by Daryl Banner
Then he pulls that finger out of his mouth with a pop and, his evil grin tightening, he thrusts that hand under my dress.
“Clayton!” I protest again.
His face intensely boring into mine, his hand negotiates its way under my dress and into my panties with the same slick persuasion as his lips.
His finger glides inside.
A surge of insanity courses through me. Fuck! Just one little movement and my body rebels, every muscle in me submitting to the power of Clayton’s finger.
Vainly, I pull against the cord, only to remind myself how very trapped I am.
In response, Clayton pulls tighter, stretching me until I’m nearly on my tippy-toes. I’m completely in his control.
His finger pushes in deeper—or maybe he’s added a second one, I can’t tell.
“Someone’s going to catch us,” I breathe, fighting my restricted hands—except I don’t really want to be free. Who in their right mind would?
He leans in, his face inches from mine. “You’re so wet,” he whispers. “You want me.”
“Yes,” I say, but the word turns into a desperate moan that pushes out of my throat. Oh my god. He’s making me so dizzy with his beautiful torment.
“Come on my fingers,” he whispers.
“Clayton …”
“Come for me.” His fingers twist.
I squirm against him, pushing my clit up against his palm, rubbing frantically and trying to get more friction. He presses up against my body. I feel his fingers dig deeper, pulsating inside me and working me like a damn puppet.
What the hell is he doing down there that feels so fucking good?
And then I feel myself letting go. I can’t stop it. I cry out in his face, my orgasm rocketing through me. Shockwaves of pleasure race up to my fingers, down to my toes, and through my clenching stomach.
I flick open my eyes.
His victorious face hovers in front of mine. Then, his fingers slip out of me and, without breaking his fierce gaze for a second, he brings those fingers to his wicked mouth and slips them in, his tongue dancing up and down each digit as he tastes me.
He lets go of the cord and it slides off the hook, my hands dropping with it. Gently, he unties his thick knot, releasing my wrists and winding the cord back up over his shoulder, like his job’s done.
He offers me a wink before tossing the wound-up cord back onto the wall. Then, he faces me to say, “Looks like our little list’s complete. You’re free to return to rehearsal, Dessie.”
Massaging my wrists, I lift my eyes to him, feeling bold, and throw my arms around his neck. I kiss him without warning, tasting myself on his swollen lips. “I think I’d rather work overtime,” I whisper.
An amused smirk darkens his face.
I don’t suspect I’m leaving anytime soon.
Chapter 21
Dessie
We’re only able to get away with our Wednesday Night Lighting Crew Sexcapades for two more weeks before rehearsal would take its due priority, forcing me to attend the earlier and far less desirable Tuesday afternoon lighting crew shift that fits neatly between my movement and voice classes.
Of course, Clayton makes sure to be there during said shifts. Unfortunately, so are five other guys.
We meet up for lunch or dinner on the “good end” of fraternity row a few times a week. It almost feels weird to eat alone now. I always seem to learn a handful of new signs each time we get together. I practice each one to him while he patiently corrects me. I know signing in public isn’t something he likes to do, but he’s become way more comfortable with it around me.
We both pull each other out of our comfy boxes.
I stay at his place two or three times a week. I’m sure Sam doesn’t mind the random nights she gets to have the dorm room all to herself, composing her music at top volume. I told her to install her software on my laptop so she can use my computer when I’m not there. Turns out, my computer is approximately nine billion times faster than hers.
She doesn’t know it, but I’m totally letting her keep that laptop; I can afford a new one.
It’s only a matter of days before Clayton and I become so highly attuned to each other’s schedules that we surprise each other after classes. It becomes a routine on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons for him to hang out in the lobby until I get out of my voice class, and then we grab dinner together before I head back to the theater for rehearsal.
“Is this how you do it?” I ask him one Thursday evening after I take a bite of cake, signing that my chocolate cake’s tasty. Clayton fights a laugh because apparently I just signed: Church is tasty! When I repeat the sign back to him, annoyed, he laughs harder because my second version comes out as: My computer is a tasty cake! When I put a piece of that cake into his face, he isn’t laughing anymore, and then for a few minutes we become one of “those couples” as I kiss the chocolate off his face. I might say, it’s one of the best desserts I’ve had in a while.
“So, what are we?”
He squints, having missed what I said.
My feet shuffle under the table. Maybe I shouldn’t push the subject. “Never mind.”
He growls, frustrated. He really hates when I don’t repeat something I’ve said.
I lick my lips, still tasting chocolate. I poke my chest—I. Then, from the place I just poked, I pull an imaginary pencil out with just my thumb and middle finger—Like. I’m drawing a blank for the remaining signs, so I mouth the words, “Whatever we are.”
Folding his arms on the table, he leans over and grunts, “Me too.”
I smile. I just said I wouldn’t push this subject, but I can’t help myself. “So … are we a thing?”
He seems to read my words perfectly this time, as I see a hint of a smirk teasing onto his lips as he studies me pensively. His hesitation almost worries me until he mumbles, “I sure as fuck hope so.”
The answer sets a cage of butterflies loose inside me. That sensation never gets old.
Not around Clayton.
Unfortunately, that sensation also happens every time I set foot into rehearsal. Moving to the main stage for rehearsals has pressed the sobering reality onto me that opening night will be on me before I know it and the auditorium will be full of people who’ve bought tickets to see me in my wonderfully subpar and highly disappointing rendition of Emily Webb in Our Town. Nina does nothing to bolster my confidence, constantly barking at me and asking weird questions that seem rhetorical, yet she wants a response each time. And annoying Nina clearly doesn’t earn me any love from the rest of the cast.
After an especially grueling Friday rehearsal where I royally flubbed at least five of my lines in act three, destroying any sense of dramatic tension that existed, I meet Eric by the exit door and sigh, asking, “When exactly am I supposed to stop sucking at rehearsal?”
To that, he responds, “Yesterday,” with an apologetic wince.
But there is one perk to rehearsing on the main stage: Clayton is periodically around, focusing lights in the grid, discussing things with Kellen somewhere in the back of the auditorium, or even backstage as he organizes things and helps the set and props crew. Despite our proximity, we keep everything professional during rehearsal.
Also, I’m rather amazed at how well things seem to be going between him and Kellen. Although, I really wouldn’t mind Kellen accidentally slipping on a banana peel in the grid and plummeting to the stage below with a shriek and a bone-crunching splat.
Wow. My bitterness over his presence really knows how to pull the dark and morbid out of me.
It becomes a regular joy of mine to visit the Throng every Saturday night for a performance. I meet up with the musicians in my free time, practicing new songs. They help me with melody and song structure, which makes me half-appreciate the attention that Sam gives her own work, with all that knowhow she gains from her classes. I may suck like hell when I’m handed an acting role, but put me in front of a microphone with some keen musicians and I will sing a ship f
ull of men into the rocks at the shore.
Twice, I’ve caught Victoria at the Throng. One time, she seemed to be listening to my song, but with half-opened, unimpressed eyes. The second time, she was carrying on a conversation with the orange-bearded Freddie in the very back during my whole performance.
I don’t mind, really. It totally doesn’t make my blood boil.
But Clayton Watts sure does, because he’s always in that audience, and both of his roommates have taken quite a liking to me. Every Saturday after my gig is over, the musicians compliment me, give me high-fives like I’m just another dude in the band, then throw out their ideas for what they want me to come up with next weekend. “Please write a song about my ex,” the guitarist begs me. “She set fire to my bed. She’s a fucking lunatic.” Then, the moment I step offstage, I meet with Clayton and his roommates, who have taken to sitting with Eric and Chloe. Nothing’s official, but I think Chloe might be warming up to Brant, and I may be totally off, but I think there’s a spark or two flying between Eric and Dmitri. Clayton did tell me that Dmitri swings both ways, and I can’t help but notice how cutely clingy Eric’s gotten toward Dmitri, insisting on sitting next to him during my gigs.
“Want to crash at my place?” Clayton always asks, as if he still needs to, even four Saturdays later.
“Good idea,” I always tease him back.
And then another night of sweating, wrinkled bed sheets, and slamming his headboard against the wall commences.
I always worry that his roommates get tired of me being around all the time, but they seem to be more amused by it. On my way out one Sunday morning, Brant looks at me over his cup of coffee and says, “You mean you can still walk after last night?”
I give him the finger.
He gives me two—placed over his mouth with his tongue wiggling between them.
Good ol’ Brant.
It isn’t until Monday after my acting class that I run into Victoria and Chloe in the lobby. Chloe’s face is a mess of black ink running from her eyes to her chin. Victoria sits next to her with a consoling hand on her back, and the moment she sees me, her eyes turn dark.
I come up to the pair of them, undaunted by Victoria’s coldness. “Chloe?”
Chloe gives one short look at me, then sniffles. “That fucker.”
“What fucker?” I prompt her.
Victoria sighs, long and dramatically, then says, “Can you give us space, Desdemona? Chloe’s having troubles and her friend here is trying to console her.” She rubs Chloe’s back in little circles with one hand, clenching her thigh with the other.
I ignore Victoria’s snark. “What happened?” I ask Chloe gently, crouching down by her side.
“That male slut,” she spits out, sniffling. “Ugh. I’m such a stupid mess. I never get this way over a boy. I am such an idiot.”
“No, you’re not,” murmurs Victoria, rubbing her back with mounting zest, as if she were trying to scrub the glass off of a window. “You’re smart and you’re full of love. That ass is just a good-for-nothing womanizer.”
“Brant?” I say suddenly. “Are we talking about—?”
“Don’t fucking say his name,” groans Chloe. She practically snarls, her teeth bared. “I could kill him. He doesn’t have any feelings. He just uses girls like, like, like, like rags and … and then he just …”
“We don’t have to rehash it all,” murmurs Victoria soothingly, and I get the impression that what she really means is: Don’t bother letting Dessie into any of this. I’m your real friend. I’m here. Dessie is a bitch.
I sigh. “I’m so sorry, Chloe.”
“None of them are any good,” Chloe spits back, her eyes sharp as needles. “Those boys all deserve each other, those woman-using chauvinists.”
Is she talking about Clayton now, too? “Wait a minute,” I start.
“I warned you,” Chloe goes on, looking up at me with those two wet paths of darkness down her face. “I said you should stay away from him. None of them are any good. They’re a pack of pricks and always were.”
“Chloe,” I press on, getting annoyed.
“He’s going to fuck you over, too. They’re best friends, two peanuts in a shell. When he’s bored of you, he’ll dump your ass—”
“Chloe!”
“And he and Brant will laugh about you,” she goes on, “and share stories about you behind your back. You’ll just be another dent on the headboard. Wait for it.”
“You don’t know a damn thing about Clayton at all,” I shout at her, furious.
Something is being rehearsed at the other end of the lobby—six freshmen working on a group project—and they go silent at my outburst. Chloe glares at me from her seat and Victoria, all too ready for another excuse to hate me, just looks up at me with a pained sort of put-on sympathetic expression.
“I think you should go,” Victoria quietly suggests.
“I think I will,” I respond just as stingingly.
The glass doors shut softly at my back, despite my effort to slam them. I feel everyone’s eyes staring at me through the windows as I pass through the courtyard. If I’m honest, Chloe and I weren’t really super close to begin with, but I could not just stand by while she poured all her resentment on both Clayton and Brant. I mean, sure, Brant’s a total player; I called it the moment I met him at the bowling alley. But if she’s mad at him, why did she have to bring up Clayton and pull him into the mix? They might be best friends, but they’re nothing alike.
Still, even just thinking that, a seed of doubt has planted itself in my already unrested stomach.
It isn’t until I get back to my dorm that I take a glance at the calendar and realize opening night is this Friday.
Of course I knew already, but the days still somehow snuck up on me. I knew it was coming for weeks, but seeing it in black and white makes it a reality.
Too much of a reality.
I throw myself into the bathroom just in time to cling to the rim of the toilet, then proceed to ungently turn myself inside-out.
Chapter 22
Clayton
Kellen Michael Wright says some scholarly know-it-all bullshit to me in the lighting booth when we’re alone. I nod, pretending I heard him.
I didn’t hear a fucking word.
People don’t realize how much we speak with our bodies. You don’t need lips or words to communicate. The flick of an eye says so much more. The tensing of the shoulders. The bend of a back.
Maybe that’s why they say eighty percent of sign language is your expression, and not the actual signs you make with your hands.
I get sentences from the way your feet fold when you’re seated. Or how your legs are inclined toward—or away—from the person you’re talking to. You tell me whether you’re comfortable around me by letting your arms hang at your side, or thrusting your hands into your pockets, or crossing your arms protectively over your chest. I note the angle of your head, where your chin points, the wrinkles in your face between which either amusement or resentment is expressed.
It’s a fucking book, from one end of your body to the other. And Kellen says it all without speaking.
He looks at me, awaiting an answer to some question I didn’t hear.
I nod. “Exactly,” I agree, just wanting this stupid shit to be over with so I can get back to Dessie. She should be out of her acting class by now, and it’s dress week, which is when life gets tough for both of us. She has dress rehearsal every night while the crews give their full focus to the show, making adjustments to the costumes, set, sound, and lights as we communicate with the director to set up lighting cues, like when the lights come on or fade out or change color, and so on.
It’s Monday. Only five days separate her from opening night. I can’t imagine what a wreck she must be. It doesn’t matter how good I tell her she is; she won’t hear a word of it.
Suddenly, the screen of Kellen’s tablet slides over the table in front of my eyes. In place of the description of a lighting cue, he�
�s typed:
Are you here today?
Getting anything
I’m saying at all?
Or am I wasting my breath
trying to teach you?
I smirk and face him, unable to hide my irritation for some reason. “I must’ve missed what you just said. Can you repeat it?”
He erases his words on the tablet, then types onto it in front of me:
Can’t rely on you seeing
what I’m saying anymore?
Need me to type everything out
for you suddenly???
Looking back at him, I see the exasperation in his eyes. I see the frustration in his hunched shoulders. I also see the curl of dislike in his parted lips, the way it makes his chin dimple.
It’s not just my absentmindedness. He’s annoyed by something else entirely, and taking into account all of what Dessie’s told me about this piece of work—and how public Dessie and I have been over the past several weeks—I can take a guess as to what’s tied his pretentious panties into a pretzel: he doesn’t like that Dessie and I are together.
“I’m fine,” I tell his lips, feeling the tension in my jaw work into each word. “Repeat yourself once and I will understand.”
He mashes his fingers into the tablet, yet again:
You sure about that???
I’m teaching you valuable lessons here.
I can easily do this by myself.
I barely read the message. My eyes zero in on his. I give him every ounce of fury behind my gaze as I consider whether to punch him in the face for what he did to Dessie years ago, or punch him in the jaw for the condescending way he’s talking to me now, or just let it all go and taking the higher ground.