Beneath The Skin (A College Obsession Romance) (26 page)

all your clothes

So I can see

what lies beneath

Then take off

all your skin

Let me know you.

Let me in.

The music takes over as Dessie sways gently, slow-dancing with her microphone as she closes her eyes, the band filling the space with a melody that mimics the one she just sang. I turn my eyes slightly, catching Brant at my side as he watches her with wonder.

And I wonder if I’ll ever let
him
in. I wonder if I’ll ever let
him
know me … the real me, the dark me, the silent shadows I won’t even dare let my only friend Minnie near.

Yes, I hate you

when you turn away

Because I can’t …

can’t see your face

That face that I

will soon set free

That face that looks

right back at me.

Right back at me.

Then it’s over. Somehow the whole room seems to know precisely when the song means to end because they’re applauding and hooting even before the band plays the final chord.

Onstage, Dessie smiles sheepishly and gives a cute wave to the crowd, then thanks them several times, but even her thanks amplified by the microphone is lost to the masses of cheers and hooting that fill the whole place. She steps off the stage and the band picks up with some nameless tune as the bar returns to its usual banter.

“Let’s go meet the talent!” exclaims Brant, taking me by the hand.

Oh, yippy.

We cut through the crowd and make it to a tall table near the foot of the stage where Dmitri, Eric, and a number of others are gathered, standing around the table shoulder-to-shoulder. It’s an excellent thing that I’m not the claustrophobic type because if I was, I’d be desperately searching for an inch of oxygen that isn’t being shared by ten other people, what with the sheer number of bodies in this place.

“What a great job, Dessie, for real,” Eric is telling her. “For a song about love, I wasn’t expecting your first lyrics to be ‘I hate you’, though.”

“I liked the lyrics,” adds a girl with thick-rimmed glasses—much like Dmitri’s—and dark hair that tumbles jaggedly to her shoulders. Her voice is a perfect, lifeless monotone.

“The music was a bit repetitive,” throws in a redheaded guy at her side with a thin-lipped tiny mouth.

“Don’t
criticize
, Tomas,” complains the girl.

“But I liked the chord progression,” he says quickly, offering Dessie a shrug. “Sorry. I always go for honesty first.”

Dessie smiles. “I’ll take honesty. It’s the only thing that makes an artist—”

From nowhere, a muscular hunk with a face granted by the gods appears at Dessie’s side, takes her in his arms, and plants a kiss on her lips, cutting her off mid-sentence. She laughs into his kiss, then slaps his arm playfully.

And
this diva’s got the hot-as-fuck boyfriend? Really?

“You were beautiful up there,” he says to her, his rich, dark eyes pouring into hers with lust.

He sounds kind of funny. I can’t put my finger on it, but his words slur slightly—and not in the had-one-tequila-shot-too-many way.

“Great job, Des!” calls out Brant from my side, lifting his bottle, then he leans into me and says, “That’s my boy, Clayton. Ex-roommate, told you about him?”

I remember now, so I give Brant a nod as I watch Dessie make another annoying, demonstrative show of pushing herself into Clayton and kissing him. It’s either impressive or nauseating that, even with the noise of the place, I can still seem to hear their mouths smacking.

When they pull apart, Clayton says, “Your lyrics were beautiful, babe.”

It’s like he has a lisp. I’m still squinting at him trying to figure it out when Dmitri taps him on the shoulder, drawing his attention. Then Dmitri starts signing to him and offering his congratulations to Dessie. With his hands.

Oh. I’m an asshole. Clayton’s deaf.

“You didn’t tell me,” I murmur in Brant’s ear, watching Dmitri’s hands move with deftness.

“Tell you what? Oh! About Clayton?”

“I feel like an asshole.”

“Why?”

“I was …” I sigh. Some judgmental thoughts, I guess, are better left unsaid. “Never mind.”

“Hey, Sam. I have another song I’m working on,” Dessie starts telling the girl with the glasses and the generally dead eyes. “I’m having trouble with the music. You wanna get together tomorrow maybe and, like … experiment with it? Figure out why the chords aren’t working?”

“Absolutely,” returns Sam, and it might be the cheeriest word I’ve ever heard uttered deadpan.

“What about … our thing?” asks Tomas, the boy at her side, who I’m surmising is a friend of Sam’s, though the nature of their relationship is entirely a mystery, considering how utterly unromantic they seem toward each other. They could be brother and sister, if it weren’t for the drastically contrasting hair and differently-shaped faces.

“What thing? Oh,
that
thing. I … don’t want to do that thing.”

“But we talked about doing
that
thing.”

Brant leans forward. “Is ‘that thing’ some kind of clever sexual euphemism, or …?”

“Naturally you’d think that,” blurts Dessie with a teasing smile, inspiring a laugh from the others. “If someone isn’t talking about sex or bowling, you’re bored to tears. And even bowling is all balls.” Suddenly her eyes meet mine and a look of worry crosses them. “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m being totally rude. Don’t listen to me. I’ve known Brant for over a year now. I’ve basically earned the right to make fun of him whenever I want. He’s a great guy. Ignore me.”

The faces at the table turn to me, laughter in them. The only face I regard is Brant’s, who regards me with a sheepish smirk.

“Remarkable assessment,” I finally say, acknowledging Dessie’s utterly inept and skewed presumption of who Brant is, “for someone who’s known him ‘over a year’, as you put it. I’ve not even known him for a month, and while I am all too aware of Brant’s
horn
ucopia of a brain,” I go on, my eyes narrowing, “I’m also aware of his keen eye, his attention to detail, and his artistic integrity. If it weren’t for those things, I wouldn’t be standing at this table right now having just listened to a girl sing about how much she hates her lover’s face.”

Dessie looks like I just slapped her in the face. “I—That wasn’t what the song—I mean, Clayton’s deaf. I don’t like his face
when
he
looks
away
because I—”

“Because he can’t read your self-important lips?” I finish for her, incensed by the way she just dismissed Brant with a handful of words and everyone at this table thinks it’s okay, Brant included. “If you’d spend less attention on Brant’s lips and whatever jokes come out of them, you’d see a driven artist behind a camera instead of some lowly horn-dog who’s just here for everyone’s amusement.”

No, I didn’t slap Dessie’s face earlier with my words.
Now
I have, and the sting is evident in the way her eyes well up instantly. Whether it’s with hurt or indignance, I don’t know her well enough to say.

Maybe I don’t know her at all. Maybe I’m being the asshole here.

And besides that, what am I even saying to these people? Why the hell am I defending Brant, calling him an artist with integrity and all that bullshit?

What’s gotten into me …?

When I look at Brant, I see a flicker of doubt in his eyes, and that’s when I realize I may have gone too far. He just brought me to meet his friends and all I’m succeeding in doing is being rude and embarrassing the hell out of him.

“I need to hit the ladies’ room,” I say dryly, dismissing myself from the table.

Cutting through the crowd, I make my way toward the wrong corner of the bar and find myself standing in front of an exit door instead of the bathroom. With a roll of my eyes, I seek the restrooms over a hundred heads and bodies standing in the way. Pushing to the opposite corner, I find the tiny hall that leads to my destination, then push through the door into the restroom.

I twist on a faucet and stare at my face in the mirror.
This is the reason you don’t have friends
, I remind myself with a cold stare into my own eyes. I hate that I always learn these valuable lessons in the worst situations.

And why am I so damn quick to jump to judgments about people? I wonder if something in Dessie’s tone reminded me of the girls on the bus who tore apart my artwork. Or the ones in the cafeteria who threw food at me.

Or the one I call Mom who raised me.

Maybe the thought that scares me the most is if Dessie
doesn’t
remind me of any of those terrible women in my life. Maybe it was seeing her performing her art in front of this room full of people who were eager to see her, who downright adore her, and for her work to be received with praise and screams of joy. Maybe she’s the kind of artist I want to be someday: celebrated, revered, and …
liked
.

Oh my god. Am I jealous of her?

“What the fuck did you just do?” I ask my reflection through a sigh. I just went off on Brant’s good friend Dessie in front of all of his friends, who I had just met.
Talk about a shitty first impression
. Eric has probably flipped his tack completely, now warning
Brant
to run the hell away from
me
.

And maybe it would be a good idea.

I can’t face them after what I just did.

Now I wonder if running into the exit door first was some kind of clue from the gods. I honestly consider finding that door again and leaving through it.

I’m sure Brant will recover just well enough without me. He’s the type of guy to salvage whatever fun can be had between him and his friends. They don’t need the dark, tortured likes of me around them. I bet if I slipped out of that exit door I first encountered, they wouldn’t even realize it until last call. They’re probably already back to laughing and have forgotten that Brant brought me along in the first place.

The bathroom door slowly opens behind me, then gently shuts with a tap. I don’t bother to turn around. From the reflection in the mirror, I know precisely who it is.

“Bad day?” Dessie asks tenderly.

Oh shit. She’s being all nice and crap. I don’t deserve that.

“I have them all the time,” she admits. “The Theatre world sucks.”

I roll my eyes and glare down at the spray of scalding hot water, its steam issuing up at me and giving me a damn facial.

“I didn’t mean to sound like I … like I don’t think much of Brant,” she goes on to explain lightly, her voice echoing throughout the tiny bathroom and forcing me to listen to a hundred Dessies at once. “I think a lot of him, actually. He’s a great guy. He’s funny. He’s obviously good-looking. My first impression of him was … him hitting on me at the bowling alley before realizing I was Clayton’s girl. Maybe that impression sort of stuck. But it really isn’t my place to say what guy he really is, because, well …”

“He didn’t tell me Clayton’s deaf,” I interject, the words coming out in half a croak.