Beneath The Skin (A College Obsession Romance) (52 page)

“And
that’s
how you do it,” I say to him, grinning.

He doesn’t respond.

With a coy shrug, I waltz back to the stage, return the microphone to its stand, then give the room a little drunken curtsy before giggling and rushing back to my table, the room revived with the musician’s music and loud, chaotic chatter.

“Oh my
god
,” moans Victoria when I’ve returned to my seat. “What were you thinking??”

“You can say I was inspired.” I giggle, eye-fucking Clayton through the smoke and banter. He looks so pissed off and sexy. “And now he knows who I am. Oh, how was the song?” I ask my friends.

“You were amazing, obviously,” Victoria says.

“Thanks!” I laugh, but when I return my gaze to Clayton, he’s abandoned his beer and is walking away.

The joy’s lost in an instant. I bend to the side, curious, but only catch a glimpse of his backside as he pushes through the door, gone.

Wow. Did
I
do that to him?

“No, no,” shouts Victoria through the noise, her face turning serious. “No, Dessie. You can’t go after him. You shouldn’t. He’s bad news.”

Why’d Clayton leave so suddenly? Did I make him uncomfortable? Well, he deserved it … after all the turmoil he put
me
through by just existing.

“Dessie. Are you listening?”

I frown, annoyed. “Why does it matter?”

But then even Chloe chimes in. “Everyone wants a piece of the Watts boy. Girls go crazy for him.”

“And guys,” adds Eric with a sneer.

“Every new student that comes through here tries to hook up with that hot piece of ass,” Chloe adds with a rueful shake of her head. “I’ve watched it since my own freshman year. It’s tragic.”

“Hell, even
I
couldn’t help but stare at him when he was in my dramaturgy class,” Victoria shouts over the table. “Listen, if it’s a boy toy you want, I’ll get you a list of ten eligible bachelors, my friend. Clayton is
not
one of them.”

I lean forward, meeting her halfway over the table. “He’s the one from the theater,
Vicki!
”

“Don’t call me that! Wait, what??”

“The one who heard me! The one from the other day!” I shout back. “
He’s
the one! That’s the guy! Clayton!” I stare after the door, still wondering why he left so abruptly. I’m trying not to let it sour the moment we just shared. I feel like I did something wrong. “Now, he’s heard my song,” I add. “Twice.”

“Oh, Des, no, no,” retorts Victoria. “He didn’t hear your song, sweetheart. Not one note.”

I frown at her. “What the hell does
that
mean?”

“Honey, he’s deaf.”

CLAYTON

I am so fucked.

Six drinks and six blocks later, I still see her face burned into the backs of my eyelids. Or maybe it was the shitty stage lighting.

I barely survived the last time I let a girl get too close to me. I’ve been so good at keeping focus. I just brought my grades back up from last semester’s poli-sci catastrophe. I can’t let another actress destroy me again. Haven’t I learned my damn lesson?

Things are looking up, too. I’m feeling weird shit I haven’t felt in years—like
hope
. Everything I’ve worked so hard for since freshman year—while struggling to pay tuition out of my own pocket with the scrappy earnings from my three or four summer jobs—is about to pay off. After my experimental lighting design of Oliver’s senior-directed black box show last year, Doctor Thwaite, the Director of the School of Theatre, is finally looking at me. I caught him giving me an approving nod when I passed by him on the first day back. His lips moved to form a hello with my name attached.
My name.
They’re starting to see me.

That’s why I can’t let
her
fuck it all up. I know how I get, obsessing over a girl like her. My weakness. It’s the same weakness I had even in the first half of my life when I could
hear
a girl say my name.

My opportunity to be the lighting designer for a main stage production is so close, I can taste it.

What I can also taste is her lips. As she sang, I was hypnotized by them as they moved, imagining what they’d taste like if I brought my mouth to them. Then she came down from the stage and got in my face. Just inches away, I could’ve fucking tasted her.

I had a similar reaction when I caught her singing to the empty seats of the auditorium the other day. When she caught me standing there, I loved how that made her freak out and bolt. I was so mesmerized by the sight of her, I didn’t even pay attention to what she was saying to me. I spent that night pushing away thoughts of her long brown hair, her curvy body, her creamy skin … and those huge, vibrant eyes …

Fuck.
And now she’s gone and sang a song to me. It was excruciating, sitting there in the dense crowd of drunken losers while that girl poured sweet music from those lips of hers … music I couldn’t hear.

My phone vibrates. I glance down to find a text from my roommate.

BRANT

Got a girl over.

Hot AF n kinda freaky.

Haven’t sealed the deal yet.

Need the place for 10 min :)

Every girl my puppy of a roommate meets is “hot as fuck”. I swear, Brant could hump fire out of a fire hydrant, that horny dog. So much for going home.

I smirk and type a reply:

ME

U only need 10 minutes?

BRANT

Good point. Gimme 15

Moments later, I’m staring at the blank screen of my phone in the 24-hour diner near my apartment. The thought of Brant getting busy with some chick is amusing at first, but that amusement sours fast, and all I’m left with is a ringing in my ears that may or may not be entirely imaginary.

A ringing where that girl’s song should be.

Soon, a curvy blonde waitress with big tits comes to my table—some new chick, not the usual one—and she lifts her flirty eyes. Her big lips move. I grip the menu and point. Appearing somewhat put-off by my brash demeanor, she cranes her neck to read, then jots down my order with a frown. Her lips move again. I pick up my phone, mash thumbs into it, then show her the screen:

Over easy.

Coffee black plz.

Her eyes flash as she reads the message. She asks if I have laryngitis or something. I shake my head no. Then she pops the magic question. I nod patiently. The reaction is what it always is. Suddenly, I’m a ghost, and she wonders a few things out loud that she thinks I can’t understand. I actually watch her lips form the words, “Shit. Okay. I can do this, I can do this, I can do this,” before she steels herself and returns to the kitchen—as if she were on a bomb squad and my order needed decoding or some shit.

It’s not just the deaf thing. Maybe it’s the ink that crawls up my neck from a mass of swirls and thorns that starts at my right shoulder and spreads out like a black, deadly explosion. Maybe it’s the fuck-you look I always seem to be giving. People think I’m dangerous. The less they have to deal with me, the better. I know if my roommates were here, the waitress would talk to me through them as if I was some strange entity from another planet they needed to order for. Hell, one time at an Italian place, I went through a whole damn meal without getting a single refill, check-up, or an offer for dessert. The waiter couldn’t wait to slap a check on my table and get me the fuck out; that’s how uncomfortable I make people.

Oh, and I fucking love dessert. Bastard.

My mind is a mess and the six drinks I downed at the
Throng & Song
are already gone, my buzz killed long ago. Even the eggs don’t cheer me up. They’re brought to the table by a different person, some server who meets my eyes worriedly as if I were a caged beast he was feeding. I’m guessing big-tits is over me. I cut into my eggs with a scowl and watch the yolk bleed across my plate.

There’s something refreshingly different about that girl from the theater … annoyingly different. It unsettles me. Everyone down here is the same. All the girls have fear in their eyes when they meet me.

She had something else. Curiosity? Confidence? It’s like her eyes cut through all the bullshit and the smoke and the walls of cynicism I built up around myself. She
saw
me.

Or I’m just lying to myself all over again, just like I lied to myself with countless girls before.

It’s exactly forty minutes later when I’m slipping my key into the door. The second the cold air of my apartment touches my skin, I feel relief, kicking the door shut behind me and dropping my bag onto the kitchen counter where last night’s army of beer cans and pizza boxes still sit. The living room’s unoccupied and Brant’s door is shut, so I assume he sealed his lady-deal. With a huff at the abundant laziness of my two helpless roommates, I surrender to half an hour of housekeeping before I allow myself to chill.

Or maybe I just want to take my aggression out on these dishes and cups and cutlery. It infuriates me that I can’t get that girl out of my mind, which shows in the way I scrub the glass in my hand. The water seeps into my sleeves the way
she
seeps into my every thought. Her singing captivated a room full of drunk morons. Who the hell manages to do that? I could physically
feel
the noise of the room die away when she took to that microphone. The frenzied hum of the place, a hum I could feel through every fingertip and follicle of hair on my body, it grew still, just so she could make her music.

That vacuum of sensation was fast replaced by a beauty I was all too eager to drink in with my eyes. I don’t think I knew eyes were capable of drinking until that moment.

Thoughts of her bring me to the couch where I collapse and kick my sore feet up, my eyelids growing heavier by the second. I mash a throw pillow behind my head and let sleep have her way with me, assuming she wants me at all. I’ve had trouble sleeping lately. That same stupid nightmare keeps creeping into my dreams, the one where I wake up in a house filled with water. My bed’s floating, my roommates are gone, and no one’s there to help me. Since I’ve had the nightmare so many times, I always know none of the doors will open no matter how hard I push, and somehow, I can’t smash the window. Because I already know I can’t get free, I’m more terrified each time I have the nightmare. The room keeps filling up, and for a moment, I always think I see someone outside. I scream for them, begging for help, pounding my fist against the glass, and for once, it’s the rest of the world who can’t seem to hear a thing. No one comes to save my life.

I hate feeling helpless.

But that’s not the dream that finds me on the couch tonight. Instead, it’s
her
on that tiny stage all by herself, and the entire room at the
Throng
has emptied itself of all those others who don’t matter. It’s just her on the stage, and me in front of her.

And all that cold, silent space between us.

I study her. Like a zoomed-in camera, my eyes draw up the length of her smooth legs, over her supple hips, and arriving at her perky, perfect breasts.