Read My Lips (A College Obsession Romance)

by Daryl Banner

  The walk down the halls from the dressing room to the lobby is longer than usual, as if the halls were made of elastic and stretched themselves to twice their usual length. I find a tangle of nerves in my stomach, as if I were still anticipating tonight’s performance.

  Maybe the real show hasn’t begun yet.

  When the doors to the lobby open, a torrent of noise crashes into me long before any faces do. I gently ease my way through the crowd, hoping to be making my way toward my parents, wherever the hell they are in this madness—if they’re even out here. For all I know, they were escorted out a side door or advised to stay in the auditorium until the worst of the crowd dispersed.

  Then a sea of heads part and I see my parents.

  My mother looks fabulous as usual, her hair perfectly curled and bound up tight to her skull, which shows off her glinting earrings and inhumanly long, slender neck. She wears a deep-plunging blue dress adorned in sparkly gems that gain density near the floor. At her side is my father, who was sensible enough to wear a humble sweater vest with a button shirt gently poking out of the neck. His sandy-blond hair is parted neatly, which is a welcome departure from the usual mess he keeps it in. He notices me first and lets a big grin take his face before he opens his arms.

  “Dessie,” he sings through the noise of the crowd.

  I hug him, squeezing so tight it hurts. “Thanks for coming, Dad.”

  “Wouldn’t have dared miss it, sweetie,” his voice empties into my ear, strained from how tightly we’re hugging.

  My mother’s locked into a conversation with Doctor Thwaite, her voice as loud and sparkly as her dress. She has a hand lightly affixed to her chest as the other waves in the air in time to her endless speech.

  On the other side of the Doc, I belatedly notice my sister. She’s blindingly beautiful in her glittery skintight dress, which looks like it was cut directly from a block of diamond.

  “Cece?”

  Her smile is tight as a vise when she bends into me for the world’s stiffest hug.

  “Well done,” she moans into my ear in that perfect English dialect. The way she says it, it’s like she’s commending a toddler for scribbling a circle with orange curlicues around it and calling it a lion.

  “Thanks, Cece,” I say anyway. “I didn’t realize you all were coming.”

  “Of course. And,” she adds with a lift of her eyebrows, her dialect still unbroken, “I do expect you to get your tush on a plane and see me when my show opens.”

  Pleasantries and congratulations and thanks are shared over and over as members of the crowd slowly make their way around, whether by kindly asking my mother for an autograph or by complimenting my performance. With each thanks, my heart swells bigger and bigger.

  “It is quite loud here, isn’t it?” my mother notes to me before she even offers her own congratulations. “Do you think we could move into one of the back hallways where it’s a touch quieter?”

  Of course I oblige, because that’s what anyone does when Winona Lebeau asks for something. Doctor Thwaite bids them a farewell and a safe flight home before the four of us slip into the hallway that leads back to the dressing rooms, classrooms, and offices.

  “Dessie,” my mother finally says, bending to give me a little kiss on either of my cheeks. “You sweet thing. Have you conquered your little pond yet? It’s such a delight to see you on that stage.”

  She is so artful at coupling a biting, backhanded compliment with an actual one. “I didn’t find this pond to be all that little.”

  “It’s a decent place to grow into the shark you need to be for when you come home and try your hand at more professional endeavors,” my mother clarifies helpfully, tapping on her phone. “Oh, Geoffrey, Lucille won’t be able to make the appointment tomorrow.”

  Cece sighs at our mother—even her sighs are English. “Quit trying to force poor Desdemona into doing something she doesn’t want to do. There’s room for all sorts of actors in this world. Some like the bite and the fight of the north. Some like the calm and the palms of the south.” She smirks cheekily at me. “I came up with that one on my own.”

  I bite my lip, unsure whether this is a fight I want to pick or not.

  Then my dad says something unexpected. “I think what your mom and sister are trying to tell you, sweetheart, is that you did a very fine job tonight, and you should be damn proud of yourself. And,” he adds, throwing an arm around me and yanking me into him for a side-hug, like I’m the son he never had and just won the ballgame, “I appreciate you, Dessie. I’m alive and I want to appreciate every little moment while I’m able to.” He kisses the top of my head. “Job well done.”

  I survey the expressions of my mother and sister. For this brief moment, my mother’s still gripping her phone, but her eyes are on me, and my sister’s wearing that annoyingly tight and uncomfortable smile, but she also seems to look upon me with a sweetness that’s so rare, I thought she outgrew it at age ten.

  “Thanks,” I tell them. “All of you. It means so much, really, truly. Oh, Mom,” I blurt suddenly. “You got a program, right?”

  She pops open her purse and fishes it out. “This thing?”

  Yes, that folded piece of nothing-paper. My mom’s so used to the professionally printed playbills that she likely hasn’t seen a folded paper program since 1996. “Can you do me a favor?” I ask her. “Sign your name on it, then write, ‘To Victoria,’ and put something inspiring. It’s for my hall mate.”

  She smirks knowingly, then takes out a pen from her purse and scribbles dramatically on the paper. When she hands it to me, the front reads: To Victoria, something inspiring. A friend of Dessie’s is a friend of mine. Winona Lebeau.

  I smile, clutching that program close. My mother’s sense of humor is still alive after all.

  “I really wish we had more time, you sweet thing,” murmurs my mother, “but the car and driver are waiting outside for us to catch the red eye back to New York. Your sister and I are heading to London Monday and have so many things to get done this weekend before we set off, but we couldn’t bear to miss your opening night.”

  “I know,” I mutter miserably. Funny, I was dreading them coming, and now I’m dreading them going.

  “We will see you soon for winter break,” my father murmurs quietly to me, “and I do promise, I won’t meddle. No special treatments. If it’s your wish to stay here at Klangburg, you have my support.”

  “Thanks,” I say back, unable to help the feeling that something is missing from this whole pleasant experience.

  “Geoffrey, we’ll miss our flight.”

  “Oh, honey,” he sighs with mock annoyance. “Can’t we waste a few more dear minutes with our daughter?” He brings me in for another tight hug, then says, “And do give my props to the lighting designer.”

  I smirk into my dad’s chest. “He took off back to New York with his tail tucked, I’m afraid.”

  “The other lighting designer,” he amends.

  My forehead screws up in confusion. Clayton? But before I’m able to ask the question, he pulls away and my mother and sister are given room to float forth for their stiff farewell hugs and birdlike kisses. Then, not two moments later, I’m standing outside the glass windows and waving goodbye as they disappear into the night like three peculiar ghosts, my heart heavy and my eyes suddenly deciding they want to spill all that emotion I was supposed to have onstage.

  A pretty chime from my pocket startles me, disrupting the calm of the night breeze. I look down at the screen.

  SAM

  sorry i didn’t see you

  after the show.

  we waited around for a bit

  but you were with your family.

  thank you for the tickets.

  tomas is cool, i guess.

  we are at the dorm.

  please knock if you come back.

  i think he might kiss me.

  i dunno.

  I giggle, staring at the text. I’m so happy for Sam that I could cry.
>
  I’m a second from putting my phone away when suddenly it starts to ring. I stare at it defiantly. Someone’s calling me? Who the hell uses phones anymore to actually call someone? I bring it into view and find my dad’s headshot staring back at me.

  I bring it to my ear. “Did you forget something?”

  “Your mother was in such a hurry to leave, I did forget something. It was something I wanted to tell you.”

  I hear my mother scoff at him in the background. “I wasn’t in a hurry, Geoffrey, but if you’re just so desperate to miss our flight …”

  “What’d you forget to tell me?” I ask, pressing through my mom’s fussing.

  “I had an experience in the bathroom at intermission,” he says.

  I wince. “You guys had Tex-Mex for lunch? Am I sure I want to hear about this?”

  He guffaws through the phone, deep and heartily. “No, sweetheart. Marv took us out for a nice dinner before the show. My experience involved running into the fellow who ran the lights and, apparently, finished the job that Kellen did not. I got to brush up a bit on my ASL, which I hadn’t used since Great Aunt Esther passed away.”

  I was so young when she died, I forgot that she was deaf.

  “Seems we’re all skilled in the business of not appreciating what we have when we have it,” he remarks. “Fine-looking young man. He had quite a lot to say about what he thought of your talent. I didn’t know you’d taken to singing again in your spare time, sweetheart.”

  I clutch at my chest. Clayton and my dad …? “I have,” I confess. “I go to a local hangout and … and there’s these musicians …” I swallow. “He told you about that?”

  “He’s quite a fan of your music, even without being able to hear it. That’s quite a feat, if you ask me!” he adds with a laugh. “You know, the Lebeau talent can come in many forms. I don’t think we’ve had a singer in the family since your late grandmother. Oh, the set of cords on that powerhouse of a woman. Dessie,” he murmurs over my mother scrupulously directing the driver in the background, “regardless of its form, you have a voice, and you belong in the Theatre world. Whether you act, or sing, or do it all, you have a spot on that stage, sweetheart.”

  Tears have a whole new reason to touch my eyes now. “Thank you.”

  “Anyway, that young man’s got it right. I might add that he has a strong artistic voice himself, if that act three was any indication. Marv ought to know the lighting talent that’s hiding under his nose.” My dad sighs happily into the phone, then says, “Stay safe down here in Texas, sweetie. We’ll call you later when we land.”

  “Love you, Dad.”

  “Don’t ever say I pulled a string. You earned and owned that stage tonight, sweetheart, and you’ll own the next.” Then, after that, silence.

  I hug my phone for a moment before finally putting it away for good. I take a deep breath, trying to push away the image of my dad and Clayton sharing a bathroom bonding experience. I could almost laugh, if I weren’t feeling so strangely brokenhearted.

  When I push back into the theater to get my things, I find the lobby cleared except for two or three stragglers who are laughing loudly and chatting with Eric. He turns around and calls out, “Are you hitting up the Throng tonight, D-lady?”

  I shake my head no. “Opening night wore me out,” I say lamely. “I think I’m just gonna head back to my dorm room and interrupt my roommate trying to make out with a bassoonist.”

  He winces disappointedly. “Maybe tomorrow night, then.”

  “Great job tonight,” I reiterate before pushing into the hallway.

  Only three people are left in the dressing room by the time I return. I pack away my makeup and stow all my things into the cabinet above my station, figuring it to be safe there for tomorrow night’s show. With a smirk, I drop by the costumes rack and find Victoria’s crew apron hanging there. I roll up the autographed program and stash it into the apron pocket; that’ll prove to be a most welcome surprise.

  Then, I give my tired face one last, long look in the mirror before dismissing myself from the room with an unsatisfied sigh.

  Whipping around the corner, I make my trek down the long hall to the lobby, only to find it completely empty now. Even Eric and his friends have taken off. I stare at the vacant chairs for a while, lost in the memory of how noisy and awful it was just thirty or forty minutes ago.

  Why does the silence feel so much louder?

  “Dessie.”

  I turn. Clayton stands there by the auditorium doors dressed in his crew blacks: a black t-shirt that pulls across his chest, black slacks that hang loose at his hips, and a pair of black boots that give his feet such a dominant quality. He wears a leather cuff around one wrist, too, which I notice when his hand goes up to the wall, bracing himself as he leans against it.

  And my eyes meet his, dark and focused on me as if he’d been watching me all night. Well, he had been—from the lighting booth.

  “Clayton,” I return.

  “If your parents could hear you sing,” he says, shaking his head. “If they could see what you do to a room full of people with that beautiful voice of yours …”

  “You ran into my dad in the restroom.”

  His eyebrows pull together. “What?”

  “You ran,” I take a step toward him, “into my dad,” I take another step, “in the restroom.”

  His eyes flash with realization. Then, he chuckles unexpectedly.

  “What’s so funny?” I prompt him.

  “What the fuck is it,” he mumbles, “with me meeting people you know … in fucking bathrooms?”

  I shake my head. “What do you mean?”

  “Never mind,” he finishes with a smirk. “You were saying?”

  “Well, about my dad,” I continue, trying to sign at the same time. “He said something about us not … appreciating … what we have when we have it.” Instead of signing the word “appreciating”, which I don’t know, I spell it out. “Is that something you told him?”

  His eyes are so intense right now. He looks fucking famished, like a wolf that’s been left in the wild for days with no food.

  I see the answer in his eyes. “I may have not given you the chance you deserve,” I whisper, drawing close enough so that the spicy scent of his cologne can intoxicate me. I lean against the wall, inches from his face. “Are you afraid of hurting me?”

  “I’m always afraid of that,” he whispers and signs.

  I poke a finger into his chest. “I want to know the real you.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “I’m Desdemona Lebeau,” I tell him unblinkingly. “I’m a pebble in the shadow of my fabulous, talented sister. I’m a blot on my mother’s golden name. I came to this campus and lied about who I was,” I keep on, signing as much as I know while pausing to spell out what I don’t, “while being afraid of men lying to me about who they are, and … suddenly I wonder if I even have a right to be afraid at all. Am I just as bad as the men who’ve lied to me in my past?”

  He brings a finger to my hair, drawing a strand of it out of my face. Just the sensation of that sends a shiver of anticipation down the whole length of my body.

  “So, yes,” I conclude, finding my voice again. “That’s … the real me. And I want to know you, Clayton Watts. I want to know it all.”

  “Maybe I’m just afraid,” he says slowly, “that when you get to know the real me, you’ll make the unfortunate discovery that I’m … really boring.”

  I smile. “I doubt that.”

  His every breath pours over my forehead. Heat rises to my cheeks as my body instinctively inclines toward him. I don’t know how much longer I can contain myself. This week has been an emotional mess without my Clayton.

  “I’ve missed you,” he whispers to my ear.

  Electricity lances its way down my neck, through my chest, into my stomach, and branching off far below. I crave his touch so bad that I’m worried I might hurt him if I give him every ounce of my hunger right now. I could
demolish him.

  I sign to him: I’ve missed—

  He grabs my hands mid-sign.

  I look up at him, startled.

  “Read my lips,” he mouths without voice. “I want to take you back to my place right now, and show you how very much, how very, very, very fucking much I appreciate every moment with you.”

  And I read every word.

  Ten minutes later, the door to his apartment explodes with the noise of two people who can’t catch a breath.

  The door slams at my back.

  His hand’s up my dress and I’m thrust onto the kitchen counter, breathless.

  My fingers tangle into his dark, tortured hair. I pull hard, inspiring a deep grunt of pleasure—or pain. His fingers claw at my panties, pulling them down so hard, they tear.

  “Clayton!” I cry out as he throws my legs over his shoulder, his face buried in my crotch as he lifts me off the counter.

  The next instant, I’m dropped onto his bed.

  He straddles me and breathes deep, his eyes feral and black.

  He’s so fucking hard right now that his cock is about to bust out of those slacks. So I help him out of them. Then he rips me out of my dress. And then his shirt is pitched somewhere and forgotten.

  After getting naked in record time, I find myself getting bold, and it’s me who’s off the bed and throwing him down. Clayton grunts, his eyes shimmering with astonishment as I climb over him like a panther, grinning with my intent.

  And he lets me take the lead. I straddle his naked waist, pinning him right where I want him.

  There’s nothing standing in the way, skin against skin, just sweat and heat and … us.

  “Get on top of me,” he says suddenly.

  I squint, confused. “I already am,” I protest.

  Then he makes his meaning clear by grabbing my hips and pulling me forward. Way forward.

  On top of his face.

  “Clayton!” I cry out, gripping the headboard for support as my eyes go wide. Oh my god, his tongue. I squeeze my legs around his head, trapping him hungrily in place. If he’s going to work his tongue like that, I won’t let him stop until I’m finished with him.