by Daryl Banner
I grab the other controller. When Brant notices, a grin spreads across his face.
“Oh, it’s going down,” he says, his teeth flashing.
Chapter 17
Clayton
An email from Dr. Thwaite puts some extra speed to my getting-ready routine early Tuesday morning.
Mr. Kellen Michael Wright, our Official Lighting Designer Douchebag, has flown in early from the big apple to work with us here in the rotted grapefruit and he wants me to meet him at seven at the theater.
So fucking blessed.
And still not a peep from Dessie.
My eyes half-open, I pull a shirt over my head before I’m completely dried off from my shower, droplets of water wetting down the back in spots. I’m racing to get ready not so that I’m punctual for this Wright fucker, but because I need to do this right to impress Dr. Thwaite. It’s his opinion that matters to me, and being late receiving this lighting designer will reflect poorly on the whole department.
But most of all, me.
I push through the doors of the theater in record time, even before the box office has opened. No one’s in the main office except for Ramon who answers the phones, so I assume the big shot isn’t here yet. I make a trip to the bathroom to check myself in the mirror, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes and fixing my hair. I haven’t been to the gym in almost a week and I can tell; I get so irritable so quickly when I don’t go. All that aggression doesn’t take long at all to build up inside me, and add to that the frustration of how I’m fucking things up so bad with Dessie, it’s a wonder I haven’t busted a vein in my forehead.
I doubt she’s up this early, but I have nothing to do until the designer arrives and I need to occupy my head with something other than wanting to put it through a wall. My phone’s out in seconds:
ME
Hey Dessie.
Really sorry about being MIA.
I hope u’re OK.
I keep thinking about u.
A lot.
I’m at the theater early
waiting on someone.
Kinda feel bad about
leaving you hanging.
Plz message me back?
With a sigh, I run some water over my face, then stare at my phone and wonder if she’s actually awake and might answer back. I stare for ten full minutes.
Suddenly, I feel a presence at my side. Turning my head, I find another student at the sink next to me. I ignore him and study my face again, especially the ugly wound on my cheek. I bandaged my face twice, but it’s not as good as when Dessie did it. I might as well wrap my face in duct tape for as unsightly as it is.
The dude taps me on the arm. I turn, lifting a brow. He’s a bit older than I realized at a first glance, maybe thirty or so. He’s my height and he wears a short-sleeve salmon-colored button shirt and jeans. His left wrist is thickly decorated in leather bands, wristlets, and wooden-beaded bracelets. He has a thin build and designer glasses. I have never seen this dude before, and clearly he doesn’t know who I am because he starts talking at my face, his mouth so little, I can’t understand a fucking word.
Until he says three words I do understand: Kellen Michael Wright.
Fuck, are you serious? I straighten up at once, my eyes flashing open, and I extend a hand. “Clayton Watts,” I get out, feeling my voice shake, which sends a surge of insecurity through my body that I instantly resent.
He shakes my hand and smiles, then confirms precisely who he is with a few words, the last of which being “New York”, I think. Did Dr. Thwaite not warn him about me, or …?
I type into my phone quickly that I’m deaf, then show him the screen. He reads it, then nods and pulls out his own phone, holding up a finger to tell me to wait as he types one-handed. Then he flashes me his own screen, telling me he’s looking forward to a quick tour once he takes a leak.
I smirk and let out a chuckle, then nod at him and say, “I’ll be outside,” before dismissing myself from the bathroom.
Well. So far, he’s not the dick I was expecting. Instead, he’s all nice and normal and shit.
I sit on a bench in the hallway, waiting for Kellen to do his business in the bathroom while I stare down at my phone and beg telepathically for Dessie to answer my text and put me out of my misery. To be fair, I’m certain I subjected Dessie to a misery of her own when I was lost in a swamp of bitterness all Sunday, refusing to answer her texts.
I’m such an idiot. I deserve this.
I clench shut my eyes and squeeze my phone until my hands cramp. Behind those eyelids, I feel the pull of the dream world as I imagine Dessie and I back on that couch, slowly pulling each other’s clothes off. Why did she stop us? Why did she put an end to something that was so fucking perfect and real and hot? I hadn’t been that intimate with anything other than my right hand for so long, I felt like a fucking horny teen again.
That’s what Dessie does to me. And Dream Dessie is about five times as cruel as doesn’t-return-my-texts Dessie. She pushes me down on that imaginary couch and opens her bra to me. When her breasts emerge in front of my face, I feel my cock stiffen in my pants so much, it aches.
There’s something about being sleepy that makes a guy so susceptible to having a raging-hard boner.
I press the phone down into my lap, eyes still closed, and grunt against my hard-on that grows bigger and harder by the second.
Dessie’s tits are in my face and I can’t shake away this fantasy. “Clayton,” I imagine her whimpering in a voice I’ve never heard before. “Put your cock inside me, Clayton. Deep inside.” Fuck, Dessie, I want to so bad. She’s squirming on top of me, gyrating those sexy, tight hips of hers against my junk. “Fuck me. Oh, Clayton, I’m so fucking wet for you.”
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.
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.
Chapter 18
Dessie
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 relentles
s 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.”