The College Obsession Complete Series (Includes BONUS Sequel Novella)

by Daryl Banner

  “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.”

  “I make you too happy?” I throw back, grasping at straws. “Is that it? Is that an accurate assessment of what you’re saying? You realize how ridiculous that sounds, Nell?”

  “It’s not exactly that. I just need to make art, Brant, and I don’t know how to do it when I’m … feeling like I’m feeling.” She holds her stomach suddenly, like she’s sick. “I’ve been so alone for so long. And my art … my art has been everything to me. Don’t you understand I can’t just give it up? It’s my fucking blood, Brant. Maybe it’s not the same for a guy like you, who’s been so comfortable picking up and tossing aside careers and majors and girls for years … but for me, it’s—”

  “I resent that.”

  “For me, it’s very different,” she finishes. “Art’s been there since the beginning. I need it. Can you say the same about that camera of yours? Can you say that, if you don’t take pictures, you feel like you’re going to die? Do you fall into a miserable, self-questioning, hateful, hellish depression when you don’t snap a gorgeous photograph? Where’s the spark in your eye, Brant? I don’t see it.”

  “Yes you do,” I argue. “You’re the one who’s been encouraging me. Of course you see it. What the fuck are you talking about, Nell?”

  She rolls her eyes and pulls away from me, hugging her knees to her chest. “Mistake. All of this. Such a mistake.”

  “Nell.” I sigh, pissed at myself suddenly. “Forgive my language. I don’t mean to be acting like an asshole. Just … I really hate that you’re suddenly pretending like you don’t know me. Or like you weren’t the one who was just … telling me to take pictures until I’m sick of it. You told me that I see the world. You pushed me to be a better artist. Don’t shut me out. Please, Nell. Don’t underestimate how badly I need you.”

  “We’re not breaking up, Brant,” she says suddenly, then rises from the curb.

  I notice a car approaching. It must be her friend Minnie. Dang, that was quick. I clamber to my feet. “Then why are you leaving me??”

  She opens the passenger side door, then turns toward me, yet does not meet my eyes. “For the record, I love you too, Brant. And maybe,” she adds, quirking her eyebrows, “maybe that’s why I have to go.”

  The car door shuts, and then she goes off, the engine purring into the distance as gently as a sigh.

  Chapter 21

  Brant

  “I guess my real question is, did you know he was a sex addict?”

  Dmitri signs the question at Clayton across the table, though from the smirking look on his face, I think he understood the gist. “Pretty much,” he answers. “I mean, he came home late all the time. He had these weird … habits. My mom knew, yet still somehow justified staying with him. She kept saying it was like any other addict, that he just had this need he had to fulfill.”

  “Wait,” interrupts Dmitri, signing as he speaks so as to include Clayton fully. “Are you trying to compare Nell’s artistic hunger with Clayton’s dad’s sexual addiction?”

  I scoff at him. “No, dude. I’m saying I think Nell might be a sex addict.” I sigh. “And yeah, I’m kinda comparing her artistic drive with her … with our sex drive. Maybe I don’t know anything. I mean, we’ve been fuckin’ like crickets for months.”

  “I don’t think that’s the saying,” Dmitri mumbles.

  “And,” I go on, ignoring him, “the sex is sometimes so wild. I mean, I’m all for wild sex. Don’t get me wrong. But like … I also kinda want to just … be with her. I want to hold her in my bed and like, I don’t know. Fall asleep watching The Breakfast Club. Or pull out all four seasons of Breaking Bad and just binge with her.”

  “There were five seasons,” Dmitri chimes in.

  “I feel so fucking inadequate for her. Being around her makes me feel so goddamn simple.”

  “You shitting me?” Clayton blurts before Dmitri’s even finished the signs. “From what you’ve told me, I think you’re the complicated one, not the simple one.”

  I screw up my forehead. “Dude. I’m a pretty simple guy with a dick and a libido. I don’t get much more complicated than that.”

  “You’re not inadequate,” Clayton retorts. “You finally found your damn calling. And you found a woman who knows it. And you’ve let her run away because … because … what was the damn reason again?”

  “Dog. Scary story. Never mind that,” I say, waving it off. “She says she needs time to ‘be an artist’ or something. She doesn’t do good work when she’s with me. She thrives on pain and darkness. She made it sound like she … counted on me breaking her heart or something. Like that’s the only way she can make art.”

  “That’s crap,” Dmitri cuts in. “I do my best work when I’m happy. When I’m sad, I just sulk and drink wine and—”

  “Jerk off a lot, yeah, I know,” I interrupt. “But apparently Nell isn’t like that. She needs her space to … be all dark and shit.”

  “Or she’s lying.”

  I stare at Dmitri. “Lying?”

  He shrugs. “She’s just afraid. Maybe she’s feeling too much for you and it’s freaking her out and she’s … taking her distance from you. I mean, dude, you have a reputation.”

  “Of being a god in the bedroom,” I say. “She’s the one who’s wantin’ to have sex all the time. And on people’s lawns, for shit’s sake. She isn’t afraid of anything, she says so herself all the time.”

  “Probably because she is afraid of everything.”

  I sneer as Dmitri finishes his sentence with his hands, signing for Clayton’s inclusion. Clayton nods mutedly, sipping his coffee and shaking his head, as if in pity. What the hell are they suggesting I do? Run off and capture Nell and insist that she’s just afraid? Tell her she’s wrong and she doesn’t need any
room to be all dark and artistic?

  “And she’s afraid of that reputation of yours,” Dmitri goes on, his hands flipping around in the air before him. “She can’t feel secure with you, not when she thinks you’re always one day closer to abandoning her. If that scary Dog story was any indication, sounds like she’s been plenty abandoned before.”

  “So … she thinks I’m gonna leave her. After we’ve been so damn happy and having so much …” I bang my hands together to indicate two people having sex, for Clayton’s benefit. From the muted snort, he got the message. “Is that how you sign the damn word? Fucking?” I repeat the gesture lewdly, which now earns a laugh from Clayton.

  “You need to reassure her,” says Dmitri seriously.

  “How? That’s bullshit. I don’t look at other girls. I don’t even get any texts anymore. What more reassurance could I possibly give her?”

  Dmitri shrugs. “I don’t know. Just continue to show her love. Make her something creepy and dark and tortured, to represent how lonely and miserable you are without her.” He pushes a finger into his glasses and lifts his eyebrows. “Maybe tell her you don’t think her stories are crap and that your little comment about her repetitive adjective choices and lack of a climax is, in fact, not offputting and perhaps is exactly what her story ought to be.” He glances at me, then realizes what he just said. “Uh, no. Sorry. I’m talking about my relationship suddenly. Shit, fuck. Damn it, I just cussed.” He buries his face into his palms.

  I give his shoulder a hearty slap and a rub, jostling him from his mental torment. “You and Riley on the jagged rocks?”

  “And sharp rocks. And invisible rocks. All the rocks.” He slaps his own face, once on either cheek. “It’s because I have some growing up to do. Nothing wrong with Riley. She’s … She’s just perfect,” he says, but his energy falls flat. He’s a bad liar.

  “Alright.” I drop the subject, not pushing it further. “Thanks, man.”

  “For what?”

  “For pointing me in the direction of …” I sigh, at a total loss. Maybe I’m the one who needs reassurance. “In the direction of …”