Flirting With Fame (Flirting With Fame) (5 page)

A
fter class ended, I shrugged my book bag over my shoulder and slipped past Clint, who was still trying to catch up writing his notes. I walked carefully down the steps toward the front of the room, determined not to repeat yesterday’s beanbag episode by not paying attention.

Reaching into my bag, I pulled out a novel and bit my lip.

This was dumb. This was the stupidest thing I could do. I needed to leave.

I turned to make my way back up the stairs and someone tapped me on the shoulder. I spun around, and my mouth froze in what had to be an incredibly unattractive open position.

“Is that mine?” Professor Creed asked.

“Huh?”

“Your book. Is it mine?” He plucked the novel out of my hand. It was
Carnivore’s Teeth
, my favorite of his, and the last one he’d written.

I licked my lips. “Uh, yeah. I was hoping you might sign it? I mean, if that’s okay, Professor Creed.”

“Duncan, please.” He smiled again. “And of course I’ll sign it. What’s your name? I promise I’ll try to remember everyone’s names by the end of the semester.”

“Elise,” I said. “Elise Jameson.”

The smiled dropped from his face. His speech slowed to an embarrassing pace. “Oh, Elise. My goodness. They told me about you. Why were you sitting all the way at the back? You should be up front.”

Great. He thought I was some idiot who required special attention.

“Well,” I said, clearing my throat. “When you can’t hear, it doesn’t matter how close to the front you are. Besides, I read lips pretty well, and I have an app that takes dictation for me. It’s fine.”

Glancing down at his book, he nodded and opened the cover. He said something, but I had no idea what it was, as he was bent so far over the book, I couldn’t quite make out the shape of his lips.

I shifted from one foot to the other as he wrote. His handwriting was smooth and clear, with a little script, but letters straight enough to make them look masculine. Exactly the type of writing I would’ve expected from him.

He straightened and pushed his glasses up his nose before he handed me the book.

“Thanks,” I said, hoping he hadn’t said anything of major importance while he’d been scribbling, like all the answers for the final exam or something.

“You’re welcome, Elise.” He stood there staring at me like I was supposed to say something else.

I rose to the balls of my feet, trying to come up with something brilliant to prove I was more than a crazed fan. To somehow verbalize how his magnificent stories ripped me from the blackness of my accident and poured me onto the pages of the worlds he created. He made me realize writing could be an escape and a way to heal. He changed my life.

I flicked my gaze to the clock on the wall. Oooh boy . . . A full minute had now passed and I still hadn’t said anything. Way to bring the awkward, Elise.

“Well . . . see you,” I said, bounding out of the room without looking back.

A strong hand reeled me sideways as I entered the hallway, and I found myself face to chest with the cowboy. I peered up at him in surprise.

“Sorry if I startled you, darlin’.” He held a pen up. “I just wanted to give you your pen back.”

“Oh.” I took a slow breath, willing my heart to return to a somewhat normal rhythm. “Thanks.”

I shoved the pen and Professor Creed’s book back into my bag and started down the hall, only to find Clint matching pace beside me.

“Uh, can I help you?”

He rubbed his neck, his eyes scanning the hallway before settling on me. “I overheard you talkin’ to the professor back there. Are you really deaf?”

“Yes, I am. Why?”

“Wow.” He pushed his hat back off his forehead. “I had no idea. I’m sorry. Why didn’t you say anything earlier?”

“It’s not exactly something I want to tell everyone the first time I meet them. I’m pretty good at lip-reading, so I can get along without that awkward conversation.”

Pushing open the door, I squinted when the sunlight infiltrated the dark hallway. A flurry of activity dominated the quad as students rushed from building to building. I took a deep breath and stepped into the light. I wasn’t sure I’d ever get used to walking directly into a crowd instead of away from it.

I pulled the crinkled map out of my pocket and shaded my eyes with my free hand, trying to differentiate one building from another among the badly drawn boxes.

A hand waved in front of my face and I sighed as I looked up at Clint.

“Where you tryin’ to get to?” he asked.

The sun beat down on us with fiery fists, making my head feel as though my hair might go up in flames at any moment. I ogled his giant hat, a jealous twinge in my belly.

“Victoria A Building,” I said. “I have history next.”

The light caught the blue of his eyes and he squinted before pulling his hat farther down. “I have a bunch of classes near there. I can show you the way, if you like. It ain’t far.”

“Thanks.” I folded the map and shoved it into the back pocket of my jeans “So, where are you from, Clint? You don’t seem like you’re from here. Not a lot of Southern drawls in Fernbrooke.”

“How do
you
know I have a drawl?”

“I guess I just assumed. The hat. The boots. The way you shape your words when you speak.”

He turned right and I followed him past a beige building. Students sprawled across the front steps, laptops open. Some had cigarettes dangling out of their mouths. A boy in a hoodie who must’ve been positively sweltering pulled a silver flask out of his bag and took a nip. As he slipped the contraband back into his bag, he saw me and winked. I returned my focus to Clint.

“. . . not actually a cowboy,” he said.

“What?” I stopped in the middle of the path and someone slammed into my back. I muttered an apology, but that didn’t stop the boy from tossing a profanity at me over his shoulder. Clint started after him, but I grabbed his wrist to pull him back.

“Totally my fault,” I said. “It usually is. I’m not exactly the most graceful person ever. So, what’s this about you not being a cowboy?”

Clint eyed the boy who’d cursed at me as he disappeared around a corner. Then the cowboy turned back to me and shrugged. “I like cowboys. I always wanted to be one. But I’m actually from Chicago. About as un-country as you get.”

I laughed and we started walking again, rounding another building and heading toward a cluster of trees. “Why would you come to Fernbrooke U, then? You have great schools out that way.”

“None of ’em have Duncan Creed,” he said.

“I thought you didn’t like books without cowboys.”

“I make an exception for him.” He made a sharp turn and we left the blessed shade behind. He stopped at the entrance to one of the brown buildings and waved toward the sign on the lawn. “This is Victoria A Buildin’.”

“Thanks,” I said, making my way up the steps, Clint right on my heels. “I appreciate it. I’ll see you next week in American Lit?”

His eyes smoldered beneath the shadow of his hat. “That seems like a mighty long way away. Would you wanna get together sometime before that? You can explain why I’m wrong about your Viking books.”

I opened my mouth and closed it again, scanning his face. Did he just ask me out? How in the world did that happen? I could imagine Jin insisting I jump the hot cowboy. But I hadn’t been on a date since before I’d attempted regular high school, and that had been a disaster, due to my inability to behave like a sane person when it came to boys.

Taking a backward step, I grimaced as the doorknob pressed into my spine. “I . . . um . . . I . . . maybe?”

Way to win at life, Elise. This gorgeous—albeit strange—man actually asks you out, and you come up with “maybe.” Jin threw a freaking fit inside my head.

“Maybe.” Clint’s chest expanded as he took a breath. “Well, that’s good enough for now. I’ll find a way to turn it into a yes.”

He winked at me and started down the stairs.

I opened the door and slipped into the refuge of the building. I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes, wondering if the real me really was out cold in a hospital somewhere. Life had just gotten seriously weird.

I
spent the rest of the week learning how to weave seamlessly through campus, without making friends with any more cowboys or garnering the attention of another teacher. When I wasn’t in class and Reggie was out, I banged out some of the first draft of the new
Viking Moon
. I gritted my teeth against each phrase, and stumbled around characters I was pretty sure I knew better.

The other books had come so easily, as though my fingers wrote them with barely any input from me. But this one seemed harder somehow. I chalked it up to an unwillingness to say good-bye to characters who had become such an integral part of my life. It was like knowing I was going to bury my best friend soon. A dull ache accompanied every single word.

Hunched over my laptop on Saturday night, I bit my lip as I tried to determine what exactly was wrong with the scene. Dag was fighting, as usual, against Thora’s brothers. In the previous book—the book everyone had lined up for—he’d pushed Thora’s older brother Elof off a cliff, resulting in Thora running away heartbroken and her remaining brothers out for blood. It was a perfect setup for the finale, and should have made it easy to write. But nothing came easy, it seemed.

I jumped as a hand waved in front of my face and I slammed my laptop closed. Reggie peered down at me, her face scrunched as she eyed the closed computer.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “Just a report for American Lit. What’s up?”

“A couple people in my English class mentioned there’s an open mic poetry night at the café on campus. I thought you might want to come.”

Bad poetry. Crowds. Small talk. I’d rather walk barefoot on the sun.

“Um, it’s not really my thing, but thanks.”

Reggie pulled my computer off my lap and dropped it on the bed. She took my hand and started to pry me from the mattress.

“No,” she said. “You’ve spent enough time in here on your computer. This is college, Elise. It’s supposed to be the time of our lives when we go out and have fun and do stupid things we regret the next day, but tell as stories to our grandkids to prove we were once cool. What are you doing here if you aren’t willing to try new things?”

I bit back a sigh and let Reggie pull me up. She had a point. I could picture my parents and Jin telling me it was time to leave my room and become a member of the actual human race. Besides, how many people went to poetry readings on a Saturday night anyway? We’d probably be the only ones there.

“Fine, fine,” I said. “I give.” I eyed her ensemble of green peasant skirt and white blouse. “Should I change? What does a person wear to one of these things anyway?”

Reggie stood back and studied my outfit of black turtleneck over black jeans as though I were a painting in a gallery. “Actually, I think that is kinda perfect. You’ll fit right in. Come on.”

While summer still laid claim to the days of September, the night belonged to the fall. I closed my eyes and inhaled the cool air before following Reggie down the path from our dorm. The musty smell of leaves wafted around us.

“Do you know where this place is?” I asked.

She surveyed our surroundings. “I think so. A girl from English said it’s near the Lit buildings.”

She released my fingers and combed her hand through her hair. We walked without speaking for a while, both of us focusing on the buildings and seeking out recognizable objects around us.

“So,” I said, realizing I hadn’t taken much time to learn about my roommate since school started, “where are you from, Reggie?”

Reggie took a left at a fork in the path, and I followed. The quad was well lit, highlighting every slant of her cheek and freckle on her nose. She strode purposefully, never looking around like she was lost. It was hard not to admire someone like her, so sure of herself in every way.

“Just outside Fernbrooke,” she said, angling her face so I could see her lips without trouble. “So I’ve known this town my whole life. What about you?”

“I’m from here,” I said. “Born and raised.”

“Pretty lame, huh?” she said with a shrug. “I mean, look at us, headed to a poetry reading on a Saturday night. If we lived in a big city, we could go to clubs, or concerts, or something.”

We turned right and a tree cast her face in shadow.

I laughed under my breath. “Clubs and concerts aren’t really my thing.”

Her face reddened to almost purple as we left the darkness and the light hit her cheeks. “Oh my God. I’m sorry. I didn’t even think about—”

I held up my hand to stop her from feeling like a total idiot. “Actually, the problem is too many people. I could still go to concerts, if I wanted to. When the music is loud enough, I can feel the vibrations in my body. Plus, I still remember the songs of singers I used to like. It’s easy to sing along with them—though I can’t guarantee the quality of my singing. I’ve actually forced myself to go to a few concerts since the accident. It’s the closest I’ve come to feeling like I have my hearing back.”

“I forget sometimes,” Reggie said. “That you’re deaf. I mean, you speak really well, and you don’t really sign or anything.”

“I can sign,” I said. “I learned when the accident first happened. I spent my first few years of high school in a school for the Deaf, learning sign language, doing intense speech therapy, figuring out how to read lips, but I felt different from everyone else. Most of them were born Deaf. I still remember what it was like to hear. It’s funny ’cause my parents sent me there thinking I’d fit right in. Only there, I stood out worse than ever. So I tried to go to Fernbrooke’s regular high school for senior year, but that . . . well, that didn’t really work out. I ended up being homeschooled.”

“Well, that sucks. Kids can be jerks. I dealt with my fair share of teasing in high school. It was actually kind of awful to go there some days.”

“Seriously?” I squinted at her. “But you seem so sure of yourself.”

“I figured, why let them have the power to take my confidence away, just because I didn’t fit in with their ideals? I like who I am.”

A smile crept onto my face. “I like who you are, too.”

She grinned back at me but didn’t reply. We walked the rest of the way without speaking, a shared understanding threading between us.

We stopped outside a squat building with a set of stairs leading down to a wooden door. A piece of white paper with the words
OPEN MIC TONITE
was taped to the entrance.

“I think we’re here,” I said.

Reggie nodded and bolted down the stairs. She whisked the door open and looked back up at me. “You coming?”

I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Sure.”

Then I headed down into the darkness.

•   •   •

The air of the coffee shop was stale and sat fuzzy on my tongue. It reeked of coffee and old paper.

The place was not empty, as I’d expected. Far from it. The café appeared to be the place to go on a Saturday night. Bodies stood too close together, sucking up the oxygen and rendering the A/C useless.

If I closed my eyes, I could imagine what it sounded like: the gentle hum of the crowd as the voices slithered over one another like snakes with no one conversation fully audible.

A small stage with a microphone stood at the front of the room, lit by a single spotlight. No one dared stand in the illumination yet. We were early.

Lucky us.

Reggie had been wrong when she’d said I’d blend in. Swatches of color surrounded me as pinks mingled with purples and somersaulted with greens. The place looked like a freaking rainbow.

I wiped my forehead and tugged my turtleneck off my skin as Reggie peered past a table of twentysomethings.

“There don’t seem to be any seats,” I said. “Maybe we should go.”

Her face fell as she took in the room and its collection of FU T-shirts. “I guess. Crap.”

“Okay, well, we tried.”

I turned toward the exit and Reggie yanked me backward. My voice hooked in my throat as I found myself pressed into my roommate. She spun me to face her.

“Sorry,” she said, “but do you happen to know an incredibly hot cowboy?”

“What?”

“He keeps shouting your name.”

Reggie pointed to a spot in the corner. I squinted to make out the shape through the clusters of people. Squinting was unnecessary, however, as the hat was unmistakable.

Clint waved at us and pointed to the couch he occupied. He patted the empty cushions beside him. I clenched my jaw as I remembered his invitation earlier that week. He was probably going to take this as another opportunity to ask me out.

“Yeah,” I said. “He’s in my Intro to American Lit seminar.”

“Well, they sure don’t make a lot of guys who look like that around here.”

“You can say that again.”

“What are we waiting for? Let’s go sit with him!”

We weaved our way through the crowd and Clint unfolded himself from the couch to greet us.

“Elise! I had no idea you were into poetry.”

He embraced me with his long arms. I froze, hands tacked to my sides, taken by surprise at his assumption there was anything intimate between us already. He released me with a grin and held his hand out to Reggie.

“And who might you be?”

“I’m Regina. Reggie’s good, though.”

“Lovely to meet you, darlin’. Name’s Clint.”

The blush that rose to Reggie’s cheeks was obvious and only accentuated by the bright light of the lamp in the corner.

Clint barely seemed to notice. His gaze lay firmly on me as his hand swallowed hers. I lowered my eyes and settled into the end of the couch, pulling Reggie beside me as a barrier between me and the cowboy.

“Can you see the stage?” Reggie asked with a poke in my side.

I nodded. “If they stand too close to the mic, I might not be able to read their lips, but we aren’t too far away and I’m not gonna cry if I miss a poem or six.”

“Awesome.”

She sat back against the faux velvet cushion as the lights flashed to let us know the show would begin shortly.

The cowboy leaned forward. “Can I wrangle you gals a coffee before they start?”

The congestion of the room and the softness of the couch had already started to seep into my bones, and my eyelids grew heavy. Caffeine would be a necessity if I expected to stay conscious for the next few hours.

“Yes, please,” I said. “Two cream, one sugar.”

“Hot chocolate for me,” Reggie piped in. “With extra whipped cream.”

With a tip of his hat, Clint stood and disappeared into the crowd, headed for a counter I could barely make out through the slew of young bodies.

A touch on my wrist brought my attention back to Reggie. She bounced on the couch with such vigor, the entire furnishing shook beneath me.

“Clint has to be the hottest guy I’ve ever seen,” she gushed.

I glanced over at him leaning on the counter, his legs stretched behind him, an ass I hadn’t really noticed before perfectly filling in his dark denim jeans. Blinking, I focused back on my friend.

“I suppose,” I said. “If you’re into that type.”

“I’ve always had a thing for cowboys. Horses, hats, boots, and . . .
ropes
.” She wiggled her eyebrows.

I snorted. “He isn’t even a real cowboy. He’s from Chicago or something. He just
wants
to be a cowboy. It’s kind of weird.”

“I think it’s adorable,” Reggie said. “And I love how he isn’t afraid to be himself.”

I bobbed my head in response—there was no question the cowboy was comfortable in his own skin, leather vests and all. Clint returned with our drinks and handed me a bone-colored mug. Closing my eyes, I wrapped my hands around the steaming cup of heaven and took a long sip. The bitter liquid slid down my throat with ease, and I moaned a welcome to it. When my eyes snapped open, Reggie and Clint were staring at me, laughter evident in their features.

“What?” I asked.

“Well,” Reggie said. “We know Elise
really
loves coffee.”

I ducked behind my oversize mug, cheeks flaming. “Sorry. I had no idea I was so loud.”

“Perfectly fine,” Clint said. “It’s nice to see a woman who appreciates the finer things in life.”

Reggie opened her mouth to reply, then snapped it shut. She turned to the stage and I followed suit. A guy in a deep-blue hoodie had taken the stage and tapped on the mic. Based on the reactions around me, it was loud enough to make a person grimace.

“Good evening,” he said. “Welcome to open mic night! Are you guys ready for some poetry?”

Reggie bounced beside me and clapped her hands. Clint cupped his hands over his mouth and hollered something.

Wow. These people really liked their poetry.

“I’m going to call the first poet. Would Shaylynn Brant come up here?”

People clapped around me. I reluctantly joined in after a nudge in the ribs from Reggie. A small, dark-skinned girl took the stage and pulled out a folded piece of paper.

Love is pain!

Love tears us up from the inside out and sucks on our entrails.

Love pulls us apart like straw dolls and sets fire to our flesh.

It pecks at us as though it were a thousand crows out for our blood!

Love fucks us from every angle and doesn’t call the next day.