Beneath The Skin (A College Obsession Romance) (18 page)

BRANT

“What do you mean it’s lost??”

I fall into the couch, annoyed, and wrap myself in my blue-and-orange afghan. It smells funny. Eric and one of his boys-of-the-week probably cuddled up in it. I wrinkle my face, annoyed by that, too.

“Oh, Brant. Oh, Brant, Brant, Brant …”

I sigh into the phone against my ear. “It’s lost,” I repeat tiredly. “I already told you, Mom.”

“You lost an eight-hundred dollar camera??”

“Mom.” I don’t want to say the whole truth, but considering where this conversation will likely lead if I don’t, I choose the lesser of two evils. “It … was stolen.”

“Stolen, sweetheart? Oh, no! Were you robbed?”

“Someone broke into my roommate’s car and stole it.”

“Oh! What was it doing in your roommate’s car?”

“I was … running an errand,” I answer with a huff. “Well, sorta. I left it in the car.”

“
Brant,
” she reprimands. “Oh, dear. I
told
you to keep it with you at all times, sweetheart.”

“Don’t we have some kind of insurance?”

“Insurance??” my mother exclaims, sighing exasperatedly. “Yes, Phil. The camera.
The
camera. Honey, do you know what your son did?”

Now, she’s talking to Dad. Whenever she’s pissed at me, she says “your son”, as if with one word she can pretend she wasn’t the one who gave birth to all ten-and-a-half pounds of me.

I pull my phone from my ear while Mom and Dad quibble back and forth at my expense, then pull up the pic of Nell I took while I was at her place last night. She’s looking at me through the photo. I stare at it and try to see what
she
was seeing. I look for the contrasts and the light and dark and the essence of her hair that I captured … or whatever.

When I bring the phone back to my ear, I miss what my mom just said. “What?”

“Brant, I’m sorry to say this, but if you don’t straighten up—”

It’s my dad talking now. “What? But my grades are all good. We’re talking about my camera, Dad.”

“That camera is
mine
that you lost. I paid for it, so it’s mine. So you just lost
my
camera.”

“But it was stolen.”

He takes a deep breath, which always means I’m about to get it. “Son, if you don’t straighten up and figure out what you’re doing with my money at that college, I’m pulling you from it.”

“Huh?”

“You heard me.” He huffs into the phone, despite Mom’s efforts to calm him suddenly. “I’m pulling all your funding unless you take your education seriously. I’m sick of your …
dickin’
around
… on your mother and my dime.”

The words were difficult for him to say. They aren’t any easier to hear. “I’m not … dickin’ around,” I spit back.

“All your friends are graduating this year,” he says in a firm voice, hitting me as bluntly as a brick to the chest. “Doesn’t that concern you a bit, Brant?”

Something about the way my dad scolds me makes me feel an inch tall. “Of course it does. I just—”

“And where will you be? Still trying to pass basic algebra?”

“Dad …”

“I had a
vision
for you when I sent you off to that school. I saw you making a man out of yourself. I saw you growin’ up after all that stuff we had to deal with in high school. And I’m not talking about you and Clayton and your …
antics
.” He sighs and says something to my mom, I think to calm her down, then returns to me. “I saw you taking some darn responsibility by now. And now look at what you’re doing with my money. Literally letting it get stolen out of your hands. You’re leaving it on a car seat for some darn hoodlum to come take.”

I feel hollow after all the scolding. “I’m sorry.” The two words come out in a miserable drone. “I’m really trying, Dad. I just need—”

“Photography? What’re you gonna do with a photography degree?”

“Photograph,” I spit back.

“And you can’t very well do that without a camera, now can you?”

Or an ounce of Nell’s creativity. Or an understanding of balance, of light and dark and blah, blah, blah.

Dad sighs. The storm in his voice dissipates. “We’ll get you another camera. A replacement.”

I breathe a sigh of relief. “Thank you.”

“But you need to take a serious look at your life.”

I’m staring across the room at a blowup doll I bought Dmitri as a prank. Its big O mouth gapes at me as if caught mid-scream, frozen in surprise.

“Yes, sir,” I say back.

“We love you.”

“Love you too, Dad.”

I bring the phone back to my lap, which shows the picture I took of Nell for a short moment before the screen goes completely dark. Then all that’s left is my tired reflection staring back at me.

“Your dad?”

I look up at Dmitri, who’s leaning against the doorframe of his bedroom.

“And my mom,” I confirm, smirking down at my phone. “They’re not happy.”

“Neither was I.”

“I’ll pay for the window.”

Dmitri slumps into the room and drops onto the couch with a huff. Now we’re both sitting here in the stark silence, neither of us speaking, just the sound of our breathing filling the room.

“I’m working on a new story.”

I lift an eyebrow, turning to him. “What’s it about?”

“I haven’t figured it out yet.” Dmitri picks at his fingers, scowling. “I think it might be about Riley.”

“The girl in your writing class?”

“She’s really pretty. I like the way she sees the world. She’s got this way of turning really ugly stuff into beauty. She, like, wrote this scene about an angry wife revenge-murdering her husband one night and she made it sound like a choreographed dance. I could hear music with it.”

I wrinkle my face. “That story sounds horrible.”

“It wasn’t a nice one. But it was beautifully written.” Dmitri yawns, then slaps his own face. “I really need to start waking up earlier.
I keep  having lunch for breakfast.
”

Somehow, his slapping his own face reminds me. “Hey, by the way, Dessie is performing a new song at the
Throng & Song
this weekend. Clayton messaged me last night. You up for going?”

“I heard. Clayton messaged me, too.” He turns his head towards me. “Maybe I can bring Riley along …? She’d love it there, I think.”

I nod. “Sure, yeah. I need to meet this Riley chick.”

“You can’t have her,” he teases me.

“I can’t have the girl who writes about a woman who murders her husband? What a loss,” I tease back, rising off the couch. “When you finally get her in bed, remember to sleep with an eye open. Or to sleep cuddling an axe, either way.”

“Hey,” he calls out after me as I open the fridge, pushing through all the Chinese leftovers and half-empty sauce jars for something to eat. “How’d last night go, by the way? Other than getting my car broken into. Are you bringing Nell to the
Throng?
”

I sigh into the fridge. A part of me was hoping he’d magically forget all about my so-called date, too distracted by the broken window.

“I don’t think it’s gonna work out,” I admit.

“Why not?”

“She’s …” Anything I say feels wrong, like I’m betraying some kind of trust between her and I. “She’s got issues, I guess.”

“You were way into her, though. What happened?”

The cool air of the fridge keeps wafting over me. So does the stench of four-day-old lo mein and soy sauce. I shut the door, frustrated. “Is there not a damn thing to eat in this place?”

“We could grab a bite at the University Center before our afternoon classes,” Dmitri suggests. “Your treat.”

I have a feeling that due to the car incident, it’s going to be “my treat” for quite a while.

We ditch the apartment together and cross a cloudless campus, the sun beaming down on our heads. I feel like my skull is on fire by the time we reach the University Center, which is bubbling with students and teachers and noise at this time of day. The glass doors blind me as we pull them open and drink in the cool air conditioning inside on our way to get some grub.

“Six-inch or foot-long?” asks the sub lady.

“Eight inches when hard,” I answer.

“What?”

“I’ll take the foot-long,” I say, leaning over the counter to take a peek at the toppings. “Extra lettuce and banana peppers, please.”

As we enter the seating area, we’re nearly knocked over twice by crowds of other students pushing through the room, whether to leave or to come in and find their own seat. Heads and backpacks and noise are all that stand between me and the two empty seats we’re hoping to find. Trouble is, after nearly ten minutes of slowly pushing around the room, we don’t happen on a single damn place to sit.

Until a familiar voice cuts through the crowd. “Dmitri! Over here!”

Dmitri tugs on my sleeve, then guides me toward the voice. I lose my footing twice and nearly eat the floor until we arrive at a table with two available seats. A girl with messy, shoulder-length black hair sits across from a girl with even darker hair, but it’s jagged and short. One wears shades of green and the other, black from head to toe.

When the girl in black looks up, my stomach twists.

Not that it matters; she hardly regards my existence. “Dmitri!” she greets my roommate almost too sweetly—perhaps to show how very much she doesn’t notice or care for me. “Eric told me about your new story! The one about the corpse organ donor lover who’s looking for his heart back. Such a beautiful, dark premise.”

“Thanks, Chloe,” he mumbles. “These seats aren’t taken? You sure?”

“Nope.” She smiles at him—again, too sweetly—scooting over in her booth to make room. “You’ve been alright? Are you coming to see the play Eric wrote? It’s tomorrow night.”

“Oh, crap. That’s this week already?” Dmitri shakes the confusion out of his head. “Yeah, I’ll uh … of course. I’ll be there. Brant, you want to come?”

The table turns into ice the moment my name is uttered and I haven’t even sat down yet. Chloe, my ex from last year who should totally not
still
be holding a damn grudge against me, doesn’t even bother with the courtesy of looking up to meet my eyes. Instead, she just smirks at the mention of me, her whole face turning cool and pale as the Arctic Ocean.

So I provide the beachy warmth of the Caribbean Ocean. “Yep!” I exclaim, then take my seat next to the other girl at the table dressed in green, who regards me with mild curiosity. I realize with a start that I know her too. “Hey, wait. I know you. You’re … no, no, don’t tell me … You’re Dessie’s old roommate, right?”

“Yes, sir,” she answers plainly, her voice low and ungainly. Her eyes are pretty, though, and her skin is smooth and …
virginal
… like it’s never even been touched by a dude. Maybe she bats for the other team and it really hasn’t.

“What was your name again?” I ask, extending a hand.

“Well, of course,” says Chloe so softly, I doubt she means for me to hear. “It’s hard for him to keep up with so many girls’ names.”

Okay, maybe she did mean for me to hear that jab.

“I’m Sam …
antha
,” the girl answers deadpan, shaking my hand. “Ugh. Dessie wants me to use my full name. Ugh and a half.”

Dmitri folds his arms on the table. “I like just Sam,” he puts in. “I mean, you seem the most comfortable with it, anyway.”

“Thanks. I like your glasses,” she says, her words uttered in perfect monotone and her sentences bleeding together without any indication of pause. “Dessie said I look better with contacts. My glasses are too thick and big. She also told me to just be myself. I don’t know. It’s all very confusing.”

“Dessie’s weird like that,” I admit, from what I know about her. “I think with the whole actress thing …”

“
The whole actress thing
,” Chloe mutters under her breath, smirking.

I ignore her. “With the whole actress thing, Dessie is pretty used to putting on new skins all the time and shedding old ones.”

“
Kinda like trying on new girls, shedding old ones
.” Again, she mutters quietly and to herself, but just loud enough for me to hear.

And again, her snide remarks go mostly ignored. “So I say, just take her advice with one tasty grain of salt, Sam. You just do whatever it is you want to do. She’s probably wanting you to emphasize those pretty eyes you got.”

Sam chortles, as if that compliment was the most ridiculous thing in the world to her, blushing instantly and looking away.

I smile, amused by the reaction. “What? Don’t like hearing that you got pretty eyes?”