Beneath The Skin(59)

“No. They’d just be in the courtyard below, or stuck in a tree for the squirrels to play with. Who cares? Dangle your damn feet with me.” She gives her own a little twirl in the air, which seems to ignite a fearful twirl in my stomach.

I push away the fears. I’ve got no room for them anymore, not when I’m sitting by the prettiest damn girl on campus. “Alright, you win.”

My legs open and flip over the ledge, dangling alongside hers. I feel like my kidneys just dropped out of my butt and my esophagus twisted up as though being ungently hugged by a noose. My breathing tightens and my fingers claw into the gravel, as if any of these reactions will save me from a fall, should I somehow slip.

“Your heart’s pounding,” she observes.

“You seem to have a talent for making my heart race,” I note, giving her a teasing side-eye. “You’re gorgeous.”

Her shining eyes burrow into mine, fixing me into a trance at once. Maybe my words hit her at just the right moment for her to really, truly hear them. She needs to hear them. She needs to believe them, because they’re the damned truth.

And then I give her another truth. “I really want to kiss you right now, Nell.”

“I’d like that,” she murmurs back.

Heart racing, legs dangling, I stare into her eyes and gently lean into her, letting my lips seek out hers in the semidarkness. I find her neck at first. Then my lips softly work up to her cheek, drawing a path of kisses until I reach the warm velvet of her mouth.

Why label it? she had asked. Let’s just go with it.

Here we are “just going with it” as our heads bob side to side, gently yet intensely locking mouths in our mutual conquest to consume one another at an agonizingly slow pace.

Let it become whatever it wants to become.

I gently open my lips to her, letting my tongue inside her warm, wet mouth. Her tongue joins mine, sensuous, slow, savoring every moment. We are those two slobbering fools in the video on the wall. Our world is reduced to just a pair of faces, a coupling of tongues, a marriage of mouths, a partnership of breath. I’ve never wanted anyone so badly.

Like a work of art, Brant. You just apply one stroke at a time.

One.

Stroke.

At.

A.

Time.

I’ve been Nell’s work of art before. I’ll be her work of art again, and with any luck, she’ll soon be mine.





NELL



I meet him outside in the parking lot of the Throng & Song. He’s wearing a formfitting black button-down shirt untucked over a pair of torn jeans. His hair darts over his face in carefully arranged tufts of light brown and his killer smile is armed and dangerous tonight.

“You look beautiful,” he tells me, his voice hitching on that last word, which makes me smile.

“I hope they serve hard liquor,” I mutter. I’m going to need it.

Brant reaches for my hand. Fear charges loudly from one end of my brain to the other, leaving no room to focus on anything but the sight of his gently outstretched palm in the cool, unsettling semidarkness of the parking lot. How can just a kind, well-meaning hand affect me so horribly?

“Ready?” he prompts me.

Stuffing my hesitation at once, I take his hand. The world is pulled back together in an instant. The parking lot, sinister only a second ago, suddenly feels downright friendly.

I meet his eyes. “Lead the way.”

The Throng & Song is already packed from one corner to the other with people from campus. I imagine 99% of their clientele is comprised of Klangburg students, though none of them look familiar to me. Must be mostly Theatre and Dance peeps, I figure. The air is thick with cigarette smoke, booze, and body heat. Music from the band thrums through my body, which reminds me almost too much of my dad’s music as it would pummel throughout the house from the garage where he did most of his meticulous model-painting work. This place also reminds me of a favorite bar that Minnie and I used to frequent downtown every weekend my freshman year. Overall, I’d say I could easily get pretty comfortable in a place like this. Considering how many student housing units are nearby within walking distance, I don’t imagine this place worries too much about intoxicating its customers and draining their wallets dry—wallets filled with Mommy and Daddy’s hard-earned money, no doubt.

“YO!” cries Brant, cutting through the crowd in pursuit of a person I cannot yet see. Our hands still joined, I follow him, nearly taking someone’s elbow in my face on the way.

When we emerge from the other end of the crowd, we’ve arrived at the bar. Brant lets go of my hand to give a hug to a guy I’ve seen before. He’s the shorter dude I saw Brant walking with that one day when they took a pic of a girl’s ass. It was the same day I unintentionally left my Pussy on that grassy knoll for the benefit of—I presume—a bunch of greedy-ass birds perched in the trees above me.