by Daryl Banner
I nod.
He pushes a thumb into a console I didn’t notice until it’s too late, and the basket jerks, startling me, then slowly begins to rise. The vibrations tickle my feet. Bertha’s an old bitch, I think to myself. Clayton doesn’t even bother gripping the railing for balance; he just stands there, his lazily planted feet doing all the work of keeping him upright as we ascend.
He watches me the entire time. I can’t meet his eyes. The blushing in my cheeks stubbornly persists, refusing to calm even for a moment. I start to breathe in and out through my mouth the higher we get. I’m not afraid of heights, I remind myself, then take a peek down.
Big mistake. The stage is so, so far away. This machine is so damn rickety, it sways left and right as we go, giving me the impression that the whole basket we’re entrusting our lives with is secured to Bertha by two screws and a strip of tape.
“Nervous?” his soft, sultry voice asks.
I face him defiantly, despite my fears. “Petrified,” I answer sarcastically, then wonder if I actually meant the word.
To be fair, my fiercely gripping hands have not let go and my palms are starting to cramp.
That knowing, cocky smirk plays on his full, plush lips again. I involuntarily lick my own, thoughts of what I’d do with him alone in a room racing across my mind and rendering my face vulnerable for a second. I bet he can see my thoughts … these thoughts.
Then I realize I am alone in a room with him. A very, very big room. I glance down again. Fuck, I clearly don’t learn from my mistakes. My stomach spins and the machine keeps going up, up, up. How tall is this damn stage? This is the biggest auditorium I’ve ever been in. Texas. Everything’s bigger, or something.
“Here,” he says.
I look up at him, then notice what he’s indicating, following his nod. We’ve reached the hanging pipes of the fly system where curtains and certain set pieces are hung. There appears to be a flat, painted sun—or something—that hangs in the middle, likely left over from a summer production if I had to guess. Lighting instruments can also be hung here, or in the grid, which is even higher up.
“Do you ever …”
His voice startles me, as I was focusing on the flat-sun-thing so as not to be so damn aware of the basket swaying side to side. I lift my eyebrows. “Do I ever …?”
He swallows suddenly, appearing frustrated. The look comes out of nowhere, his abrupt change in mood casting a shadow over his face. Then, with a scowl, he whips his phone out of his pocket and starts typing. I think he’s texting a friend when he suddenly lifts the screen to my eyes:
Do u ever work in the grid?
Ever hung a light?
“Oh,” I mutter. “No. Not really.”
“No,” he mumbles, repeating my word. I wonder for a second if he’s aware that he echoed me, and then he plunges his face back into the phone, typing away. He shows the screen again:
U’re not gonna die.
U’re safe w me.
I still haven’t let go of the railing. “Bertha’s a bit shaky,” I explain, then catch the fact that I am, in fact, yelling and overpronouncing my words. “A bit shaky,” I repeat a touch more naturally. “B-Bertha.”
He nods, then types some more:
We can go back down if u want
Why did he stop talking? I love the soft sound of his silky, sexy voice … but does he hate it?
An idea hits me. As it’s just the two of us here, I find the confidence that had totally abandoned me in the food court a couple days ago. I have no idea where this confidence comes from, considering that I’m ten seconds from peeing my pants out of fear right now; the basket’s swaying in all four directions, like some child’s arm reaching up to grab candy from an out-of-reach candy jar, bending left, bending forward, then right, then left again. If I can get through this without losing my dinner all over Clayton’s tight, muscle-hugging shirt, I’ll call it a win.
Removing my hand from the railing for the first time, I lift a shaky, sweat-ridden fist and knock on an imaginary door in front of me, as if my fist were a nodding head—the sign for “yes”.
He frowns as if my sign hit him in the face. Then he shakes his head, his lips pursed and annoyed.
Shit. Figuring I’d done it wrong, I bring a fist to my chest and draw a circle, repeating the sign for “sorry” that I’d done before. What was that other one?—the sign for “please”? It’s similar to “sorry”, oddly enough. My hands hover in the air as I try to remember it.
Then Clayton grabs my hands, stopping me.
My eyes flash.
Neither of us move. I stare at him, stunned, and he stares back, though I can’t get a read on his eyes. He’s almost angry. His brow is wrinkled, pained, as if I just wounded him. He seems to be gnawing on his teeth, his jaw drawn tight, his cheeks dimpled with tension.
The air between us is so still, I wonder if either of us are breathing.
Then, his grip relaxes, but he doesn’t yet let go. With a face as hardened as stone, he says, “Don’t.”
I was just trying to talk to him in his, uh … native language. How is that wrong? “Am I that bad at it?”
The corner of his lips bend into a scowl.
“That’s a yes?” I press on, my hands still caught in his powerful yet strangely gentle grip. “Horrible? I’m just horrible and awful at sign language? Is that it?”
His eyes run all over my face, as if searching for something. Did he get lost in my words? Did I speak too quickly?
I keep going. “Am I really that bad with my hands? Do I look dumb?”
Still, the beast before me stares wordlessly.
“Should I start typing on my phone?” I ramble on, unable to will myself to shut the hell up. “Would you prefer that over reading my lips?”
Then he jerks on my hands, pulling me in, and our lips collide.
My eyes cram shut as he takes over, his warm mouth consuming mine. Clayton’s hot, jagged breath dresses my face, his powerful hands still clasped over mine and keeping me in place, trapped in his kiss.
Holy fucking shit.
Then it’s over, just like that. He pulls away and lets go of me in one fluid motion, jabbing the button to bring the basket slowly back down to Earth.
And I’m just staring at him with what might be the biggest what-the-hell-just-happened expression on my face. I don’t even notice us swaying, nor feel a trace of the fear of heights I just had. All of my attention is one hundred percent Clayton Watts and those lips.
Seriously, though … what just happened?
The basket shudders when it hits the stage abruptly, and Clayton swings open the cage, escaping Bertha as fast as if his pants caught fire.
“Clayton?” I call after him pointlessly. He’s off the stage in seconds, headed down the aisle into darkness. The auditorium doors open, flashing his beautiful silhouette at me for a moment before they shut gently behind him, closing me in with the cold silence and the warm sensation of his lips still on mine.
Chapter 10
Clayton
I can’t do this again.
Fuck, she tasted so good I already want another taste.
No, this can’t happen. I’m not losing my head over a girl, not right now.
But her eyes … Standing that close to her, I could have poured myself into them and made a home.
What the fuck am I talking about?
She’s a sophisticated city girl from New York. I’m the dirty scum of a poor Texas nobody. She can do so much better than me.
Why did I kiss her?? Why would I fucking do that to myself?—or to her? I’m sending the wrong message. A kiss means “come here” when I should be teaching her the signs for “get the fuck away from me”.
And she learned signs. She learned them so she could talk to me with her hands.
I can picture her now, looking them up online and mimicking the hand motions in front of the screen. She did that for you, Clayton. I’m so fucked.
I stop at a giant abstract sc
ulpture made of wire and glass panels just outside of the School of Art and collapse onto one of the benches that encircle it. On that bench for an hour, I stare at the horizon as it ignites with angry shades of orange and pink before being chased away by deep blues, then darkness. That sunset pretty much sums up my mood: up in the air with Dessie’s mouth on mine, I was ignited, and back down on the ground, I’m the shadows.
I pull out my phone and text Brant, asking him what he’s up to. I desperately need to distract myself. My phone shivers twenty seconds later, Brant asking me where we keep the chocolate syrup because he’s got a girl in his room and they “have ideas”. With a sigh, I inform him that we have none, then shove my phone back in my pocket, ignoring his response. That was more distraction and imagery than I needed.
Two girls pass by, and the conversation they were clearly having is paused as they sip the straws of their beverages suggestively, but it’s their eyes that do all the drinking, staring me down as they pass. One of them, a pretty brunette with curls down to her boobs, gives me a wiggle of her long fingers, sporting blood red nails.
I look away, annoyed. Girls like them used to be my thing. I was the expert. I had the skills that Brant was jealous of, even back when we were kids and our voices were still changing.
It’s the strangest thing, for the last memory of your own voice to be that of your twelve-year-old self, an unreliable voice that cracked at the worst of times, a voice that turned rough one day of the week, then boyish and squeaky the next.
But that squeaky voice couldn’t dare stop me from going after all the pretty girls. Little Clayton knew how to talk to them. He wasn’t afraid.
It was little dorky Brant who had all the trouble, and I was the one who coached him that day at Laura’s party. “You can’t think of a girl as someone you want,” I told him—my cocky, know-it-all self who acted like I had all the answers a dumb twelve-year-old would ever need. “You have to see her as someone who wants you.”
“I feel like I’m gonna puke,” whined little Brant. It always annoyed me how much he complained.
“Walk up and ask her why she hasn’t offered you some punch yet,” I teased him, nudging him with my elbow. He pushed me off, annoyed, and I saw the fear in his eyes. It didn’t make me sympathize with him; it made me want to laugh at the scared little fucker. “You’re such a chicken, Brant.”
“Shut up, I’m not.”
“Watch me,” I told him, puffing up my chest. “Watch and learn, little bro.”
We weren’t brothers, but I loved acting like the older brother Brant never had, in all the best and worst ways.
I walked up to that girl he’d had his eyes on ever since fifth grade. It was that easy. I strutted up to Miss Courtney and enjoyed the conversation Brant was meant to have. And at nine o’clock that night, it was me kissing Courtney in the closet under the stairs while everyone else’s fingers turned orange eating Cheetos and playing Twister in the living room.
I’d done some pretty sick shit back when I could hear. I was on top of the world and acted like I owned it, no matter how poor I was, no matter how I felt after Dad took off before my sixth birthday with some blonde bitch he met online, no matter how bad Mom’s hoarding problem got for those three months before he came back. I wouldn’t let anything stop me, even when Brant was furious with me for taking Courtney from him. “Snooze you lose,” I recall telling him in my room before he hurled a PlayStation controller at my head and pounced on me. In the heated struggle, Brant sliced open his arm pretty bad, and a trip to the emergency room earned him twelve stitches and a crescent scar he still has to this day.
He didn’t forgive me for a while. The last time I ever heard his voice, it was in the hallway at school right in front of my locker where he shouted, “I’m sorry I ever looked up to your selfish, coldhearted ass! You’re not my friend! Fuck you, Clayton!”
Not two months after that exchange, I lost my hearing forever.
And Brant’s loving, final words to me would be thereafter locked in my mind. When he saw me next, the only apology I received was in the form of his lips moving, creating words I couldn’t understand. Then I couldn’t even see the lips anymore as they began to blur behind a sheen of my tears.
I blink away the memories, startled to discover how dark it’s gotten. The only light that touches me now is the nearby lamppost. I pull my phone out, the screen blinding me, and type a message to Brant:
ME
We DO have caramel sauce, tho.
Behind the salsa....
back of the fridge
I grin to myself, a chuckle pushing past my lips before I rise from the bench. Hands in my pockets, I stroll into the calm, breezy night, the moon my only guide, and consider what the hell I’m going to do about a certain beautiful Theatre girl.
Chapter 11
Dessie
The water in the shower is just perfect, turned up almost too hot, bathing my skin in its liquid fire. His face is still burned into my brain. His breath touches my skin like we’re still trapped five zillion feet above the stage in that shaky metal basket. I can imagine it so vividly, so I think, why not go for it?
I slide a slippery hand over my breast.
“Oh, God,” I can’t help but moan.
If he were in this shower with me, it’d be as tight a squeeze as standing in that rickety basket. I can see the water soaking his shirt, picturing it in so much detail, it’s like he’s really here with me. The more the water drenches him, the more his firm muscles reveal themselves.
My nipples are so sensitive. I can’t stop moving my hand over them, up and down, then in circles.
“Fuck,” I breathe, quivering.
The water is almost too hot to bear, and so is he. My fingers run lower, tickling down my stomach. I keep myself on edge, anticipating the sensation I want to feel so badly. I deliberately take my time, torturing myself. My fingers are Clayton’s. My touch is Clayton, evilly crawling his fingers down my body too slowly.
“You’re so bad,” I whisper into the water, echoes of my own voice hissing all around me in the white noise of the shower. “You’re so, so bad.”
Then my slippery hand plunges between my legs. No muzzle or hand or gag can possibly hope to snuff out the moan that escapes my trembling lips now.
Clayton Watts is down there working a cruel sort of magic on me.
“Don’t stop,” I beg him.
He doesn’t. My fingers that are his fingers start to move quicker. I sway so badly, I catch a stream of shower water in my gaping mouth. One hand down below, I keep a set of fingers working my increasingly sensitive nipples. I’m so horny I feel sick. My insides are coming undone fast. I know I’m about to come.
Clayton … Clayton wants me to come for him.
“Yes,” I agree, the word turning into a sizzle on my tongue, my face scrunching up in sweet agony. “Yes.”
The impending waves of ecstasy chase up my body as I race over the cliff of orgasm. I lean forward into the wet wall of the shower, face flattened against the tile as I plummet off the edge, my fingers working me into a state of delirium as I moan my release through the steam and the water and the heat.
It’s not often that you can say you feel dirtier after a shower.
I breathe deeply, recovering as I press against the shower wall. I suck in one lungful of air after another, my hands stuck right where they are, half hugging the sensitive parts of my body.
As the thrill of orgasm departs, reality makes a quick replacement of the joy I was chasing, and I realize that I’m all alone. That kiss we shared while we swayed in the air two days ago, it’s already so far gone that I’m having doubts it ever really happened.
Clayton Watts, you teasing asshole. You’re driving me insane. I’m so obsessed with you.
Then, my moment is further stolen from me by a loud knock at the door that leads to my suitemates in the adjoining room, followed by the words, “I need to pee! For the love of God, can you hurry up??”
I k
inda thought I was alone. I was so lost in my fantasy, I wonder self-consciously if she heard any of my moaning or whispering dirty things through the noise of the shower.
Shutting off the water, I dry off—which is literally impossible in this tiny chamber that fills up with steam in a matter of five minutes—then dismiss myself to my room wearing just a towel as the desperate, squirming suitemate barges her way into the bathroom. No eye contact is made and my door’s shut and locked before any due awkwardness can ensue. Still, that doesn’t save me from the deadpan stare I get from Sam sitting cross-legged on her bed, who I didn’t realize was here either. Did everyone in the world return to their rooms during the one shower I take in which I chose to get myself off?
No matter, I hide in the closet and dress myself for tonight’s read-through. Even though rehearsals don’t start until Monday, they’ve scheduled a reading of the script with all the cast and some crew heads tonight before we all break for the weekend to learn our lines.
The whole way to the School of Theatre, I find my heart thrumming heavily between my footsteps. I don’t know if it’s because auditions happened last Friday—exactly a week ago today—or if I’m somehow channeling the bold recklessness that a few drinks gave me before I sang my heart out at the Throng.
I enter the rehearsal room and dozens of eyes are on me at once, the noise of chatter cut in half by my arrival. I’m stunned by the reaction, worrying for a second that I’d gotten the time wrong and I’m late. There’s a set of long tables arranged in a U, around which actors and designers are seated with scripts set before them, ready.
“D-lady!” calls out Eric, who magically appears, waving. “Got a seat for you!”
I smile mutely at the others in the room, then put myself in the empty chair at his side. When I look up at the person seated across from me, I’m stabbed in the chest.