop at one of them and turn, I find Brant standing in the middle of the room with his eyes grown to twice their size as he spins slowly, swallowing in the new environment. With the exception of the gallery owner and likely a student or two in the back, there’s no one here yet but us. The only others in our immediate presence are the countless pieces of art that sit on their respective displays, silently staring back.

“Never been to an art exhibit before?” I ask him, my voice echoing hollowly across the room.

“Holy moly.” Brant stops and stares back at the entrance. “You can see the street. All the walls are glass. They can see in,” he states dumbly, then turns back around to look at all the art projects spread around the room in their little sections and stations. His eyes zero in on one in particular. “Is … Is that a penis?”

I follow his line of sight to a clay pot that looks like a very tall mushroom and would likely be mistaken for one if it weren’t for the two round drums the artist deliberately set in front of it.

“It’s art,” I answer vaguely.

He scoffs, coming up to it and smirking. “Right. And I can toss a clam on a pedestal and call it a vagina. Is that art?”

My eyes narrow. Every stupid thing that spills from his stupid, sexy mouth just confirms more and more what kind of guy I’m getting to know.

“Want to see more?” I offer tersely, masking my annoyance the way one holds back from shouting an obscenity after stubbing a toe.

His bright blue eyes lift from the penis pot and meet mine.

The effect loosens every ounce of tight frustration I’d just gained.

Then, it’s his soft footsteps that now fill the room, tapping slowly along the tile as he struts up to me. The closer he gets, the more his smile fades until we’re nearly nose-to-nose and all I see are his infinite blue eyes.

“Yep,” he says, quiet as a sigh. “I wanna see more. Much more.”

Every little spark of willpower within me is exercised to its fullest capacity to turn away from that sexy face. He’s really making this a challenge for me.

Over my shoulder, I tell him, “This way.”

I lead him to a work of art that sits on a pedestal out in the open—fully visible to the street from the front
and
side glass windows, as well as within perfect view of the whole rest of the gallery. There, his eyes fall on the display that gives him cause to lift his brows in surprise, and gape. I watch with secret, dark delight as he walks around the piece of work, taking it in at all possible angles with his big, bewildered eyes. I’m feasting on his every little reaction, joy bubbling within me like a spicy soup on the stovetop. He even stops to cross his arms, bringing a thoughtful finger to his lips as he studies it.

Finally, just when I’m ready for him to offer his admiration, he lifts his face, meets my eyes, and says, “And what in freaky hell is this?”

I lift an affronted eyebrow. “Well, what do you think?”

He tilts his head. “It’s a naked woman,” he observes, “on all fours … and her mouth has … a ball-gag with a censor bar over it.” He shakes his head. “The hell kind of sick shit is this?” He laughs suddenly, his chuckles whistling through his fingers. “Some kind of BDSM thing?”

My face hides all emotion—except for my eyes, perhaps, which feel like they’re glowing with green fire. I merely stand there, my stomach tight and my breath held, and let him observe. It’s like I’m in class all over again, awaiting my stupid peers’ criticism.

“Her hands and ankles are handcuffed to the pedestal,” he notices. “Sorry, but uh … seeing as she’s papier-mâché … or clay, or something … I don’t think she’s going anywhere.” He laughs again.

His laughs ring across the gallery, ring into my ears, into my heart.

“You don’t think there’s a point to the cuffs? That a woman can be objectified … without her consent?” I ask, my voice soft and low.

“Okay, is that what this is? Sorry, but no.” He shakes his head, leans back against the glass wall as he smirks. “Welcome to the new age, my friend. Men are just as objectified. You see ads nowadays? Men with sculpted abs and big, fat biceps and no fuckin’ waist to speak of?”

“It’s not the same.” Now
I’m
crossing my arms, my words growing more clipped by the syllable. “Women are treated like objects beyond that. Tools only meant to advance
men
. A pretty, opinionless wife on the arm of a CEO. The First Lady. The
slut
in a movie. A billboard of—”

“I live in an apartment with two gay men,” Brant cuts me off, and his voice is neither mad nor argumentative; in fact, the asshole sounds downright amused. “Between them and the carousel of pretty boys who slip through my pad on a nightly basis, they have so much damn body dysmorphia and body image issues and objectification between them that even
I
catch myself counting calories. Hey, did you know that I’m ‘straight skinny’ … but ‘gay fat’? Me. Fat.”

I feel so many thoughts bubbling up my throat and so much anger stewing around inside me that I suddenly—and uncharacteristically—find myself completely devoid of words. I simply stand there and stare at him stupidly, my eyes cold and my lips locked.

Didn’t I say I wouldn’t let him get to me? Didn’t I just say I knew exactly what kind of
boy
I was getting to know?

Why do I insist on engaging with him?

“And why’s the censor bar over just her mouth?” he asks, giving the work another quick, haphazard inspection. “I mean, you can clearly see her nipples. And her pink taco. I can see her cute little pink taco.” He points at it demonstratively and whispers, “
It’s right there. Her a-cooter-mah-twat-a. Right there.
”

Maybe I
should
start offering spoons with my work. “I guess that’s all I’ve brought you here to show you,” I say, giving up. “Y’know. Artist to
artist
.”

He looks at me suddenly. “Who’s the artist of this work?”

I narrow my eyes. “Some bitch named Nell.”

He nods thoughtfully, then seems to appraise me with his eyes. “So are you done showing me all this art stuff? You ready to … show me a little something
not
currently on display?” He does a little cheesy dance as he circles the naked sculpture, growing closer to me, his balled up fists in the air bouncing to some beat that only he hears.