The sensitive topic seems to have brought him to a dark place. Maybe it was that and the tattoo. I regret ruining the mood, if that’s what I just did.
“Sorry,” I murmur. “I was … I was just curious.”
“It’s okay.” He takes a quick breath, his eyes not leaving my face. Then he forces a smile. “Touch me all you want. Another drink?” He reaches for the bottle.
“No,” I say at once.
He freezes, studying my face. “You sure?”
A flutter rushes through my stomach. For some reason, I find myself thinking of all the warnings people have been giving me. Is Clayton trying to get me drunk so he can continue having his way with me? Am I just tonight’s girl, and tomorrow there will be someone else on this couch being talked out of her clothes? His roommate Brant nearly slipped, laughing at the idea of Clayton ever settling down with one woman. Is that because he sees all the tail Clayton catches?
Am I an idiot for staying here, entertaining some idea of a relationship with him?
“What’s wrong?” he asks softly. He obviously reads the tension in my face. He’s remarkably observant, even when buzzed.
I type another message, then show it:
So you said there’s a lot about me
you want to learn?
Like what?
He studies my eyes long and hard. After a second, he reaches and gently takes a tangle of my hair, then brings it to his face demonstratively and sniffs. “Like what shampoo you use,” he moans.
I slap his hand away and laugh.
He looks at me. A brief moment of gravity hardens his face, and then he reaches for the tequila. “I’m gonna need another,” he says without looking at me.
I touch his wrist, then pinch the fingers of my other hand in the air twice by his face, sort of like the universal gesture to indicate a person talking.
He squints at my hand, reading the sign. “No?”
“Too much,” I say, to which he snorts. “I don’t want you falling asleep on me.”
He lifts a brow. “You want me to sleep with you?”
“That’s not what I said!” I know he’s teasing me, but he stares at me as if that’s really what I asked him. I make the pinching sign again—No. “Am I doing that right?” I murmur, repeating the sign by pinching two fingers against my thumb twice.
A devilish smirk crosses his face. “Isn’t this how we got into trouble earlier? Sign language lessons?”
I blush, then lean back on the couch, crossing my arms. He laughs, then pours himself a single shot. After giving me a quick, daring look, he downs it. His eyes turn to water and he slams the glass down on the table too hard and hoots. He wipes his mouth with the back of a wrist, connecting his eyes to mine as he leans back into the couch himself.
Then, he asks, “So why Texas?”
I shrug. “It looked like a good Theatre program.”
He doesn’t seem to be looking at my lips. He leans the side of his face into the couch, inclined toward me with his hands in his lap and his dark eyes zeroed in on mine. The way he watches me, I feel like he’s penetrating right into my thoughts. I lay the side of my own head against the couch too, mirroring him and gazing at him.
Then, in a moment that’s so fast it startles me, he swipes the phone out of my grip, types on it, then shines the screen at me:
What was so bad in New York City
that u had to run all the way
down here?
His question makes me sit up, as if the words on the screen hit my face. I can hear Claudio screaming again. I see my sister’s disapproving look. I picture my mother filling another damn glass of chardonnay and ignoring me. I imagine the empty rows of seats in the theater, dreading the day they would be filled.
Then I think about the knot in my stomach that’s there because of the secret I’m keeping. The secret I’ve kept from every single person I’ve met so far. How can I make any real friends here if I can’t even be honest with any of them? I’m a liar. I was a liar the moment I stepped foot on campus.
Clayton is something of an outcast too, if even a hair of the rumors are true. We are both, in our own ways, running away from what people think—or could think—of us. I feel like there’s so much more about us that’s alike than I expected. I feel oddly safe.
“I want to tell you something,” I murmur, my eyes averted, “but … you can’t tell anyone.”
“Can’t tell anyone?” he asks, to be sure that’s what I said.
I meet his eyes sternly. “Yes. A secret.”
“Secret,” he echoes, his own eyes turning severe.
I press my lips together, then take his phone from his lap again. I type it all out. I mention my parents and who they are. I type that I got here because my dad knew someone in the department and pulled a string. I type that I feel embarrassed by it, that all I wanted was a normal college experience, no special treatment. I didn’t want anyone to know who my family was. After typing it out, I stare at the message for a solid minute, debating whether or not to delete the whole thing and not show him the screen.