Beneath The Skin(86)

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.





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.