by Daryl Banner
“I can’t wait to put it in my ears,” I murmur, then feel an inner stab of horror at how bad I am at flirting. I mumble a tiny, “Bye,” before turning to chase my humiliation back to the dorm.
On the way, I catch myself giggling. Sam, I don’t know you anymore.
When I’m back on the second floor of West Hall, I hear my dorm phone ringing through the door. Hurrying inside, I grab it on the last ring and slap it to my ear. “Hello?”
“Sweetheart! Good news,” my mother says. “Your phone’s alive again! I got a deal, paid the bill, and got us a basic family plan.”
I gape. Is today my lucky day? Did I win the fucking lottery? I turn and glance at the closet where I keep my phone, since it’s basically just a little game-playing photo-taking otherwise-useless hunk of metal. “That’s amazing news, mom,” I tell her in my flat voice that’s supposed to convey my excitement. I doubt my sullen voice will ever match the new, bright, beautiful Sam on the outside. I experience a sudden wave of regret. Do I miss the old Sam who wore clothing like a turtle’s shell she could pull inside of? “Now I can call the police if I’m being mugged by 432 hertz fanatics when crossing the campus at midnight.”
“Samantha. Don’t go scaring me, now.”
“It’s Sam.”
“I won’t get used to it. I refuse.” I hear the smile in her voice when she says that. “Oh, and our plan only covers 100 texts a month, so be mindful when you’re sending messages to your friends.”
All my millions of friends. She must think Amy is still my bestie. Maybe I should have stayed friends with her and gone off to Europe this summer. Was leaving Rho Kappa Lambda a mistake?
Suddenly, I feel so alone. Maybe it’s my mother’s voice. She sounds so chipper, but there’s a tinge of sadness I know she’s suppressing in there somewhere. Does she still have nightmares about Dad?
“Love you, Mom,” I say instead of asking her anything meaningful.
After hanging up, I hurry to my closet and fish out my phone from a basket of odds and ends. When I turn it on, I feel a wave of warmth run through me. The last time I really bothered with this thing was over the summer when Amy was sending me a new pic every day.
I think I’m overdue for some cleaning up.
I scroll through my photos and delete all evidence of my summer. Amy vanishes from my life in a series of wide-lipped smiles, still images of her laughter, and lip-biting quirkiness amidst a silent backdrop of European splendor. One photo at a time, she disappears.
Then my finger slips on the wrong button, and the camera app pops open. It’s on selfie mode. In the very next instant after casting a mountain of Amy into the void, I’m now staring at an entirely different face. A pretty face. My own face.
And I look so lost.
The slanted, waning sunlight burns my otherwise dark room a murky, unkind amber that gives me the eerie feeling that I’m caught in the stomach of a great big beast. I drop right back down onto my bed, staring at the device that now rests in my palm, transfixed by the weird girl who stares back. Even through a mask of prettiness and cute hair and new eyebrows, the weird girl still lives in those big hazel eyes.
Chapter 10
Dmitri
The local college pub Throng & Song is loud. The place is packed to every corner. My mind is a plate of hot scrambled eggs as I try to focus on something other than the laughter, screaming, and smoke.
Dessie, Clayton’s girlfriend (I think?) who I finally met at Brant’s bowling competition thing a Saturday or two ago, has finally arrived with a couple friends. Clayton’s body tightens up at the sight of her. It’s funny how he doesn’t even need to sign or say a damn thing to me; I can read his body like a New York Times headline. When Dessie and her posse circle our tiny table, my world goes from crowded to sardine-can caliber.
I mind it—until the cute guy Dessie brought with her extends a hand over the table. “Eric,” he says for an introduction. “Theatre major. I’m acting with Dessie in her show.”
“Dmitri. Clayton’s roommate,” I shout back at him, shaking his hand. He’s got an unexpectedly firm handshake for a tall, slender sort of guy who doesn’t look like he’s lifted a weight in his life. Maybe I’m just too used to the muscular Clayton and the fit-as-a-panther Brant. Eric’s face is soft, yet his eyes are striking and hard—a deep green, if the smoke, lighting, or a set of contacts isn’t deceiving me.
“You’re cute,” he calls out.
I lift my eyebrows so high, my glasses come up a bit with them. And this Eric guy is into dudes. I couldn’t tell. The plot thickens. “Thanks?”
“Don’t take it to heart,” he adds with a wave of his hand. “I say that to literally every guy I ever encounter. I’m a total slut.”
“Uh … noted!”
“Oh my God, I’m kidding. Seriously, loosen up.”
I snort and shake my head, feeling my face flush. “Also noted!”
Then, Eric reaches over the table unexpectedly and touches my red serpent. “Nice ink.”
I watch him boldly stroking my red serpent. I don’t care how that sounds. “That’s … my hot.”
“Your what?” he shouts.
“And this is my cold,” I further explain over the screaming laughter of someone near us, touching the blue serpent that coils around it.
“You run hot and cold?? I like it.” Eric smirks. His finger keeps tracing my serpents, sending goosebumps up my back. This guy is pretty damn handsy. I can’t help but enjoy the sensation. It’s been a long time since I’ve been touched by a guy or a girl. “I can never get tattoos. The whole actor thing. I mean, well, maybe I could cover up a small one with makeup, but still. Such a hassle. Plus, I hate needles.”
“I hate needles, too,” I confess.
He studies me after that comment with his lips pursed, his eyes scanning down my body.
I straighten my posture. “Want to … see my spark of inspiration?”
“Oh, the thing on your neck,” he murmurs. “Yeah, I already saw it earlier when I was walking up to the table. First thing I noticed was your sexy neck firework.”
Then the musicians on the stage conclude their song, and one of them takes to the microphone, introducing Dessie as the next act. My attention is pulled from the dashingly forward Eric fellow as obligatory applause rolls through the room before Dessie takes the stage. When she starts to introduce herself, I spin around and interpret her words to Clayton by habit. The look in his desperate eyes (that quickly softens to a shimmering puddle of gratefulness) is my thanks. I even continue to move my hands when Dessie sings, giving Clayton her lyrics.
Damn, that girl can sing.
But all the while, I keep catching Eric peering at me from across the table. When our eyes meet at one point—which causes me to fall behind on the third verse—he smiles crookedly, his eyes twinkling in the dim light reflecting off the stage. I smile back at him, then return my full focus to Clayton, catching up on Dessie’s lyrics.
Afterwards when the song is over and everyone, including myself, gives Dessie due congratulations and compliments, I find Eric right by my side suddenly, no one else there to come between us. Dessie and Clayton seem to be all up in each other’s faces, and Brant is talking and clinking glasses with the other girl Chloe.
Eric’s shoulders rub up against mine, and whenever I turn to him thinking he wants to say something, he just looks right at my eyes and giggles, then bites his lip.
I don’t need three guesses to figure out what’s on his mind.
I just return a smile, too chicken to encourage anything more than that, then glance over the table to find Clayton and Dessie halfway to the door on their way out. Clayton looks over his shoulder, catches my eye, then signs something at me from across the room. I give him a nod of understanding as he disappears out the door. Well, that didn’t take long at all.
Brant slaps my arm. “Dude, I’m pretty sure Clay-boy’s about to get it on with his girl. What’d he sign at you? I saw that.”
I chu
ckle. Despite Brant being a horny puppy all the time, he sure is observant. “Yeah. He just signed that he feels sorry for you having a little dick and hopes you can still manage to get lucky tonight.”
Chloe, having heard that, bursts out into laughter and looks away, hiding her tears of hilarity.
Brant shrugs. “I’m not lookin’ to get lucky. I’m a perfect gentleman with approximately zero complaints about my dick from the ladies.”
Of course he’d put on the I’m-a-perfect-gentleman face for Chloe.
“I’m sure, like any well-adjusted man, Brant here regularly checks his dick’s reviews on Yelp,” Eric announces to Chloe, inspiring another tickled laughter from her.
I lean over the table toward Brant. “He said he’s gonna need the apartment for a bit. I think we ought to honor that wish.”
Brant smirks and shakes his head like a disapproving parent. “The dude’s got a psych test tomorrow he was complaining to me about. Fucker needs to study.”
“Oh, he’ll be studying something tonight, for sure,” Eric teases us, pushing up against me as he noses into our conversation.
Brant eyes me. “How’s late night tacos sound?”
“Are we invited?” asks Eric, turning his face toward me, his lips inches from mine. I can smell the cloying scent of alcohol as he speaks.
My eyes flick from him, to Chloe, to Brant. Brant gives me a subtle wiggle of his eyebrows. “Sure thing,” I answer.
An hour later finds the four of us on the edge of campus at a low-key Tex-Mex place that is a drastic (and welcome) change from the loudness of the Throng. Sitting at a table in the middle of the lit-up hole-in-the-wall with tasty and cheap to-die-for Tex-Mex, the four of us chat and laugh and share chips and green salsa.
Chloe has a very biting sense of humor and, to be honest, comes off quite negative and cynical about almost every topic brought up, though sometimes she makes me laugh with her snide remarks. I’m sure Brant is finding all of that sexy as hell, imagining how hot and evil-in-the-good-way she is in bed. I wouldn’t doubt that there could be black leather and chains involved. Eric seems to take after her a bit, putting in his own snarky comments about their show Our Town and things people are saying behind Dessie’s back which anger him. Brant says something uncharacteristically sweet in response: “They’ll have to just wait ‘til opening night to truly judge Dessie. No effort should be judged halfway through its completion.”
After he says that, though, he gives a coy lift of his eyebrows at Chloe, as if his words ought to earn him some time between the sheets with her later. I roll my eyes; for a second, I was convinced Brant had something on his mind other than sex. Then Brant starts asking Chloe about the “art of Theatre”, as he puts it, and it shifts to a discussion of how relatable Brant is and whether he’d make a decent actor or not. “Really?” he says to Chloe, turning his face from side to side cutely. “You think I have the looks for it? Y’know, I did act in a class play in the fifth grade …”
While they’re lost in their discussion, Eric and I get lost in one of our own. “I hope you don’t think I’m being too forward,” Eric tells me in a low, discreet voice. “I’ve just been single for quite some time, and like, you’re sorta the first guy I’ve seen that just … totally blew my eyeballs apart.”
I chuckle dryly, then shoot Brant a nervous glance, wondering if he can hear any of this. He can’t; he’s too busy puffing himself up in front of Chloe like a peacock and isn’t even looking our way.
I face Eric and speak in a discreet voice of my own. “You have a way with imagery, dude. You sure you’re not a writer instead of an actor?”
“No way. I don’t have the focus to get from one end of a book to the other. I don’t even really read much, if I’m being honest.”
“But what about playwrighting?”
Eric shrugs. “I don’t know. Who the hell would put on a play I wrote? Also, the idea of having to hand over my work to a director, who might not understand my vision, and then have my words read by actors who could suck, and then a tech crew who might be lazy and underpaid and, like, constructing my set with cardboard … seriously, I’m already imagining the nightmares I’d have every minute my play was being produced. I can’t with all that. Can’t, can’t, can’t.”
I nod. “Yeah, I get you.”
“I’d love to read something you wrote.”
“Oh, I don’t really have anything that’s—”
“Just anything. Like, a short story, even. Or an essay. You write any? You look like a guy who’d have a blog. Dmitri’s Dark Domain.”
I snort. “Sounds like a sex club.”
“Could be.” Eric bites his lip and looks me over. His mind seems to be working as he runs a finger lazily around the rim of his glass. Then he lifts an eyebrow at me. “You didn’t really acknowledge what I said.”
“About what?”
“You blowing up my eyeballs.”
“Oh. Yeah, I got that. Vivid imagery.”
“What I meant was …” He pokes me with his foot under the table. “I think you’re hot. You blow up my eyes.”
I smile, let out a sharp breath through my nose, then lift a glass of water to my lips and start to drink. I feel my heart squeezing in my chest and my throat constricting. It’s been such a long time since I’ve been hit on that I don’t know what to do. Should I play back at him? Would that be leading him on if I don’t take him to a bedroom or something? I don’t even know what to properly do with a guy. There was a boy I kissed my senior year of high school, and another I sort of felt up during a sleepover when I was sixteen and we both pretended to be asleep, side by side. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep at all that night.
So what’s the protocol here in the adult world? What do I do?
“You hear me that time?” he murmurs, prodding me.
He’s really persistent. I need to react somehow. I can’t just sit here and act like a big, brooding stump of nothing. “You too,” I croak out.
Eric lifts an eyebrow. His face becomes three times cuter when he does that. “Me too? What do you mean?”
He wants me to say it? Like, out loud? I shift uncomfortably, shooting Brant another glance to make sure he’s still sucked into conversation with Chloe.
“Oh.” Eric nods, eyeing Brant himself. “I get it.”
I stare at Eric wide-eyed, the glass of water hovering in front of my mouth. “What do you mean?”
“He’s weird about it?” he asks, giving a sideways nod at Brant.
And somehow, of all things, that is what grabs my roommate’s attention. “Weird about what?” asks Brant, interrupting whatever he was saying to Chloe to look between us.
Before Eric can say anything, I turn to Brant and shrug it off. “Ah, nothing. I was just thinking I might head back to the apartment after this. I’m feeling kinda—”
Brant cuts me off. “Dude. We can’t crash on the lovebirds.”
“We could go to my dorm,” suggests Eric with a shrug.
Chloe elbows him. “And get drunk off of your homebrew? Please tell me you made more since the Theatre mixer.”
“No, no. Too risky. My totally genius roommate almost made me get caught, so I got rid of the rest and am keeping my dorm clean. But I do have some weed,” he adds with a lopsided smirk.
“I’m in!” cries Chloe, throwing her hands in the air.
Brant chuckles and shakes his head. “Nah, I don’t smoke up. But I’m down for hangin’ in your dorm for a while. You in, Dmitri?”
Everyone at the table turns their faces to me. It seems to only be Eric’s that I notice as he gazes into my eyes, excitedly awaiting my answer. I don’t know why, but I get the feeling he’s wanting to do more with me than just hang in a dorm room wasting our night. If I’m being totally honest, I think I’m starting to share the same sort of excitement that he is. My cock’s stiffening up just thinking about what might happen if the two of us ended up in a room all by ourselves.
It’s just as exciting as it is scar
y. I’d be lying if I didn’t confess to the performance anxiety I’m experiencing. I don’t do well at all when I’m being pressured, especially when a table full of three horny people are waiting expectantly for me to join in on their debauchery and hormone chasing. That includes a gay guy who might eat me alive.
But I also don’t do well sitting around waiting for stuff to happen. I have to say yes for anything to happen at all, right?
The two words slip out like a surprise hiccup. “I’m in.”
The relief on Eric’s face explodes with a smile.
After traversing the dark, creepy campus together on our way to the Quad, I find myself back in East Hall where Eric has been living all along, even back when I was here just a year ago. Somehow, we never crossed paths, and now we’re leaned up against the foot of his bed side-by-side while the TV blasts the first episode of a Netflix series Chloe picked out. Brant and her are cuddled (I presume) on the bed behind us while Eric and I behave, despite our arms touching and a hand innocently grazing a thigh here or there. I’d be lying if I said I’m not hoping for his hand to find my inner thigh, or move up to my crotch, or reach inside my quickly tightening underwear.
He leans into me at one point and whispers, “I like you.”
I fight a smile when I respond, “Thanks.”
Eric frowns playfully at me. “Thanks …? That’s all I get?” he hisses into my ear. “Thanks??”
“Yep,” I say back, enjoying teasing him, then fold my arms and pay full attention to the screen. (Read: full attention to my stiffening cock, the exact placement of his hand near my thigh, and how many more shifts of that hand it will take for the two of them to meet.)
And if they never meet tonight, considering we’re not alone and we just met, that’s okay too; as it turns out, I happen to be a patient guy.
Chapter 11
Sam
The piano rooms at the School of Music are small.