Crap. I’m out of conversation.
It doesn’t seem to matter. Clayton, his jaw flexed, gives me another tight nod and a short, halfhearted wave before he turns and departs the building. The glass doors close behind him.
I stare after him, my pulse throbbing in my ears.
Then, all the fear and doubt is replaced yet again with unapologetic glee. I just conversed with Clayton. Wow. I just conversed with Clayton using my hands.
There’s a few other ways I’d like to communicate with Clayton using my hands.
Feeling twenty times lighter than I did before, I return to my booth and pop the last bite of sub into my mouth, a giggle wiggling its way up and down my whole body. I can’t believe what I just did. I can’t believe that actually just happened.
“Is he a friend?”
I look up at Sam, who has yet another speck of mayonnaise on her face, right by her lips. I don’t care. It’s even adorable, suddenly.
“You could say that,” I answer with a dumb grin.
“Is he deaf?”
“Yep.”
I open the bag of chips I didn’t even want. I pop one into my mouth, then scoot the bag across the table to my roommate, who doesn’t even have to be asked, helping herself to one.
“He looks like someone I knew in high school,” she says. “He could be part of a heavy metal band.”
“A sexy drummer,” I say, dreaming on. First thing I’ll do when I get back to my dorm is research every sign I possibly can. “Guitarist,” I go on, wondering how to sign the phrase: I want you to push me into the wall and stick your cock inside me. “Sexy, sexy guitarist.”
“Him being a drummer would make sense,” Sam reasons. “Vibrations and everything …”
“Vibrations,” I agree, dreaming about what sort of vibrations I want to feel between my legs tonight, if I can get some time alone. I think about what signs I’d need to learn to tell him: Bend me over the table and pound me until I forget my own name.
Imaginary signs and hand-shapes keep spinning around my mind as I share the rest of the potato chips with my roommate, lost in dreams of him … and what other kind of magic I can do with my hands.
CLAYTON
What the fuck was that?
I can barely concentrate even when I’m backstage sorting stage weights and fucking two-by-fours, as if I’ve suddenly doubled as the set crew, too. Dick was so damn efficient with his lighting crew this morning that there’s barely anything left to do tonight or tomorrow, which leaves my body in a perpetual state of busywork and my mind trapped on that girl.
Dessie.
Not a name I’ve heard before.
I’m so distracted by her that I let a stage weight go too early and the heavy fucker drops on my foot like a brick. After a shriek of pain, I kick the damn thing fruitlessly and study my foot, thankful I wore some sturdy boots today. When I take a glance at the others who are messing with the counterweight system, I realize I might’ve shouted louder than I intended to. I give them an annoyed nod, then continue about my work, determined to keep my toes unbroken.
That Dessie girl signed to me. Great. Fucking great. It’s obvious she either never used sign language before or just learned those few signs for my benefit. I don’t know which feels worse. I hate the attention that signing in public gives me. The only person I sign with is my other roommate Dmitri, who met me in an astronomy class last year when he noticed that I had an interpreter present. He’s got a deaf sister, so he was already fluent. Fuck, he’s even more fluent than I am.
But that girl signed me her name. She obviously gave enough of a shit about me to introduce herself. I feel that horrible flutter in my chest. The girl I’ve been obsessing about … she fucking signed to me.
It makes me insane. Who the hell is she? Why did she appear out of nowhere this semester and fly right into my line of sight and pull me off my tracks?
I’m doing so well. Things are so fucking perfect.
I know the cost of my obsessions. I know what happened last year. I know how girls can ruin me.
I can’t do this again.
But I want to so fucking badly.
Someone comes up to my side and I watch his lips ask me if I’m okay. It’s some freshman I don’t know. I just ignore him, minding my duty in organizing these stupid set pieces and flats that were left for me, and I find myself thinking about signs and hands and that girl’s sexy fingers.
She had sexy, sexy fingers.
Just that small moment at the University Center with her, it revived feelings I’d long left buried since my freshman year, which was a total nightmare. I hated interpreters back then, and maybe I still do. For some reason, I wanted to prove to myself—and maybe to everyone else—that I could do this all on my own. I wasn’t any different than my hearing classmates, and I wanted to prove it. Some leftover high school arrogance had me caught in its know-it-all web.