Read My Lips (A College Obsession Romance)

by Daryl Banner

  She’d probably never talk like that.

  It doesn’t matter in dream land. I can’t grind my cock through my pants any harder. What if she texted back right now? The vibration would race through my cock like it was her actual hand, gripping it. Please, Dessie, I might as well beg. Please text me. I need to feel you in so many ways right now.

  A hand on my shoulder shakes me from the dream. I flick my eyes open.

  Kellen’s looking down at me, drying his hands with a paper towel. His lips move: “You okay?”

  Scrunched up as I am, I probably look like I have a cramp or something. For a split second, I honestly debate whether I should slip back into the bathroom and choke one out real quick. “Yeah, I’m good,” I say instead. “Is … Is it okay if you type what you … what you say so we can—?”

  He nods curtly, holding up a hand as he, again, types one-handed into his phone. Kellen must have one speedy-ass thumb. He lifts the screen, telling me he’s ready and excited to see what he’s got to work with whenever I am.

  I shift my legs, praying my stiffy is strangled into submission enough not to tent my jeans, then rise from the bench and lead the way to the main stage auditorium.

  After an hour or so with Kellen Michael Wright, I have made the unfortunate discovery that he is, in fact, a very knowledgeable, talented, and personable guy who is patient as hell in communicating to me through texts on his phone. I respond with voice as much as I can, pushing myself to talk despite my unremitting insecurities.

  I hate to say it, but I can probably learn a shitload from this shithead.

  It’s easy to take him around the theater this early, as there’s only a handful of classes happening in the rehearsal room and the black box, but nothing on the main stage where all his attention will be in designing the lights. I show him the grid. I show him what we have available on the fly system. I show him the booth and the two spots, though he won’t be using either.

  I’m about to take him back to the office when my phone trembles.

  “One second,” I tell him, though he’s distracted by a Fresnel he’s examining on the lighting rack anyway.

  I stare down at my phone in disbelief:

  DESSIE

  Was it because I didn’t put out?

  I gawk at her text. Is she fucking serious? I read it seven billion times, growing more pissed with every pass of my eyes over the words. Since Kellen is still occupied, I mash my thumbs to respond:

  ME

  Why would u say that?

  DESSIE

  Just wondering why you went

  cold fish on me.

  I’ve had two whole days

  to consider what I did.

  ME

  U didn’t do anything.

  Can we get a bite?

  To chat?

  Breakfast?

  Lunch, maybe?

  10 or 11?

  DESSIE

  Okay.

  Okay? That’s it? So is it 10 or 11? Breakfast or lunch? Yes or no? Fuck, she’s being so infuriating! I gotta remind myself that I’m the damn reason for all this weirdness. It’s my fucking fault.

  Kellen shows me the screen of his phone, asking me where the office is because he wants to check in with “Ol’ Marvin” before he goes. I nod and tell him to follow me, pocketing my phone and swallowing a growl along with all my frustrated thoughts of Dessie.

  I lead him to the office doors. After we exchange numbers, Kellen thanks me with a handshake, which I take to be my permission to go before he slips into the office. I check my phone one last time, then shove it away after finding the screen irritatingly blank.

  When I look up to push open the glass doors of the lobby, Dessie is making her way in.

  We stop, frozen by one another’s presence.

  “Hi,” I greet her first, my eyes wide.

  She’s beautiful today. Her hair falls in waves and tangles of brown, and she’s in a green sundress with yellow flowers along the bottom rim of it, which is about the most colorful thing I’ve seen her wear yet. I’m already imagining how smooth her legs would be if I ran my hands up them, sliding that dress up with it and discovering the color of her panties. Maybe if I ask nicely enough, she won’t wear any at all.

  She gives me a little wave of her hand—Hi. Her eyes, light brown and shimmering, seem guarded. It cuts me deep that I don’t know what she’s thinking, if she’s already over me, just tolerating me, or still gives half a shit about what went on between us Saturday. I almost devoured her. I was so close. She wanted it too. We craved each other’s taste all night; I could tell in the magnetic way she drew toward me when I pulled away, or how every nerve in my body vibrated with electricity when her wicked finger traced my tattoo. I’d draw a roadmap of ink all over my body if it meant having her touch all over me.

  “How’re you?” I ask her dumbly.

  She gives me a shrug and a muted smile, then runs a hand through her hair, drawing some of it behind an ear. God, she looks so beautiful. She presses her lips together, and for some reason, that makes me think of how she squeezed her legs together when I touched her on my couch.

  She still wants me, I decide, a stroke of confidence racing up my back, straightening it. “You wanna grab a bite?” I ask her, crossing my arms and leaning on the glass next to her, which brings me so close to Dessie that I can smell her hair.

  “I have class,” she says demonstratively, then points at the hallway.

  I bite the inside of my cheek, frustrated.

  Then her hand finds my arm. I sink into her gorgeous eyes. Just the touch of her soft fingers on my forearm invigorates me to the core. I was a frozen-solid yeti in a realm of ice and endless cold, and she’s thawed me in seconds.

  “Afterwards, maybe,” she adds.

  “Afterwards,” I agree, my eyes lighting up.

  The next second, Kellen has emerged from the hall and his face shimmers with surprise, his eyebrows lifting up high. He says something and Dessie turns around to face him, and the look on her face is, to say the very least, caught off-guard. She seems to sputter and her face turns three shades of pink. No smile finds her, despite her apparent attempt at being polite and shaking his hand, albeit stiffly. The two of them exchange words, none of which I understand.

  I feel my pulse throb in my throat.

  They know each other. Of course.

  Kellen says something and Dessie looks uneasy, her beautiful hair dancing as she glances away. Kellen smiles self-assuredly, then puts a big hand on her shoulder and gives it a rub. The fuck is he touching her for? She smiles stiffly and seems to shrug away, then gives him a nod and says something else.

  All this fucking talking. All this fucking touching.

  All this fucking silence.

  Kellen says his goodbye, then makes his way around her and gives me a wave, to which I respond with a cold, detached nod. The glass doors close behind him with a gentle thrum I feel through my body.

  Dessie’s face is visibly darkened by that encounter. She looks up at me and I put on a smile right away, determined not to show the bitterness that’s sitting in my chest. I could give two fucks about Kellen, even if he’s all nice to me. His presence clearly didn’t improve Dessie’s day, and it’s led me down a path of possibility that I don’t want to entertain. Are they old flames? Did he have his hands all over her in New York? Is he some abusive asshole from her past? The possibilities burn across my synapses like wildfire.

  I give a sideways nod at the glass, then lift my eyebrows. “So you know him?”

  She bites her lip, looks to the left, to the right, and then she double-taps the thumb of a fist to her pretty pink lips—Secret.

  I nod knowingly. I don’t even know what the hell’s between them and I already want to pummel Kellen until he’s bent in half. “Does he know it’s a secret?”

  She nods, though uncertainly. Her eyes are all over the place, thoughts and worries racing across them.

  “Why’d he put his hands on you?” I mumble.
<
br />   What the fuck am I saying? I can’t imagine anything more possessive-sounding to have said than that. Are we in fucking high school or some shit? I want to know what the fuck’s gone on between them. Maybe I’m provoking her to spill.

  “Maybe ‘cause you look so beautiful today,” I suggest for her.

  Gag me. Someone fucking gag me.

  She smiles, her cheeks turning pink. Her eyes averted, she points at her classroom again without a word, then gives me a little wave and walks away. I fight another urge to call after her and say something else dumb. Apparently, I’m just full of dumb words. I’m a dumb word factory.

  I want to know what’s gone down between them, but maybe that can wait. Dessie’s talking to me again. That’s fucking everything to me right now.

  We’re talking.

  I take a breath, half the tension inside me released with it, and I push through the glass doors, taking a seat on the bench outside and letting the morning sun bathe over me.

  I get to have a bite with her after her class, and that’s the best news I’ve gotten in days.

  And if I play my cards right, maybe I’ll get a bite of her, too.

  We share a table in the UC food court. He’s got two giant fried fish fillet sandwiches and I have a grilled cheese.

  And the noise here is deafening, even at barely 11 in the morning.

  It’s amazing, but also maybe a bit sad, how quickly I forgave him. I think I forgave him. When I got that text Monday night at the Throng, my first reaction was utter, unapologetic thrill. I was so fucking happy to have heard from him, even after suffering nearly two days of radio silence. It was Eric who told me not to answer. “Give him a taste of his own,” he insisted, but I think he was channeling bitterness from his own boy troubles and projecting them onto me.

  I held my phone that whole night, caressing it like a chocolate addict with the world’s last Snickers.

  Now here we are, sharing lunch in the dense noise of a hundred people shouting, laughing, and yelling at each other from across booths and tables. As I suffer in the chaos, I peer over the table at Clayton eating his sandwich and realize with a start that this experience is drastically different for him. Where I’m assaulted by the relentless onslaught of noise, Clayton only knows peace.

  He smirks at me across the table after taking his first generous bite, chewing with a strained expression on his face.

  Well, okay. Maybe there’s a form of inner peace that he may presently be lacking.

  After he swallows, he says something to me, his mouth half-blocked by his fish fillet sandwich, hands propped up at the elbows and his meal hanging loose between them.

  I can’t hear him. Oh, the irony. “What?”

  He lowers his sandwich, revealing his sexy, plush lips, then speaks louder. “So you know Kellen?”

  I kinda knew that, of all topics to enjoy, Kellen Wright would be the first thing he brought up. “Yes,” I say, nodding for emphasis.

  “Nice guy?” he prompts me with a lift of his brow, taking another humungous bite of his sandwich.

  The way his mouth moves, his jaw tightening and relaxing in his massive, muscular efforts of chewing, is so fucking erotic that I can’t stand it. His lips alone are art. Add that to the whole visually-stimulating workout of his teeth and sharp jawline, and I’m about as distracted as a lunch mate can possibly be. I’m already having fond recollections of how his mouth worked mine when my lips were his meal.

  “Nice,” I agree vaguely, nodding again, then help myself to a bite of my grilled cheese.

  He asks me a question through his full mouth. I catch exactly zero words of it, lifting my eyebrows in confusion. He swallows hard, then lifts his chin and repeats, “Did you two date?”

  I roll my eyes. “My dad … mentored him,” I explain, punching the word.

  “Your dad? The one who pulled a string?” he goes on, his face wrinkling as he chews.

  “Yes. That dad.”

  His eyes pull away suddenly, and I see a flicker of darkness in them. I’ve become so adept at reading the little expressions that play war games across Clayton’s face. The jolt in his eye bothers me.

  “What?” I prompt him, but he doesn’t seem to be paying attention, lost in a thought.

  Kellen and I met during one of the shows my dad was designing in New York. For the first few days that I knew him, I thought he was a member of the chorus. Then I learned he was a lighting intern of sorts, but thought he was shy. When a Friday night rehearsal came to its end and the last stage light was shut off, Kellen kissed me unexpectedly in the dark behind the fold of a curtain where I was sorting props, proving to me how very not shy he was. Then he tried to talk me out of going to the cast party two weeks later where I would then discover how not single he was. It was one of my first lessons in how faithless and fickle city men can be, constantly shopping for the next best thing while gripping their girlfriends so tightly.

  Maybe I have a soured secret or two of my own that I’m not sure I want to expose Clayton to just yet.

  I set my sandwich down, type something into my phone, then give a little wave, drawing his attention back to see the contents of my screen:

  I don’t know why Kellen’s here.

  On Monday I found out that

  Victoria knows who I am

  and now

  I’m afraid between the two of them,

  everyone will find out

  :( :(

  He frowns at the message, then pulls out his own phone and, after cramming the last bite of his first fish fillet, types:

  U’re cute when u’re pissed.

  To that, I glare at him.

  He chuckles, full-mouthed, then puts a reassuring hand on top of mine and gives it a rub. The very next second, he seems to think that the gesture was too much and quickly retracts his hand, swallowing hard before starting on his second sandwich.

  The gesture wasn’t too much. It granted a much-needed warmth to the coldness I’ve felt since leaving the theater.

  But it doesn’t quite ease my uncertainty about our hot-and-cold weekend. I type, then lift my screen:

  Are you going to explain

  Sunday’s silence

  or what?

  His sandwich lowers to the table, a surrender, and his face hardens. He swallows his bite, meets my eyes, then says a couple words too quietly.

  “Louder,” I urge him.

  He leans partway over the table, propped up by his elbows, his arms bulging as he does. “I was a coward,” he murmurs. His lips this much closer to me, I could just lean in as much as he is and kiss him right now. “Been a while since I’ve been with a girl.”

  “Me too,” I mouth.

  His face wrinkles. “You’ve been with a girl?”

  I slap his arm, pushing him away with a laugh. He doesn’t budge, the stone statue that he is.

  “That’s kinda hot,” he teases me.

  “So we’ve both been alone for a while,” I mutter.

  He nods resolutely.

  “And we’re both … kinda scared … of each other?” I suggest, speaking slowly.

  He shrugs, then nods at that, too.

  His shoulders are so big and he looks so delicious in that tight-fitting shirt, the fabric pulling across his chest distractingly. His eyes are alight with interest and his lips … his lips are right fucking there.

  Then he says, “You two dated, didn’t you.”

  It isn’t quite a question, more of an accusation. I press my lips together, unsure if he’s actually asking, or just trying to playfully get a rise out of me again. I smack his arm again, harder than before, and earn a little Clayton-brand smirk of amusement.

  Then I decide, of all things, to torture him. I type into my phone, then shove it right in his face. He has to back away a bit to read it:

  No.

  But he did kiss me.

  I think he wanted to get

  closer to my dad through me.

  I felt used.

  He also had a h
ot girlfriend

  in the cast

  that I didn’t know about.

  I don’t think very highly of him.

  Clayton’s chest puffs up after reading that, his jaw tightening. An odd look of validation crosses his face. “Thought something was off about him,” he says.

  I smirk. “Yeah? Smelled all the lies and deceit he was drenched in?”

  Clayton takes a sip of his drink, then says, “Truth is, I resent him being …” He swallows, rubs his ear, then finishes, “I resent the fucker being here. I wanted to design the lights for the main stage show. He took that job from me.”

  A shiver of worry reenters my mind as I listen to him. It was first born the moment I recognized Kellen at the theater, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what bothered me so much until just now. My father mentored Kellen like a little lighting-god protégé. Did my father have anything to do with Kellen showing up out of nowhere to design lights for the show?

  And is that connected with “the string” my father pulled in getting me into this Theatre program?

  Am I the reason Clayton’s opportunity was stolen?

  Just like I’m the reason Victoria’s chance at a lead was swiped out from under her ready, able hands?

  Is there anything my arrival here hasn’t ruined?

  “Dessie?”

  I look up, realizing that I’d gone silent. I don’t know if he said anything else, so lost in my own dark hurricane of anxiety that I wasn’t paying attention.

  “Sorry,” I mutter, shaking away my worries. Only time will answer my questions—time and an overdue phone call to my dad. “I resent him, too.”

  A question seems to glimmer in Clayton’s eyes, but he doesn’t ask it, drawing his sandwich back up to his lips to take another mouthful as I watch, a mixture of longing and doubt swimming inside me as I wonder if Clayton’s pieced it together himself. Does he already suspect I have anything to do with Kellen’s arrival?

  He finishes his sandwich and I finish my drink in silence. He smiles at me twice and I return them with a small one of my own, studying my phone and trying to think about the routine I need to have prepared for my voice class in an hour. Something to do with vowels and combining them with different poses and odd stretches. Ugh, I’m going to fail.