Beneath The Skin (A College Obsession Romance) (74 page)

“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.

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.

“I’m here to learn,” I say through gritted teeth.

Then, twisting his face away, I see Kellen mouth something to himself.

“What was that?” I prompt him.

He shakes his head, taking his tablet back to resume his work, except this time he ignores me, not saying a word.

I won’t let it go. “What did you just say?”

He rolls his eyes, then mouths the word,
“Nothing
,” at me before returning to his little thousand-dollar shiny show-off tablet.

I can’t hold back with this motherfucker. “Maybe it escaped your attention, but I’m deaf,” I explain to him, drawing his gaze back to me, “and it’s fucking rude to say something under your breath when you know damn well I can’t hear you.”

He studies my face for a moment, pensive and superior. Then, without the assistance of his tablet, he says,
“She told you about us.”

My nostrils flare. I say nothing.

“Yeah,”
he murmurs, his mouth curling into a triumphant smirk.
“That’s what this is, isn’t it?”

I can’t be sure of his words, not exactly, but I know the gleam of arrogance in another man’s eyes when I see it, even if it’s through his pair of designer glasses.

He leans in, his face so close that I smell the onion from the bagel he ate this morning. His lips part and he says,
“You’re pissed because I got inside her first.
”

My fist meets his face before I draw my next breath.

The force is so strong, he flies back in his rolling chair, knocking against the sound console.

And apparently I’m not done. I’m on my feet and my fist meets his face again because the first time just wasn’t satisfying enough.

The second hit cracks his designer glasses in half.

Satisfied.

Kellen’s on the floor before I know it, his hands thrown up to block himself against any more surprise fists. He doesn’t fight back. He quivers and pushes his back against the foot of the table. I already see his face reddening from my impact. That’ll leave a monster of a bruise. It’s strange, for as hard as I hit him, for there to be no blood.

I look at my own fist to find a tiny bloody spot where I must’ve nicked a knuckle on his glasses.

There it is.

I glare at him. “I wonder what Dessie’s dad would think about your predatory appetite years ago. His eighteen-year-old daughter back then, with his twenty-nine-year-old … whatever the fuck you are.” I crouch down. He cringes away, terrified. With his hands shielding his face, I can’t tell if he’s pleading for me not to kill him, begging for his life in a whiny, sniveling voice, or not saying a word at all. “Thanks for teaching me so much about lighting. You really fucking
lit
up
my eyes to what a lowlife prick you are, and how much better of a man Dessie deserves.”

The way his broken glasses sit askew on his face, his cheek turning redder by the second, I could almost laugh at him.

Until I remember some fifteen-year-old kid from Yellow Mills High on the floor of a locker room, cowering in the exact same way, pushing himself as far away from the dangerous, fist-happy Clayton as he could.

Every trace of bloodlust is gone in an instant.

I leave Kellen whimpering—or trembling in silence, or crying, whatever he’s doing—and I shove through the door of the lighting booth and descend the stairs to the lobby.

I haven’t been this hot about anything in a long time. I feel my peripheral view vibrating with anger and my teeth are starting to ache.

I just punched Kellen in the face. Twice.

I broke his glasses.

My career is fucking over.

I hardly notice Chloe and Victoria sitting in the lobby when I pass by, but when I do, I’m only met with their glares.

I can’t even be bothered with either of them. I need to see Dessie and I need to explain what I’ve done.
Fuck, it’s her opening week
, I remind myself all over again. Why am I so good at fucking things up?

Do I tell Dr. Thwaite, or let the fucker do it first?

I push out of the building, furious. I don’t know if I’m more angry at myself, or at Kellen for being a prick, or at Dr. Thwaite for pushing him on me. Who is to blame here? The chemist for not knowing what volatile chemicals he was pouring into the same flask? The flask for containing said chemicals as they mixed and erupted? The chemicals themselves for being so damn volatile, despite it being in their nature to explode upon mixing?

Fuck if I know.

The sky is grey and heavy. Halfway to Dessie’s dorm, droplets of rain begin to kiss my hair. I suck the drop of blood off my knuckle, feeling the sting of regret already.
I shouldn’t have punched him
. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, double-fuck.

I’ve ruined everything.

That power-tripping prick is going to go straight to Thwaite and have me removed from the program for my assault. He’s going to press charges, hiring his big fancy lawyers with his big-shot money, and rape every last cent out of my bank account, which took me years and years of sweat and tears to earn. It’ll all be his, in some sickening turn of irony that began and ended with my fist.