Beneath The Skin (A College Obsession Romance) (53 page)

My cock’s so hard, a moan vibrates my chest.

My eyes arrive at her lips, and suddenly I’m at the edge of the stage looking up at her. The whole room feels ice cold against my skin. Her breath is the only warmth I know, and it touches me in little jagged spurts and I haven’t even touched her yet.
She wants me so bad. She wants me to do things to her.
“Clayton,”
I can imagine her saying.

Yes, I can imagine her voice. I think on what it might sound like. I feel it, smooth and seductive as her finger tracing my tattoos. Her pink lips dance, singing to me. What else can she do with them?

My cock is so hard.
“Clayton …”
It pushes against the inside of my jeans. I want to pull it out while her breath keeps touching my face.

I want to look up into her eyes and bury my mouth in her breasts.

I want to know what she smells like so bad. I want to taste her. I want to tear off her clothes and watch her gasp with surprise as the beast within me is unleashed on her.

I reach down for my cock, ready to release him.

Then I feel the subtle shake of a door closing and remove my hand, the dream destroyed.
Fucking hell.
I catch my breath and lift my head, only to find Brant standing over the couch holding a six-pack with a smug grin of victory stretched across his face.

Brant is the tall, slender type with the messy brown hair and blue eyes that all the girls go ape shit for, and he knows it too. He works out a third as much as I do, yet keeps a body that’s ripped and lean, no matter how much pizza he packs a day. I don’t know how the fucker does it. Brant’s come a long way since we were kids, that’s for sure. We’ve been the best of buddies since the day we fought and made up over bloody noses in an elementary school playground.

He wiggles the six-pack and gives me a lift of his eyebrows, offering one. I type, then lift my phone with a scowl:

WTF with the dishes?

Im not ur mom

Brant smirks, leans over the back of the couch and says it’s all Dmitri’s leftover mess from some friends he brought over last night. Then he adds something about how if I listened more carefully, I would’ve heard their ruckus and kicked them out.

I throw a punch into his arm for that remark, inspiring a laugh from him that I can almost hear with my mind. I’ve known Brant since long before I lost my hearing and we’ve cracked so many stupid jokes together that I know his laugh as intimately as my own. He’s the only person in the world who can get away with giving me shit for being deaf. Maybe it’s the only way we both can cope with it … even if he’s still shit at sign language and doesn’t seem able to retain a damn thing beyond the signs for “fart”, “poop”, “penis”, and “Cherry Coke”.

Brant comes around the couch and plops down by my legs, nearly sitting on them, and asks me if I’m still planning on coming to his thing.
What I was planning to do was jerk off, you fucker.
Truth is, I’m not even sure that’s what he asked; the sleepier I get, the harder it is to read lips. I have to think for a moment before realizing what he means: he’s got a bowling tournament next Saturday that he’s invited Dmitri and I to come watch. It’s an unofficial sort of local thing with the prize being free drinks for a week, but it means a lot to Brant. Also, he happens to be some weird kind of bowling ball whisperer.

I nod at him, which seems to satisfy him more than the supposed lady-sex he just had. I didn’t see her leave, but I know he never lets a girl stay over, so either her stealth level is top notch or he made her climb out of the window.

The six-pack appears once again and he rips one off, tossing it into my lap. With a snapping of its lid, I take a long, deep swallow. The cold beer runs down my throat and fills me with a comfort I’ve so craved. My eyes glaze over as Brant throws an arm over the back of the couch and flips on the TV.

I read the captions for two minutes before growing bored.

It doesn’t matter what’s on TV. Between the cold, wet can in my fist and the colors flashing over my face from the screen, I let the alcohol numb my incessant, invasive thoughts of that girl I shouldn’t be craving … a girl I can’t let stay over, a girl I’m letting climb out the window of my mind …

A girl still waiting for me on that stage with her jagged breaths …

A girl who finds me on this couch when my eyes finally close, her soft fingers dancing across my skin and sending currents of pleasure up my arms. A girl whose touch makes me so hard, my cock aches as it tents uncomfortably in my jeans. A girl whose pink, pouty lips hover tauntingly over my face, ready to make a slobbering, paralyzed idiot out of me.

A girl who is carefully, patiently taking me apart … one agonizing piece at a time.

DESSIE

I can’t contain my excitement, not even in acting class. My stomach’s doing cartwheels in the grass and my lips keep twisting into a smile that hasn’t gone away all weekend.

I don’t care if he’s deaf. He didn’t hear my song? No big deal. He
felt
it. I could see it in his eyes, which burned black with hunger, with need, with
danger
…

I don’t care about my friends’ warnings, either. Everyone has a
story
attached to them. Living in the limelight of my parents, I’m used to doubting every piece of gossip or hearsay that drifts past my ears and eyes. I’ve seen my mother blasted on enough slanted, click-bait articles to know not to trust rumors.

My phone buzzes. I glance down at a text.

NOT-VICKI

OMG Des, the cast list is up.

I gawp, pulled out of my thoughts of Clayton.
Already?
It’s only been two days. Who the hell casts a whole season of shows in two days?

ME

I didn’t expect it so fast.

NOT-VICKI

Yep.

Im stuck in costume history tho

:(

ME

I’m in acting.

Meet up afterwards?

NOT-VICKI

YESSS and then lets get some lunch

to celebrate!!!

I stow away my phone, worried that my acting professor Nina has caught me when I realize the room’s gone silent, but instead it’s just one of my classmates performing, being all dramatic and taking long, annoying pauses between his lines.

My mind drifts back to thoughts of Clayton, and the rest of the class period is forgotten.

I leave the black box eagerly. The world brushes past my face as I reach the cast list hanging off the rehearsal room door. A flock of eager students push one another out of the way to read its contents, much in the same way dogs fight over a bone. There is a moan of disappointment to my left. There is a cheer of victory to my right. There is silent pondering everywhere else.

And then there’s me. Two heads in front of me move apart, and through the sea of whispers and groans and hair, I finally see the names. I rub my eyes and stare, reading the name at the top a dozen times. I don’t believe what I’m reading.

“Congrats,” murmurs Eric, who I didn’t notice at my side.

I shake my head. “But I didn’t think—”

“You obviously earned it,” he says, offering me a smile. “And hey, look. I’ll be playing the town drunk, Simon! But we don’t have any scenes together …”

“That’s great,” I tell him distractedly, still reading and rereading my name on that list.

“You know what the secret to acting drunk is? It’s to try
not
acting drunk.” Eric laughs hollowly. “I’ll see you later, D-lady.”

I still can’t believe it. It has to be a mistake, right? “Bye,” I say belatedly, then realize that Eric’s already gone.

And it’s not only that I was cast; it’s the
role
I was cast in. I shake my head, unable to comprehend it. Maybe this is an error, surely. Maybe there’s another Desdemona Lebeau in the Theatre department.

To make matters worse, not twenty seconds after Eric’s ghostly departure, Victoria replaces him at my side. “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god,” she sings excitedly, her eyes eagerly scanning the cast list.

I get the pleasure of having a front row seat to observe my friend’s face as it slowly, gently collapses in disappointment.

“Wow,” she mutters after some time, the pain evident on her face. Then, she squints, something occurring to her. “Lebeau …” she reads.

Oh, fuck.

She turns to me, a look in her eye. “Lebeau?” She’s piecing it together. “Any relation to—?”

“No,” I blurt a little too quickly.
Of course she’d know my family; she knows everything.
“There’s lots of Lebeaus in New York. Like, tons.”

“Hmm.” Though the dubious glint remains in her eye, she gives a shrug and says, “Congrats, Dessie. Honestly, I didn’t know you were going for the role of Emily.” She tries her best to sound composed. “Of course, you totally fit the role. I mean, you’re pretty and all.”

Now I can’t tell if she’s sincerely complimenting me or just being a bitch. “Thanks,” I say anyway.

“I gotta get to class,” she blurts, although I know her next class isn’t for another two hours. “I’ll see you back at the dorms later.” Then with a tiny smile that looks like a grimace, she’s off.

So much for our lunch plans.
I’m about to shout after her, explaining that I wasn’t even going for the part, that I didn’t indicate “Emily” as a preference on my audition form, but saying that would probably just make things worse, admitting I got a part I didn’t even want. The part
she
wanted. The lead role.

The … lead role.

Suddenly, that fact hits me as if it weren’t already made plain.
The lead role.
Oh my god. I just got the lead in the first main stage production of the year. That’s how good they thought I was.
This has to be an error,
my mind keeps telling me, but a sudden whirlwind of confidence seems to take over instead. Maybe I’m still riding the high from my show on that tiny circular stage last Friday night.

Quite suddenly, whatever wrinkle of guilt I was feeling is long gone.

“I got the part!” I say elatedly into the phone when I’m by myself in the corner of the lobby, just outside the auditorium doors.

“Of course you did, doll,” sings my mother’s fluid voice. I hear wine glasses and silverware tinkling in the background, wherever she is. “Now, it’s important that you put in an actor’s worth of work. No, I’ll take another chardonnay. Please, with some brie.”

I smile as I stare out the tall glass windows of the lobby, letting my mom talk to whoever else it is who’s got her attention. I’m watching some sweaty guys throwing a Frisbee back and forth in the courtyard outside, too happy with the news to be bothered by my mom’s distracted attention to it.