Read My Lips (A College Obsession Romance)

by Daryl Banner

  I’m an actress who shows no fear. With my free hand, I bring a finger to his neck, tracing where that dark ink comes up from the muscular, hidden unknown beneath his shirt. Firm and frozen, he coldly watches me. The bravest in my whole biosphere. I brace myself against his table, my hips grazing along his side as I sing up to his wary face.

  Clayton’s eyes narrow, as if I’m wounding him with my music. Yes, let me wound you with it, so that you might feel an ounce of the agony I’ve felt all week ever since I first laid eyes on you.

  As the musicians bring me into the final verse, I pause and bring a hand to that beer in his hand. It slips from his grip easily and I bring it to my lips, my eyes locked on his. I take a swig of it, then set it back on the table. My eyes wrinkle slightly in response; I hadn’t expected the beer to be so bitter. His eyes turn glassy and a hint of amusement twists his lips.

  It’s work to perch atop this throne … Oh god. That smirk of his is so sexy, I could ditch the song and plunge into him right now. This throne made of credit cards and silicone …

  I’m standing so close to Clayton now, I feel heat coming off of him. I’ve never felt so exposed, so free … Don’t dare give your heart, or you’ll fall right apart.

  I lick my lips as the guitarist strums and the pianist glides his long fingers. Right here in my palace of stone …

  He parts his lips, his face tightening, pained.

  My lips kiss the tip of the microphone as I push the last lyrics out. Yes, right here … in my palace of stone.

  The music concludes in a contemplative, resolving chord.

  Silence swallows the room.

  Clayton’s eyes.

  Me and a heavy microphone in my hand, growing heavier and heavier by the second.

  I’m met suddenly with the reality of what I just did. In front of everyone. The alcohol’s no longer a mask. I just sang the most personal song I’ve ever written to a room full of strangers.

  Clayton breathes.

  I can’t.

  What did I just do?

  Then there’s a shout of joy from the back, startling me, and then the rest of the room erupts into applause and cheering. I think I’m imagining it for a second, stunned by the reaction. Are they mocking me, or did I really do a decent job?

  When I look at Clayton again, I see a question in his eyes. Suddenly, nothing else matters. I got his attention, I tell myself. He knows who I am. He’s curious. I caught him. And in the midst of all my doubt, I feel like I’ve won some game I didn’t know I was playing. The game of cat and mouse. The crush game.

  “And that’s how you do it,” I say to him, grinning.

  He doesn’t respond.

  With a coy shrug, I waltz back to the stage, return the microphone to its stand, then give the room a little drunken curtsy before giggling and rushing back to my table, the room revived with the musician’s music and loud, chaotic chatter.

  “Oh my god,” moans Victoria when I’ve returned to my seat. “What were you thinking??”

  “You can say I was inspired.” I giggle, eye-fucking Clayton through the smoke and banter. He looks so pissed off and sexy. “And now he knows who I am. Oh, how was the song?” I ask my friends.

  “You were amazing, obviously,” Victoria says.

  “Thanks!” I laugh, but when I return my gaze to Clayton, he’s abandoned his beer and is walking away.

  The joy’s lost in an instant. I bend to the side, curious, but only catch a glimpse of his backside as he pushes through the door, gone.

  Wow. Did I do that to him?

  “No, no,” shouts Victoria through the noise, her face turning serious. “No, Dessie. You can’t go after him. You shouldn’t. He’s bad news.”

  Why’d Clayton leave so suddenly? Did I make him uncomfortable? Well, he deserved it … after all the turmoil he put me through by just existing.

  “Dessie. Are you listening?”

  I frown, annoyed. “Why does it matter?”

  But then even Chloe chimes in. “Everyone wants a piece of the Watts boy. Girls go crazy for him.”

  “And guys,” adds Eric with a sneer.

  “Every new student that comes through here tries to hook up with that hot piece of ass,” Chloe adds with a rueful shake of her head. “I’ve watched it since my own freshman year. It’s tragic.”

  “Hell, even I couldn’t help but stare at him when he was in my dramaturgy class,” Victoria shouts over the table. “Listen, if it’s a boy toy you want, I’ll get you a list of ten eligible bachelors, my friend. Clayton is not one of them.”

  I lean forward, meeting her halfway over the table. “He’s the one from the theater, Vicki!”

  “Don’t call me that! Wait, what??”

  “The one who heard me! The one from the other day!” I shout back. “He’s the one! That’s the guy! Clayton!” I stare after the door, still wondering why he left so abruptly. I’m trying not to let it sour the moment we just shared. I feel like I did something wrong. “Now, he’s heard my song,” I add. “Twice.”

  “Oh, Des, no, no,” retorts Victoria. “He didn’t hear your song, sweetheart. Not one note.”

  I frown at her. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Honey, he’s deaf.”

  I am so fucked.

  Six drinks and six blocks later, I still see her face burned into the backs of my eyelids. Or maybe it was the shitty stage lighting.

  I barely survived the last time I let a girl get too close to me. I’ve been so good at keeping focus. I just brought my grades back up from last semester’s poli-sci catastrophe. I can’t let another actress destroy me again. Haven’t I learned my damn lesson?

  Things are looking up, too. I’m feeling weird shit I haven’t felt in years—like hope. Everything I’ve worked so hard for since freshman year—while struggling to pay tuition out of my own pocket with the scrappy earnings from my three or four summer jobs—is about to pay off. After my experimental lighting design of Oliver’s senior-directed black box show last year, Doctor Thwaite, the Director of the School of Theatre, is finally looking at me. I caught him giving me an approving nod when I passed by him on the first day back. His lips moved to form a hello with my name attached. My name. They’re starting to see me.

  That’s why I can’t let her fuck it all up. I know how I get, obsessing over a girl like her. My weakness. It’s the same weakness I had even in the first half of my life when I could hear a girl say my name.

  My opportunity to be the lighting designer for a main stage production is so close, I can taste it.

  What I can also taste is her lips. As she sang, I was hypnotized by them as they moved, imagining what they’d taste like if I brought my mouth to them. Then she came down from the stage and got in my face. Just inches away, I could’ve fucking tasted her.

  I had a similar reaction when I caught her singing to the empty seats of the auditorium the other day. When she caught me standing there, I loved how that made her freak out and bolt. I was so mesmerized by the sight of her, I didn’t even pay attention to what she was saying to me. I spent that night pushing away thoughts of her long brown hair, her curvy body, her creamy skin … and those huge, vibrant eyes …

  Fuck. And now she’s gone and sang a song to me. It was excruciating, sitting there in the dense crowd of drunken losers while that girl poured sweet music from those lips of hers … music I couldn’t hear.

  My phone vibrates. I glance down to find a text from my roommate.

  BRANT

  Got a girl over.

  Hot AF n kinda freaky.

  Haven’t sealed the deal yet.

  Need the place for 10 min :)

  Every girl my puppy of a roommate meets is “hot as fuck”. I swear, Brant could hump fire out of a fire hydrant, that horny dog. So much for going home.

  I smirk and type a reply:

  ME

  U only need 10 minutes?

  BRANT

  Good point. Gimme 15

  Moments later, I’m star
ing at the blank screen of my phone in the 24-hour diner near my apartment. The thought of Brant getting busy with some chick is amusing at first, but that amusement sours fast, and all I’m left with is a ringing in my ears that may or may not be entirely imaginary.

  A ringing where that girl’s song should be.

  Soon, a curvy blonde waitress with big tits comes to my table—some new chick, not the usual one—and she lifts her flirty eyes. Her big lips move. I grip the menu and point. Appearing somewhat put-off by my brash demeanor, she cranes her neck to read, then jots down my order with a frown. Her lips move again. I pick up my phone, mash thumbs into it, then show her the screen:

  Over easy.

  Coffee black plz.

  Her eyes flash as she reads the message. She asks if I have laryngitis or something. I shake my head no. Then she pops the magic question. I nod patiently. The reaction is what it always is. Suddenly, I’m a ghost, and she wonders a few things out loud that she thinks I can’t understand. I actually watch her lips form the words, “Shit. Okay. I can do this, I can do this, I can do this,” before she steels herself and returns to the kitchen—as if she were on a bomb squad and my order needed decoding or some shit.

  It’s not just the deaf thing. Maybe it’s the ink that crawls up my neck from a mass of swirls and thorns that starts at my right shoulder and spreads out like a black, deadly explosion. Maybe it’s the fuck-you look I always seem to be giving. People think I’m dangerous. The less they have to deal with me, the better. I know if my roommates were here, the waitress would talk to me through them as if I was some strange entity from another planet they needed to order for. Hell, one time at an Italian place, I went through a whole damn meal without getting a single refill, check-up, or an offer for dessert. The waiter couldn’t wait to slap a check on my table and get me the fuck out; that’s how uncomfortable I make people.

  Oh, and I fucking love dessert. Bastard.

  My mind is a mess and the six drinks I downed at the Throng & Song are already gone, my buzz killed long ago. Even the eggs don’t cheer me up. They’re brought to the table by a different person, some server who meets my eyes worriedly as if I were a caged beast he was feeding. I’m guessing big-tits is over me. I cut into my eggs with a scowl and watch the yolk bleed across my plate.

  There’s something refreshingly different about that girl from the theater … annoyingly different. It unsettles me. Everyone down here is the same. All the girls have fear in their eyes when they meet me.

  She had something else. Curiosity? Confidence? It’s like her eyes cut through all the bullshit and the smoke and the walls of cynicism I built up around myself. She saw me.

  Or I’m just lying to myself all over again, just like I lied to myself with countless girls before.

  It’s exactly forty minutes later when I’m slipping my key into the door. The second the cold air of my apartment touches my skin, I feel relief, kicking the door shut behind me and dropping my bag onto the kitchen counter where last night’s army of beer cans and pizza boxes still sit. The living room’s unoccupied and Brant’s door is shut, so I assume he sealed his lady-deal. With a huff at the abundant laziness of my two helpless roommates, I surrender to half an hour of housekeeping before I allow myself to chill.

  Or maybe I just want to take my aggression out on these dishes and cups and cutlery. It infuriates me that I can’t get that girl out of my mind, which shows in the way I scrub the glass in my hand. The water seeps into my sleeves the way she seeps into my every thought. Her singing captivated a room full of drunk morons. Who the hell manages to do that? I could physically feel the noise of the room die away when she took to that microphone. The frenzied hum of the place, a hum I could feel through every fingertip and follicle of hair on my body, it grew still, just so she could make her music.

  That vacuum of sensation was fast replaced by a beauty I was all too eager to drink in with my eyes. I don’t think I knew eyes were capable of drinking until that moment.

  Thoughts of her bring me to the couch where I collapse and kick my sore feet up, my eyelids growing heavier by the second. I mash a throw pillow behind my head and let sleep have her way with me, assuming she wants me at all. I’ve had trouble sleeping lately. That same stupid nightmare keeps creeping into my dreams, the one where I wake up in a house filled with water. My bed’s floating, my roommates are gone, and no one’s there to help me. Since I’ve had the nightmare so many times, I always know none of the doors will open no matter how hard I push, and somehow, I can’t smash the window. Because I already know I can’t get free, I’m more terrified each time I have the nightmare. The room keeps filling up, and for a moment, I always think I see someone outside. I scream for them, begging for help, pounding my fist against the glass, and for once, it’s the rest of the world who can’t seem to hear a thing. No one comes to save my life.

  I hate feeling helpless.

  But that’s not the dream that finds me on the couch tonight. Instead, it’s her on that tiny stage all by herself, and the entire room at the Throng has emptied itself of all those others who don’t matter. It’s just her on the stage, and me in front of her.

  And all that cold, silent space between us.

  I study her. Like a zoomed-in camera, my eyes draw up the length of her smooth legs, over her supple hips, and arriving at her perky, perfect breasts.

  My cock’s so hard, a moan vibrates my chest.

  My eyes arrive at her lips, and suddenly I’m at the edge of the stage looking up at her. The whole room feels ice cold against my skin. Her breath is the only warmth I know, and it touches me in little jagged spurts and I haven’t even touched her yet. She wants me so bad. She wants me to do things to her. “Clayton,” I can imagine her saying.

  Yes, I can imagine her voice. I think on what it might sound like. I feel it, smooth and seductive as her finger tracing my tattoos. Her pink lips dance, singing to me. What else can she do with them?

  My cock is so hard. “Clayton …” It pushes against the inside of my jeans. I want to pull it out while her breath keeps touching my face.

  I want to look up into her eyes and bury my mouth in her breasts.

  I want to know what she smells like so bad. I want to taste her. I want to tear off her clothes and watch her gasp with surprise as the beast within me is unleashed on her.

  I reach down for my cock, ready to release him.

  Then I feel the subtle shake of a door closing and remove my hand, the dream destroyed. Fucking hell. I catch my breath and lift my head, only to find Brant standing over the couch holding a six-pack with a smug grin of victory stretched across his face.

  Brant is the tall, slender type with the messy brown hair and blue eyes that all the girls go ape shit for, and he knows it too. He works out a third as much as I do, yet keeps a body that’s ripped and lean, no matter how much pizza he packs a day. I don’t know how the fucker does it. Brant’s come a long way since we were kids, that’s for sure. We’ve been the best of buddies since the day we fought and made up over bloody noses in an elementary school playground.

  He wiggles the six-pack and gives me a lift of his eyebrows, offering one. I type, then lift my phone with a scowl:

  WTF with the dishes?

  Im not ur mom

  Brant smirks, leans over the back of the couch and says it’s all Dmitri’s leftover mess from some friends he brought over last night. Then he adds something about how if I listened more carefully, I would’ve heard their ruckus and kicked them out.

  I throw a punch into his arm for that remark, inspiring a laugh from him that I can almost hear with my mind. I’ve known Brant since long before I lost my hearing and we’ve cracked so many stupid jokes together that I know his laugh as intimately as my own. He’s the only person in the world who can get away with giving me shit for being deaf. Maybe it’s the only way we both can cope with it … even if he’s still shit at sign language and doesn’t seem able to retain a damn thing beyond the signs for “fart”, “poop�
��, “penis”, and “Cherry Coke”.

  Brant comes around the couch and plops down by my legs, nearly sitting on them, and asks me if I’m still planning on coming to his thing. What I was planning to do was jerk off, you fucker. Truth is, I’m not even sure that’s what he asked; the sleepier I get, the harder it is to read lips. I have to think for a moment before realizing what he means: he’s got a bowling tournament next Saturday that he’s invited Dmitri and I to come watch. It’s an unofficial sort of local thing with the prize being free drinks for a week, but it means a lot to Brant. Also, he happens to be some weird kind of bowling ball whisperer.

  I nod at him, which seems to satisfy him more than the supposed lady-sex he just had. I didn’t see her leave, but I know he never lets a girl stay over, so either her stealth level is top notch or he made her climb out of the window.

  The six-pack appears once again and he rips one off, tossing it into my lap. With a snapping of its lid, I take a long, deep swallow. The cold beer runs down my throat and fills me with a comfort I’ve so craved. My eyes glaze over as Brant throws an arm over the back of the couch and flips on the TV.

  I read the captions for two minutes before growing bored.

  It doesn’t matter what’s on TV. Between the cold, wet can in my fist and the colors flashing over my face from the screen, I let the alcohol numb my incessant, invasive thoughts of that girl I shouldn’t be craving … a girl I can’t let stay over, a girl I’m letting climb out the window of my mind …

  A girl still waiting for me on that stage with her jagged breaths …

  A girl who finds me on this couch when my eyes finally close, her soft fingers dancing across my skin and sending currents of pleasure up my arms. A girl whose touch makes me so hard, my cock aches as it tents uncomfortably in my jeans. A girl whose pink, pouty lips hover tauntingly over my face, ready to make a slobbering, paralyzed idiot out of me.

  A girl who is carefully, patiently taking me apart … one agonizing piece at a time.