Beneath The Skin(164)

So fucking blessed.

And still not a peep from Dessie.

My eyes half-open, I pull a shirt over my head before I’m completely dried off from my shower, droplets of water wetting down the back in spots. I’m racing to get ready not so that I’m punctual for this Wright fucker, but because I need to do this right to impress Dr. Thwaite. It’s his opinion that matters to me, and being late receiving this lighting designer will reflect poorly on the whole department.

But most of all, me.

I push through the doors of the theater in record time, even before the box office has opened. No one’s in the main office except for Ramon who answers the phones, so I assume the big shot isn’t here yet. I make a trip to the bathroom to check myself in the mirror, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes and fixing my hair. I haven’t been to the gym in almost a week and I can tell; I get so irritable so quickly when I don’t go. All that aggression doesn’t take long at all to build up inside me, and add to that the frustration of how I’m fucking things up so bad with Dessie, it’s a wonder I haven’t busted a vein in my forehead.

I doubt she’s up this early, but I have nothing to do until the designer arrives and I need to occupy my head with something other than wanting to put it through a wall. My phone’s out in seconds:



ME

Hey Dessie.

Really sorry about being MIA.

I hope u’re OK.

I keep thinking about u.

A lot.

I’m at the theater early

waiting on someone.

Kinda feel bad about

leaving you hanging.

Plz message me back?



With a sigh, I run some water over my face, then stare at my phone and wonder if she’s actually awake and might answer back. I stare for ten full minutes.

Suddenly, I feel a presence at my side. Turning my head, I find another student at the sink next to me. I ignore him and study my face again, especially the ugly wound on my cheek. I bandaged my face twice, but it’s not as good as when Dessie did it. I might as well wrap my face in duct tape for as unsightly as it is.

The dude taps me on the arm. I turn, lifting a brow. He’s a bit older than I realized at a first glance, maybe thirty or so. He’s my height and he wears a short-sleeve salmon-colored button shirt and jeans. His left wrist is thickly decorated in leather bands, wristlets, and wooden-beaded bracelets. He has a thin build and designer glasses. I have never seen this dude before, and clearly he doesn’t know who I am because he starts talking at my face, his mouth so little, I can’t understand a fucking word.

Until he says three words I do understand: Kellen Michael Wright.

Fuck, are you serious? I straighten up at once, my eyes flashing open, and I extend a hand. “Clayton Watts,” I get out, feeling my voice shake, which sends a surge of insecurity through my body that I instantly resent.

He shakes my hand and smiles, then confirms precisely who he is with a few words, the last of which being “New York”, I think. Did Dr. Thwaite not warn him about me, or …?

I type into my phone quickly that I’m deaf, then show him the screen. He reads it, then nods and pulls out his own phone, holding up a finger to tell me to wait as he types one-handed. Then he flashes me his own screen, telling me he’s looking forward to a quick tour once he takes a leak.

I smirk and let out a chuckle, then nod at him and say, “I’ll be outside,” before dismissing myself from the bathroom.

Well. So far, he’s not the dick I was expecting. Instead, he’s all nice and normal and shit.

I sit on a bench in the hallway, waiting for Kellen to do his business in the bathroom while I stare down at my phone and beg telepathically for Dessie to answer my text and put me out of my misery. To be fair, I’m certain I subjected Dessie to a misery of her own when I was lost in a swamp of bitterness all Sunday, refusing to answer her texts.

I’m such an idiot. I deserve this.

I clench shut my eyes and squeeze my phone until my hands cramp. Behind those eyelids, I feel the pull of the dream world as I imagine Dessie and I back on that couch, slowly pulling each other’s clothes off. Why did she stop us? Why did she put an end to something that was so fucking perfect and real and hot? I hadn’t been that intimate with anything other than my right hand for so long, I felt like a fucking horny teen again.

That’s what Dessie does to me. And Dream Dessie is about five times as cruel as doesn’t-return-my-texts Dessie. She pushes me down on that imaginary couch and opens her bra to me. When her breasts emerge in front of my face, I feel my cock stiffen in my pants so much, it aches.

There’s something about being sleepy that makes a guy so susceptible to having a raging-hard boner.

I press the phone down into my lap, eyes still closed, and grunt against my hard-on that grows bigger and harder by the second.