The College Obsession Complete Series (Includes BONUS Sequel Novella)

by Daryl Banner

  “Nope.” I fold my arms.

  His eyes flick down to my breasts for a moment. I guess folding my arms just brought them into focus. When he returns his gaze to mine, he says, “I’m probably wrong about your drawing anyway, aren’t I?”

  I purse my lips, studying him for a long moment. Then, I finally give in. “If I’m totally honest, I never quite know what my drawings mean.” I come around to his other side, trying to see my deranged cat with objective eyes. It’s always so hard to do.

  “So it was a trick challenge?”

  “Maybe,” I admit.

  “Settin’ me up to fail?”

  “Probably.”

  I continue to inspect my work, noticing a spot where I could shade under the food bowl better. I also take a mental note of a part of the tail where the fur looks too perfect and needs some fussing up.

  I realize he hasn’t said anything for a moment. I glance up, only to find Brant no longer looking at the drawing. His blue eyes are glued to mine instead.

  The sudden intimacy makes me recoil in fear, yet my body doesn’t seem to move. I’m frozen in place, hypnotized.

  Brant inhales, then lets it all out slowly, his crystalline eyes never leaving my face. A smile creeps onto his lips just as slowly before he says, “Honestly, I think I’d be pretty much the dumbest guy alive to try and win any game against you.”

  “Dumbest ever,” I agree lamely, my gaze lost to his mouth and the silky words coming out from them.

  “I mean, really, I ended up chained and nearly naked after losing my last game to you …”

  “Cuffed, not chained.” The way his lips move are hypnotic …

  “So maybe we should forget all the game playing and … just do this the old-fashioned way.” He swallows so hard, I hear it in his throat. His smile is gone. His hands are back in his pockets and his posture stiffens.

  Did shit just get serious?

  “Old-fashioned way?” I prompt him.

  “Do you want to go out with me, Nell?”

  “I …”

  Now it’s my turn to swallow hard, blinking at him and completely thrown. My mouth is so dry suddenly. My insides tremble. I can’t even remember the last time I was asked out. Freshman year? High school?

  Never?

  “Just dinner,” he says. “Nothing else. Maybe. I mean, you know, if I manage to woo you over a nice steak or somethin’, I’m not opposed to getting naked in front of you for the third time. Or is it the fourth?”

  “Fourth,” I answer numbly. “Unless you count those black briefs you were wearing at the gallery.”

  “Aww, you remembered the color!” he exclaims, his face lighting up.

  And my face flushes, frustrated that I let that slip. I grit my teeth, my arms folding tightly.

  “Those were one of my gay roommate’s fault, by the way,” he adds quickly. “He insisted that I wear them.”

  I’m turned to stone, from my feet to my stomach to even my brain. I can’t seem to trust him, no matter how imploringly those beautiful eyes of his glow. When I look at his gentle, inviting arms, I remember a boy who embraced me long ago and told me he’d never let go—then did. When Brant’s lips spill such sweet words, I hear the same sweet words that a boy once whispered in my ear—and his words were so heartfelt, I was nearly convinced that he meant every one. Even the day my father abandoned me charges forth to shovel more doubt into my fast-filling brain. The pain I harbor for my twin brothers who moved as far away from home as they possibly could hurts anew.

  I can’t move. I can’t trust him. I can’t even appreciate his sweetness for what it is, because my brain knows that no matter how sweet the fruit, it’s in their nature to rot.

  “So you wanna go out with me or not, Nell?” he asks gently, stirring me from my thoughts. “If you’re feelin’ nothing here and I’m just … barkin’ up some tree I got no business barkin’ up …”

  “I have work to do,” I blurt.

  His face freezes, startled by my blunt response. “Afterwards, then?”

  “My work will take me all night,” I lie, running the back of a wrist over my forehead before making a move to reclaim my stool.

  “Wait,” he says, stopping me.

  I stare into his eyes.

  To my surprise, he gently presses a thumb to my forehead, then wipes. He brings the now-darkened thumb to his lips. “Smudge,” he explains, the word barely a whisper.

  I hold my breath, then let out a word: “Charcoal.”

  He glances at my drawing, then lifts a questioning eyebrow. “Does it have a name yet?”

  “No,” I lie.

  He smirks at it. Then he asks, “You really don’t want to go out with me tonight?”

  I press my lips together, refusing to answer him again. Or maybe I don’t trust the answer I’d give him.

  “Alright,” he says softly, taking my silence for his answer, and then quietly leaves.

  I stare at my cat for a long while. Then I clench my eyes and purge all thought of Brant and his messy hair and his perfect body and whatever tiny, nearly undetectable trace of humanity or sensitivity or soul that might—with some very, near-to-breaking-point stretch of the imagination—exist. I take a deep breath, face my work, and patiently decide where to place my next stroke.

  “You know …”

  I jump at the sound of his voice again, turning to find him still standing at the door.

  “If I were to name it,” he muses, leaning against the doorframe, “I might call it something like … Dinner.” He smiles, his dimples showing. “Doesn’t tell the viewer what to think. Doesn’t explain anything. Just … sort of … unsettles you. Makes you think. Makes you … hungry. Which I’m hoping is the point, because I’m starving.”

  “Brant …”

  He screws up his forehead. “Yeah?”

  “Nine o’clock,” I make myself say. “Tonight.”

  Chapter 8

  Nell

  There are two very passionate young women inside of me. One of them wears black and summons the rain with her dark, furious eyes. The other wears a bright green dress and dances in the puddles. I’m always at war with them.

  Brant has the girl in the green dress to thank for my saying yes.

  I don’t know what kind of woman he was expecting to pick up, but I don’t imagine it’s the one he gets. When he pulls up to the rear of the art school that grazes the main road by a line of carefully placed shrubs, there’s a look of awe in his eyes when I open his car door and slip inside. I had run home and changed into a pair of black jeans that don’t have paint stains on them, complemented by a red crop top. I even bothered to tease a few curls into my hair. Why? I don’t know. I never have a reason to do much of anything with it lately.

  And Brant? He’s apparently gone home and traded his look from earlier with a totally new one. He wears a clean, seemingly starched blue-and-orange plaid shirt buttoned with the top one undone, tucked into a pair of rough, distressed jeans and a belt that thankfully doesn’t have a dinner plate for a buckle. His hair has been tamed, parted to the side with just a few rebel tufts here and there going in their own stubborn directions. His eyes are somehow softer than usual too. It’s both inviting and disarming, what those eyes do to me.

  “Well, hey there, pretty.”

  “Nell,” I correct him reservedly, securing the seatbelt.

  He smiles at me, pulling onto the main road. “Nell,” he amends. “Not fond of terms of endearment?”

  I check my phone for the time, then pocket it. “Not particularly.”

  “Alright. I’ll remember that, babe.”

  I shoot him a look, then question whether he even knows what he said as he innocently pays attention to the road, one hand hanging on the top of the wheel and the other gripping the stick shift.

  Of course he knew what he said.

  “So how long have you been an artist?”

  I keep my eyes ahead as I think of how to answer that question. I hate that question. There’s
never just one moment that someone like me wakes up and thinks: Ah, yes—I want to torture everyone around me for the rest of my life, including myself.

  “Forever,” I answer vaguely.

  “It always kinda amazes me, the stuff that comes out of creative people’s minds.” He jabs a button into the console and the radio turns on, blasting us with the likes of Nirvana at max volume. We both jump. He grabs and twists the volume knob at once, an apologetic wince on his face. “Sorry ‘bout that. Dmitri’s car, Dmitri’s music.”

  “This isn’t your car?”

  “I borrowed my roomie’s for the night.”

  “I like this song.”

  “Huh?” He turns the volume up a bit. “This one?”

  “Mmm-hmm.” I hum along to the tune of Heart-Shaped Box, then glance over at Brant and catch him looking at me while driving. “Keep your eyes on the road.”

  “Sorry, ma’am.” He turns forward, smiling. “You like rock?”

  I haven’t heard Nirvana in years, it seems. Pangs of nostalgia rush forth of times when my dad would come home from the office, trade his stuffy suit for a tattered Korn t-shirt, and turn up the stereo as he painted his miniature model dragons. “Sure.” My answer is delayed. “My dad listened to a lot of Metallica, Nine Inch Nails, Nirvana … Then he’d flip the CD and play Chopin while he painted.”

  “Show Pan? Who the hell’s Show Pan?”

  “Chopin. Polish composer. Pianist.”

  “Cool.” He nods, pouting his lips in thought. “So your dad paints?”

  “Miniature figurines. Used to.”

  “Used to? What does he do now?”

  “No idea. Couldn’t care less. Where are we going?” I ask, changing the subject as my insides tighten at all this talk about my dad. “I could eat an arm and a leg right about now.”

  “I got some nuts if you need somethin’ to put in your mouth.”

  I gape at him. Is he fucking serious? Am I supposed to laugh at that? “Not interested,” I tell him with a huff.

  “You sure? They’re honey-roasted.”

  I blink, confusedly staring at the side of his face.

  “There’s a can in the glove box.” He reaches over suddenly, his hand grazing my thigh, and pops it open, revealing the can to me.

  “A can … of nuts,” I say, swallowing back a laugh.

  “What? You thought I meant—? Oh, you dirty girl.” Brant sneers at me teasingly. “I’d never say somethin’ that asinine on a first date.”

  “Oh, yeah? Is that what this is? A first date?”

  “Sure. Isn’t it?”

  “Too early to tell.” I slap shut the glove box. “Thanks for your offer, but I’ll wait until we’re at the … wherever we’re going.”

  “Lucky Dean’s.”

  Never heard of it. “If they serve food, sounds good to me.”

  A moment passes as we drive with the soft, grungy beat of Nirvana in the background. Suddenly Brant blurts, “Y’know, if you want to put my nuts in your mouth—”

  I burst out in laughter. I can’t hold it in.

  “Knew I could get you to laugh,” he mutters to himself through a victorious smile of his own. “Score one for Rudawski.”

  I’m already chewing on my lips to swallow the chuckles, shaking my head and looking away. Despite my annoyance at my inability to keep from laughing, I can’t deny the utter release of tension that laugh just gifted me. I feel pounds lighter in an instant.

  “Can’t blame you,” he says with a shrug, coming to a stop at another red light. “Every other thing comin’ out of my mouth is some sort of … bedroom invite, so to speak. Habit of mine, I guess. I might legitimately have sexual Tourette’s. Can’t blame you for what you think of me.”

  I stare down at my fingers, picking at them. “What do you think I think of you?”

  “Maybe you think I’m just a dumb dude who has no business in the art school. Maybe you think I got no depth in me.”

  “Maybe.”

  I stare out the window for a while. Then, I hear a click. I look up. Brant’s holding his camera, lowering it from having just taken a picture. “Sorry,” he murmurs. “You just look so damn pretty tonight.”

  I open my mouth to say something, but nothing comes. I just stare at his bright eyes and that camera in his soft hands … a camera I know easily costs upwards of six hundred dollars.

  “I’ll delete the pic if that was weird,” he says quickly. “I just wanted to sorta … catch you unawares, I guess.”

  “Caught,” I assure him with a short nod. “Where were you hiding that thing?”

  “Under my seat,” he confesses with a chuckle. “In a little black case. I take it everywhere with me. It’s like my new toy or somethin’. Can’t go nowhere without it.”

  I don’t know why, but it only just now occurs to me how close together we are in this tiny car. Just a few feet separate his lips from mine, and I’m disarmed by the fact that that’s the only thing my mind bothers to measure—the proximity of our lips.

  Is Brant holding his breath? I feel like I’m holding mine. Even the music seems to have left us alone in this vehicle so we can become so incredibly, sensitively, unsettlingly aware of one another’s presence, one another’s bodies …

  He licks his lips.

  I pull my bottom one in, biting it softly.

  “You gotta know,” he says so low, his voice turns into gravel, “that it isn’t just the little horny, bouncy dude inside me speaking when I say you’re … f-fucking gorgeous.”

  His eyes shimmer anxiously.

  Brant just stuttered.

  And my mouth is so dry, I couldn’t respond even if I wanted to.

  Why am I so damn nervous all of a sudden?

  “You know that, right?” He won’t let up. “You know that you’re a total babe, right?”

  I look away suddenly, recoiling back into myself. It’s too much, too soon. Too intense. Too close.

  “Hey, look, we’re here,” he announces when the light turns green, his voice a bit strained. I glance up just as he hangs a right, pulling into the parking lot of some restaurant I’ve never seen before. Big green lights adorn every window and there seems to be quite a crowd, even for a Monday.

  I get out of the car perhaps a touch too fast. I let Brant lead the way to the door and, naturally, he holds it open and gives a sweeping gesture of his hand, letting me enter first. Such a gentleman. And I’m sure he’s just as much a gentleman when he bends his girls over countertops and thrusts his cock in and out of them faster than a car piston.

  When the hostess seats us, it’s in an outdoor patio area enclosed by posts with strands of green bulbs hanging lazily between them. The eyes of the hostess linger on Brant’s before she sets menus in front of us and makes her leave. So as I peruse the appetizers, I wonder privately if Brant might have already tried a few things here that are not on the menu. Then our waitress, a girl named Brianna, has a smile only for Brant when she takes his order. That same smile both tightens and darkens when she takes mine, then she sweeps away with the menus. Is she yet another of Brant’s conquests, or am I now presuming too much?

  “I like this place,” he tells me with a lift of his eyebrows.

  “It seems to like you, too,” I remark dryly.

  The sarcasm goes over his head. “So do you live alone?”

  I take a sip of my water. “Yes. I have a place by the Brook.”

  He lifts his eyebrows. “Jefferson Brook? Isn’t that kind of far from campus?”

  “It’s only a fifteen minute walk.”

  “No car?”

  “I prefer to walk. I run errands by foot every day. I volunteer at the Westwood Light, bringing by art supplies whenever I can and … letting the kids create. It’s a bit of an unofficial thing. The head admin doesn’t like me but lets me come because the kids do, so—”

  “What’s that? An orphanage? Homeless shelter?”

  “Something like that.” I take another sip, then shiver at a sudden gust o
f wind, which tosses my hair. “Why are you amazed by creative minds? You act like you don’t have one of your own.”

  “Because I don’t,” he shoots back.

  I lift my eyebrows questioningly at him, awaiting some elaboration. Is he saying that because I accused him of not being a real artist, or is there something more behind his words?

  He smiles lightly, shifting in his seat, then props his elbows up on the table. “Listen, I’ve been surrounded by people my whole life who are twenty times more creative than me. Even my roommates. I’ve got Dmitri, who writes poetry. And short stories. Then there’s Eric, who’s an actor. But he didn’t get cast in anything this semester or last, so he sulks a lot and talks about how he wants to write plays and win himself a Pulitzer or something. He’s pretty miserable to be around lately, if I’m honest. I think Dmitri’s a good influence on him, what with the being a writer and all. Then there’s Clayton, my bestie since childhood, and he’s a damn lighting designer working with … with people from New York now. Lucky bastard.”

  “They’re all your gay roommates?”

  “Just Eric and Dmitri. Clayton moved out. He’s my best friend, so it sucks that he’s gone. Now he’s living with Dessie, a pretty actress and singer. Maybe you’ll meet them sometime.”

  “Maybe.” I offer him a smile, stirring my water with a straw.

  He shifts in his seat again and I feel his shoe tap into mine. I look up and find him glancing off somewhere in the parking lot, pressing his lips together.

  I wonder if this night is as hard for him as it is for me. Do I have Brant all wrong? Sometimes he acts like a self-proclaimed gift to all of womankind. And sometimes he reminds me of this timid boy I knew long ago who was so scared to ask to sit with anyone at lunch that he’d just take his tray to the corner of the room and eat by the trashcan. It was a girl in a green dress who might or might not have joined him one unassuming Tuesday in October and gave him reason to smile for the first time all school year. We might have also been laughed at by a neighboring table and then pelted with banana peels.

  Also, I’m pretty sure I wore more than just that green dress when I was a kid, seriously.