Beneath The Skin (A College Obsession Romance) (65 page)

DESSIE

I texted him to make sure he made it back safe.

When my phone buzzed with his reply, I giggled and cuddled the phone on my bed like a dumb, crush-obsessed teenager. The script for
Our Town
was long forgotten for the rest of the night as Clayton and I texted back and forth until one in the morning.

I learned what his favorite food is (teriyaki ribs), the name of his high school (Yellow Mills High), how horrible he is at math, that he’s an only child, how his mom’s a chain smoker and his dad’s a sex addict and somehow against all odds they’re still together, and how he had to take two semesters off because he couldn’t pay tuition during “a rough time” and that’s why he’s only starting his third year when he should be graduating this year.

I also got a detailed description of how he’d light the stage if he was given the chance for
Our Town
, with a clever idea or two for how he pictures the funeral and graveyard scene to look in the third and final act of the play. I grinned stupidly for hours and, lost in a digital world full of Clayton, already couldn’t wait until the next time I would get to see him.

When Sunday came, I had a quiet breakfast with Sam, who was all aflutter (read: almost undetectably less deadpan than usual) about a music composition project she’s been assigned by her Theory prof. I congratulated her absentmindedly, wondering how long I should wait before texting Clayton again.

It was in the afternoon that I finally caved and sent him a text. The phone rested on my lap while I studied
Our Town
on a bench by the Art building, memorizing Emily’s lines distractedly while shooting glances down at my lap to see if he’d responded yet.

He never did.

I went to sleep that night with a scowl on my face. Sam had gotten some cheap composition software for her ancient laptop and wanted my opinion on a song as I was lying in bed trying to go to sleep, and I pretended not to hear her, turned away toward the wall and staring at the blank screen of my phone, waiting for a reply that never came.

So after a miserable Sunday like that, why would I expect Monday to bring me anything good?

On my way into acting class, I see Victoria. She stands in front of the box office chatting with Eric at the window. They draw silent at my arrival. My stomach dances in the bad way at the sight of her. It’s the first time I’ve really seen her since the cast list was posted. How she’s managed to avoid me for this long is a total mystery, considering she lives directly across the hall from me.

“Hello,” she says coolly.

Between Clayton not answering my texts from yesterday and my own inner frustrations, I find myself in a state of having little to no patience. “Victoria.”

“Desdemona Lebeau,” she murmurs, crossing her tiny arms and tilting her head. “Daughter of Winona Lebeau, Broadway star and film actor, and Geoffrey Lebeau, world-renowned lighting designer.”

My heart stops. “Listen …” I try to say.

“It’s called Google, honey.” Victoria scoffs at me, shaking her head. “Unless you’re about to proclaim that there’s actually
two
Desdemona Lebeaus—”

“Please,” I beg her and Eric, rushing up to the window. “I didn’t mean to lie to anyone. I just didn’t want to be given any … special treatment, or … Listen, I just want to be another normal student, just like you guys, and—”

“Ugh, I feel so
normal
,” groans Victoria mockingly. “Don’t you feel that, Eric? Don’t you feel that sting of
normalcy?
Gosh, we’re so bloody
normal
.”

“Don’t tell anyone,” I beg her anyway, despite how quickly all trace of hope for her to respect my wishes is evaporating. “Please, Victoria … Eric …”

“Who would I tell? Who would care? You think we have nothing better to do with our days than sit around and talk about The Dessie From New York?” Victoria smirks. “Get over yourself. I have an audition at a community theater in-town tomorrow and an audition for Freddie’s play in November. I’m an
actor
and a
big
girl
, Desdemona. When I don’t get cast, I get over it and move on. It’s an actor’s life.”

Her words do their intended job of pummeling me in the stomach. It isn’t lost on me that she’s calling me by my full name deliberately. That almost bothers me more than anything she’s already said.

Also, it hardly sounds like she’s moved on. “I’m sorry for lying to you. To both of you. I really am. Victoria, you were the first person I met here. Please, don’t let this ruin our—”

“I’ll see you later, Eric,” she says, turning to him at the window. “Lunch, maybe?”

He smiles tiredly, but it looks more like a grimace.

Then, Victoria saunters off, departing through the front glass doors. When I look back at the window, Eric’s on the box office phone helping a customer, his eyes going everywhere except to me.

What a lovely start to a lovely day.

I text Clayton while I have lunch with Sam sitting across from me in the UC food court. I’ve already dumped all my frustrations on Sam, subjecting her to all my worries as of late, from Clayton’s refusal to answer my texts, to Victoria’s complete one-eighty (sans the whole who-I-really-am thing), to the fact that rehearsals start tonight for
Our Town
and I am still swimming in fractures of lines that I do
not
have memorized. Not to mention a voice class routine I need to have ready to perform by tomorrow. Or a Thai Chi group-thing for my movement class I’m assigned to do Thursday. All the stress has me passing a banana and another half of a sandwich off to Sam, insisting I can’t eat it and meaning it this time.

When I finally get to the rehearsal room at six, my stomach feels hollowed out. I sleepwalk through the most of it, watching listlessly as the Stage Manager character is given the blocking for the opening scene—which basically means he’s told where to stand and who to direct his lines to and so on.

For a solid hour, I wonder what the hell I’m doing here. I stare at the screen of my phone and consider all the logical reasons for why he’s not responding.

I didn’t have sex with him. I put on the brakes.

He’s bored with me. He’s moved on to some pretty chick he met in a math class, a chick who’s tutoring him and showing him exactly how to solve for X.

He drowned himself in three more bottles of tequila and slept all day Sunday and simply missed my messages.

He made a sudden career change and he’s an astronaut now. I’ll find him on the news walking the surface of Venus and insisting that it’s totally not as hot as scientists say, his flesh boiling and his hair bursting into flames.

Then the voice of Nina cuts through all the turmoil of my head. “Desdemona.”

I lift my eyes from the screen. Every actor in the room is staring at me. I’ve missed something.

“Yes?” I say in a nearly inaudible choke, yet the word still carries perfectly in the dense silence.

“Care to join us for this scene?” Nina’s patient voice rings through the room like a spear made of ice and stinging resentment, skewering me to the spot.

I swallow hard. “Yes, of course. Sorry. Yes.”

The script drops from my fumbling hand. I shove my phone away and pick up the script off the floor, thumbing through until I get to my first scene.

“Stage left,” she dictates.

I move, taking my place at where I guess to be the approximate entrance.

“Your other left.”

“Sorry.” I walk across to the other side of the room, my every footstep slamming against my ears. I feel the weight of every pair of eyes on me. Suddenly, I catch myself wondering if Victoria’s told anyone else what she discovered. Am I being paranoid? How many people in this room know who I really am?

The rehearsal goes as rigidly and as horribly as I would have ever expected it to, regardless of mood. Every line I say is stiff and emotionless. Every place I walk to on the stage feels uncomfortable. I ask Nina to repeat her directions, feeling stupider each time I do. The cold, patient, half-lidded stare she gives me my whole time onstage makes me feel an inch tall.

Rehearsal ends at ten and I can’t pack my things fast enough. When I throw my bag over a shoulder to go, a shadow drops over me. I look up to find Eric.

“You look tense,” he notes with a grimace.

I sigh, leaning against the wall. As most everyone else has left and it’s only us and a couple of stragglers chatting at the other end of the room, I drop my bag back down on the ground and blurt out, “I suck.”

“Well …”

“I suck so much, Eric.” I let it all out, exploding with every ounce of frustration these past couple days have packed into me. “Nina
hates
me. Ugh.”

“Nina cast you. She doesn’t hate you.”

“And Victoria hates me. And
you
hate me.”

“No, no. I am
not
Victoria,” he tells me, wagging a finger in my face. “We are very separate people.”

“You didn’t say anything when she went off on me in front of the box office,” I point out. “I just figured you agreed with her and—”

“Victoria’s … touchy. She’s always been like that. Don’t think about her. And as for your sucking,” he goes on, “
everyone
sucks in rehearsal. That’s the point of rehearsal. The point is to suck. Did you even
hear
the Stage Manager’s twenty-thousand opening lines? He sounded like a cucumber with a mouth. So suck away, Dessie. Suck lots. Now is the time to suck.”

I try to sigh, but it turns into a chuckle. “Is that what this is, then?
Our Suck?
”

“
Suck Town
,” he agrees.

I pull my phone up to my face. Nothing. “Maybe I’m also letting a little … something else … get to me.”

“Wanna spill about boys at the
Throng
together?”

“Eric, I’m exhausted.”

“Me too, and I have an early morning class. But we’re still going to the
Throng
.”

“Ugh. We are?”

Twenty-five minutes later, Eric and I are sharing that same booth near the tiny circular stage at the
Throng & Song
. Being a Monday night, it’s far less noisy than it was before. The same musicians are playing—that sexy guitarist Victoria’s obsessed with and his piano sidekick—while Eric and I vent over our respective boy troubles.

“So I told him, ‘Listen, I’m not into anal,’” Eric goes on, “and he called me a ‘gay anomaly’ and said I needed to give it up or else give
him
up. Who the hell makes an ultimatum like that?”

“And here I am,” I say, spilling my problem at the same time he’s spilling his, “waiting on texts from him after we had an
amazing
night Saturday … I mean, what the hell? It went well. It ended well. And now I’m staring at my phone like some lovesick—”

“I wouldn’t put up with that for a
second
,” Eric spits back. “Do you even know how many guys have asked me if you’re single? Guys that I wished played for
my
team? You lucky bitch.”

“The only one I want is him,” I complain, mashing my face into my hands and sulking.

“Hey, you.”

The voice echoes through the room, startling Eric and I out of our conversation. I glance to the side and notice the musician staring at me, his guitar resting in his lap and the microphone bent to his mouth.

“Yeah, you,” he says, grinning. “I remember you. Full of the feels. You got any new music for us?”

Eric and I share a look before I turn back to the musician. “I’m not really a singer.”

“The hell you aren’t,” he spits back, half his face shadowed by the beige bowler hat he’s got on. “You got a pretty set of cords on you.”

“No, really,” I say after sharing an amused chuckle with Eric, “it’s just a hobby. I’m more of a sing-in-the-shower type of gal.”

Gal.
Listen to me, sounding all Texan already.

“Come on, girl. I know you got some tunes in you. Don’t hold out on me.” The guitarist smacks a chord on his guitar for punctuation, inspiring a couple cheers of encouragement from somewhere in the back of the room. “We all got some blues in us we gotta get out. Some feels. Some pain. Don’t you want to get that pain out of you?”

I take a breath. “Well, when you put it like that.”

A moment later, the guitarist scoots over and I stand in front of the microphone, facing an audience that’s one tenth the size I had before—an intimate crowd, far more preferable.

Though Clayton is clearly not here, I pretend to see his face, focusing on an empty table in the middle of the room. Then the song comes, some new thing I’ve played with in my head, and I let it all out to that empty table while the musicians improvise, following my lead. No rehearsing. No judgmental stares. I just open my heart to the room and let the music go.