“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.”
CLAYTON
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 staring 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.