The College Obsession Complete Series (Includes BONUS Sequel Novella)

by Daryl Banner

  Clayton stares down at his script, his mess of hair casting a shadow down his face. He knows I’m here. He saw me and now he’s avoiding all eye contact.

  Yeah, this is all about you, Dessie. I roll my eyes.

  But I can’t help myself from staring at his thick, round shoulders in that red-and-black plaid button-down he’s wearing, how it tapers up the trapezoidal shape of his neck muscles where that coil of black ink runs up his neck like a deadly, poisonous vine. Two buttons of his shirt are undone, giving me a cruel and tormenting peek at the top of his pecs. Clayton’s face is still drawn tightly to his script. I doubt even an earthquake could pull his attention up to pretend to acknowledge me.

  What is he even doing here??

  “Sorry,” Eric whispers to me.

  I jerk, turning my face. “For what?”

  “It was the only seat,” he murmurs quietly, barely heard in the noise of the room even sitting right next to me. “I got here seconds before you did. Besides, the view isn’t that bad, eh?” He gives me a wink.

  I smirk, narrowing my eyes. “No idea what you’re talking about, Other Eric.”

  “Gay Eric would be more accurate,” he amends, “and that makes me twenty times more interesting than the Erik-with-a-K. Really, that’s what we should call him. Ugh.”

  Oh. I hadn’t realized, since no one said it outright. “Well, then,” I mutter back. “You can have all the fun you want staring at Clay-boy. He’s all yours.”

  “I wish,” he breathes with a rueful glance.

  Right then, Nina Parisi enters the room, and all the chatter wilts away in the same manner as paper shriveling up to nothing in the presence of fire. She seats herself at the head of the table, then flips open her script and coldly welcomes us to the first reading of Our Town. She proceeds to give us a speech about what she hopes to accomplish with this brave, unique production and her “big picture”.

  And it’s taking everything in me not to look up and drink in the delicious sight of Clayton across the table from me. Why does he have to make things so hard? He’s the one who kissed me and ran away. He’s the one who’s acting all weird, not me. Also, I’m pretty sure if I dare to look at him, he’ll know instantly that not an hour earlier, I had my fingers up my hoo-hoo getting off to fantasies of him in my dorm shower.

  Just the thought makes me sweat.

  Soon, Nina has us run down the line and briefly introduce ourselves. “I’m Kat, the stage manager. The actual stage manager, not to be confused with the role of ‘Stage Manager’ in the play, to be clear,” says a curvy, olive-skinned woman to her left with a mop of red and black hair gathered in cute nests by her ears. “Astrid here, assistant director,” announces the girl next to Kat, a pale thing with twenty braids piled up and pinned to her head. “Alice, or Ali, costumes,” says the next, listless and sleepy-eyed.

  As the intros move down the line, I betray all that resolve I built up, daring myself to look at Clayton.

  He’s staring right at me.

  I look away at once. Damn it. The person to my left shifts in their seat. There’s a fraction of a second of silence before I realize it’s my turn. I rise suddenly for my intro, despite the fact that no one else did. “I’m Dessie, playing my … playing the role for … of Emily.”

  My face red, I clumsily drop back into my chair as Eric rises from his, endearingly following my lead. “Eric Chaplin O’Connor here. I’ll be playing Simon Stimson.” He sits back down, then gives me a wink of encouragement, which only makes my face redder.

  I look up to find Clayton still staring at me, except now there’s a hint of amusement in his wicked eyes.

  I scowl at him, despite my incessant flushing, then mouth the words, “Stop staring at me,” across the table.

  To that, his smirk only widens, now touching his dark eyes, and then he slowly shakes his head no.

  He is so infuriating.

  The introductions have come around the table, and the round man to Clayton’s right rises, who I belatedly recognize as the orange-bearded guy from the mixer, except with glasses. “Hey! I’m Freddie, your lucky sound designer, and this here’s Clayton Watts, assistant lighting designer. And … please audition for my show. Auditions are Tuesday in the black box at six, with callbacks Wednesday. Uh, thanks. Appreciate it.” He awkwardly sits back down, and then the person to Clayton’s left continues the round of intros.

  Clayton keeps watching me with that wolf-like, hungry glint in his eyes.

  I don’t know whether to be turned on or scared.

  “Great,” says Nina, the intros finished. “Let’s get right to it. Act one, scene one.”

  Is this some sort of game to him? Kissing girls he likes, then running away and expecting them to chase after him? I’ve had my fair share of game-playing guys in my past. Sure, I dated very few of them, but I never had one that I could properly call a boyfriend. Everyone in New York City was shopping for the next best thing. Everyone knew a hundred other people. Games, that’s all the men there could play. Whether on the stage or off, everyone was an actor, even if they never stepped foot on a stage.

  I hate to think of Clayton like that. In fact, I can’t. There’s something so different about him. Maybe this isn’t a game, I consider, chewing on my lip in thought. Maybe this is his way of … showing interest.

  Like when you’re a kid on the playground and you shove your crush into the sand and make them cry.

  The read-through begins. I patiently wait for my lines to come, reading along with the script. The Stage Manager role has a crap load of lines before anyone else even speaks, introducing each family to the audience and painting a picture of two houses on an empty, deliberately set-deprived stage, setting the scene for the audience’s imagination. What a weird play, I tell myself.

  Really, I do know this play, I swear I read it long ago. But the roles are all confused in my mind, and I don’t even really remember how it ends. Of course, this doesn’t help the nugget of guilt that sits in my chest, wondering what other highly deserving actors could be sitting in my place right now, as I wait for Emily’s first line. Victoria hasn’t spoken a word to me since the day the cast list was posted. That was at the beginning of the week, five days ago. Eric swears she’s just been busy, but I know better.

  Finally, after an eternity, it’s my first line. I draw breath and recite it plainly, as if I were reading from a textbook. Ugh. I feel so stiff. I read my next line, and again, I might as well be reading advanced algebra equations. I can’t help but feel self-conscious, worried that everyone in the room is thinking the same thing: This is the person Nina cast as Emily, the lead? This is the one who beat out all the others?

  I’m certain there’s even people in this room who wanted the role of Emily, but got cast in other parts. It’s not just Victoria, I realize; all the women wanted my role. Some of my competitors are in this room right now listening to me, comparing themselves to me, scoffing inside their heads.

  As I read the next line, I glance up to survey the table. I see the costumes girl yawn. I see the face of someone else near her appearing utterly bored. I catch the assistant director who tiredly meets my eyes, smirking.

  I suck.

  I suck so much.

  When my scene is over and the character of Emily has exited the stage, I let go a little sigh, which doesn’t seem to go unnoticed by Eric, who gives me a little pat of encouragement on my thigh.

  Then, I feel someone softly kick my foot under the table, so I retract my foot a bit, figuring it to be in the way. Then my foot’s tapped again, more deliberately.

  I look up.

  Clayton’s gone back to staring at me again. It’s his foot. He smirks, his eyes narrowing as his shoe taps mine again.

  A rush of excitement surges up through me.

  What a game-playing, mind-toying asshole.

  I pull my feet under my chair, far away from his. Then, I pretend to pore over my script and ignore him utterly, despite my stomach-tumbling desire to do the exact oppos
ite.

  I am exercising some serious discipline here.

  I push through the next scene, also making it a point to ignore the others in the room. I can’t be judged by all of them; I judge myself badly enough.

  The role of George—who is Emily’s love interest, wedded to each other in act two—is played by a guy I haven’t met before. He’s a decent-looking man, most likely an upperclassman. His well-groomed hair and plain, coppery face make for a fitting George and male lead, if you discount the Stage Manager role and his twenty-or-so billion lines I don’t envy.

  When it comes to the scenes in which Emily and George flirt, I look up and try to say the lines across the table to the actor who’s playing him—whose real name I’ve already forgotten from the intros earlier, or perhaps never paid attention to in the first place. A few times, I lose my place in the script due to looking up and stumble over the words.

  “Just read for today,” Nina cuts in, startling me.

  I look up, my heart slamming against my chest in the not-so-pleasurable way. “Sorry?”

  “It’s a read-through,” she explains patiently, as if I needed to be told—in front of everyone—what we’re doing here today. “You don’t need to connect with the other actors. At least, not with your eyes. We’ll have plenty of time for that in rehearsals. For today, just read.” She offers me a cool smile and a nod.

  Some others around the table meet my startled eyes. I feel the flood of judgments and silent sneers coming from my castmates.

  How embarrassing is that, to be called out like some amateur by the director and told to “just read” during a read-through?

  I can already hear my sister scolding me, were Cece in this room.

  “Of course,” I answer Nina, the stiff-necked, rigid-as-an-icicle director, then resume my lines.

  The rest of the read-through is far less enjoyable. I make the wedding in act two sound like the funeral in act three. Even reading the lines, I trip over the words, pushing them out with the enthusiasm of a slug.

  The read-through can’t end fast enough. After it’s all over with, the director thanks us, then dismisses us with a forewarning that the first act of the play is due to be off-book by Monday, which gives me exactly two days—my weekend—to learn my first act’s lines. I give very little attention to the rest of the room, closing up my script and rising from the chair. Eric asks me something about hanging out at the Throng, but I decline—perhaps too quickly. I very suddenly want to just go back to my dorm and forget that the rest of the world exists. Even Clayton, who would have a totally different opinion of me if he heard any of that awful, horrible excuse for “acting” that I just did.

  I push through the rehearsal room doors. I walk quickly down a half-lit hall to the lobby, finding the darkness of night through the tall glass windows. A group of students are rehearsing a scene by the chairs in the lobby, and they stop when they see me.

  “Dessie.”

  I turn around. Clayton stands there, his sharp eyes locked on mine and his script tucked under his big arm. Oh. Maybe it was him the students in the lobby stopped to look at.

  But my patience is long gone. All my emotions are high and flustered and hot, my nerves tight as wires. “What do you want, Clayton?”

  After a moment of studying the obvious distress on my face, he frowns. For a second, I feel bad about snapping at him. Then, with his free hand, he brings a fist to his chest and draws a circle.

  Sorry, he signs.

  My mood softens instantly. I wonder for a second what he’s apologizing for. The kiss on Wednesday? The shitty read-through just now? The foot-thing?

  “What for?” I ask.

  He brushes the knuckles of his right fist against his left fist, then sweeps a hand to the side, palm-up.

  I sigh. “I don’t know what that means.”

  He shrugs, then quietly says, “Everything.”

  I hear whispering from the lobby, likely from our little audience of actors who’ve shut up to pay witness to this whole exchange. I fight an urge to shout at them to mind their own business.

  I don’t know why I’m so mad at Clayton. It’s not like he owes me a damn thing. He kissed me during lighting crew. So what? It’s not like I didn’t enjoy it too. Besides, if I’m really honest with myself, maybe I’m just pissed about getting cast in this dumb show, cursed with the very thing I begged the gods for ever since my older sister gulped her first tasty teaspoon of success: a lead role. Now the gods laugh at me, giving me the role without the due talent needed to perform said role.

  I’m no good for Clayton, regardless of whether or not he’s any good for me. “I should go,” I tell him dejectedly, though I’m really not so sure I want to.

  “Why?” he murmurs in his small voice.

  The students in the lobby whisper to each other.

  “I don’t know,” I admit, hugging the script to my chest. It feels heavier with each second that goes by. “I just need to go. I need to be by myself.”

  He sucks on his tongue for a moment, frustrated, his jaw tightening. Then he pulls out his phone, types, and shows me the too-bright screen:

  Want to hang out tomorrow night?

  I’m stunned. My heart races up my throat as I read the words five times in a row. I look up to meet his eyes. He’s searching mine, desperate for the answer.

  He wants to hang out with you, Dessie. You’d be crazy to say no. Don’t you dare say no. I will never, ever forgive you if you say no.

  But can I say yes? I was feeling so defiant a week ago when my friends enthusiastically advised me to stay away from the Watts boy, telling me he’s bad news. Chloe even gave me his romantic history. Ariel even pitched in her two unasked-for cents. Now, I wonder if I should have heeded all their warnings. Is this the game he plays, luring a girl into his little trap, having his way with her, then tossing her aside like a used towel? I’m not going to lie; he looks exactly the type to do just that. I mean, he’s gorgeous. He’s got a killer body. And he’s aggressive as hell, despite the soft nature of his voice.

  Can I really trust him?

  I take a deep breath, shake out my hair, then face the beautiful beast with a pinch of confidence.

  “Where?” I ask nonchalantly.

  He types again:

  Bowling alley on Kingston Blvd.

  Right off campus.

  Walking distance.....ten minutes tops.

  My roommate has a competition thing....

  I’m going, thought you might like to come too

  With that, he meets my eyes as I read the words a few times. The look in his eyes is … hesitant. It’s like he fears my answer. Is he as afraid of rejection as I am afraid of his intentions?

  Even if I agree to this, I can still be in control. It’ll be a public place with other people around, and I don’t have to kiss him again or do anything I don’t want to do.

  Not that I don’t want to kiss him, because I do.

  A lot.

  Oh, hell. I’m so screwed. Look, Dessie, you can bolt at any time. You owe him nothing. Right?

  Or maybe my fear is that I won’t want to bolt.

  What am I so afraid of?

  Chapter 12

  Dessie

  Okay, so I said yes.

  Something about a man like Clayton standing over me and asking … with his dark, hungry eyes and his smooth, sexy hands and his plush, perfect lips … is somewhat persuasive.

  Annoyingly persuasive.

  I haven’t been to a bowling alley since I was a kid. Yet somehow, I instantly remember the smoky, sweaty stench. No, I’m not a fan. There’s only one reason I’m suffering it tonight.

  And that reason isn’t here.

  I stand awkwardly by the entrance. The front counter, where a man has annoyingly asked me four times if he can help me, is to the left. An arcade filled with the likes of the Alpha Kappa Louda-As-Fucka fraternity is to my right. Ahead, the loud clanking and banging of the bowling lanes awaits.

  I stare down at my phone a
nd curse myself for not getting his number. At least then, I might’ve received a text that he would be running late, or that the thing was cancelled—who knows. Instead, I’m standing here wondering if I should bother getting a drink, or maybe making the ten-minute walk back to my dorm before it gets dark. After all, I was warned by Victoria that our campus sits between crime-land and fortune-land, and I can’t with any confidence say which one I’m in.

  Someone rushes up to the front, leaning across the counter to speak to the man there. He’s a slender, tan, good-looking guy, full of energy, with tight jeans torn at the knee (is that a Texan thing?) and a grey fitted t-shirt with a frog plastered on the front. Upon second inspection, a joint hangs out of the frog’s mouth and its big eyes are bloodshot. This carefree, cheery dude-bro wears a pair of bowling shoes, one fingerless glove on his left hand, and a backwards cap squishing down a head of messy brown hair.

  He turns. His eyes flash when they meet mine.

  I look down at my phone suddenly, pretending to be occupied with a very interesting text message. In reality, I’m staring at the reflection of my own worried face. Crap, is that what I look like?

  “Hey.”

  I look up, startled. It’s the carefree dude-bro.

  “Hi…?” I return warily.

  He brings the blue and orange marbled bowling ball up to his chest with one hand, his bicep bulging in the effort. “You look lost. Are you lost?”

  He’s got a slight Texan drawl to his voice. I offer an apologetic smile, then shake my head. “I’m not lost. Thanks for your concern.” I look back down at my super interesting phone.

  “Do you go to Klangburg?”

  I nod without looking up. He’s pretty cute, I’m not going to lie. But if I were to take a guess from his easy demeanor and slick charm, he’s had about eight girlfriends this week alone, and he’s likely sizing me up to be his ninth. I know a player when I see one.