Beneath The Skin(166)

“How’re you?” I ask her dumbly.

She gives me a shrug and a muted smile, then runs a hand through her hair, drawing some of it behind an ear. God, she looks so beautiful. She presses her lips together, and for some reason, that makes me think of how she squeezed her legs together when I touched her on my couch.

She still wants me, I decide, a stroke of confidence racing up my back, straightening it. “You wanna grab a bite?” I ask her, crossing my arms and leaning on the glass next to her, which brings me so close to Dessie that I can smell her hair.

“I have class,” she says demonstratively, then points at the hallway.

I bite the inside of my cheek, frustrated.

Then her hand finds my arm. I sink into her gorgeous eyes. Just the touch of her soft fingers on my forearm invigorates me to the core. I was a frozen-solid yeti in a realm of ice and endless cold, and she’s thawed me in seconds.

“Afterwards, maybe,” she adds.

“Afterwards,” I agree, my eyes lighting up.

The next second, Kellen has emerged from the hall and his face shimmers with surprise, his eyebrows lifting up high. He says something and Dessie turns around to face him, and the look on her face is, to say the very least, caught off-guard. She seems to sputter and her face turns three shades of pink. No smile finds her, despite her apparent attempt at being polite and shaking his hand, albeit stiffly. The two of them exchange words, none of which I understand.

I feel my pulse throb in my throat.

They know each other. Of course.

Kellen says something and Dessie looks uneasy, her beautiful hair dancing as she glances away. Kellen smiles self-assuredly, then puts a big hand on her shoulder and gives it a rub. The fuck is he touching her for? She smiles stiffly and seems to shrug away, then gives him a nod and says something else.

All this fucking talking. All this fucking touching.

All this fucking silence.

Kellen says his goodbye, then makes his way around her and gives me a wave, to which I respond with a cold, detached nod. The glass doors close behind him with a gentle thrum I feel through my body.

Dessie’s face is visibly darkened by that encounter. She looks up at me and I put on a smile right away, determined not to show the bitterness that’s sitting in my chest. I could give two fucks about Kellen, even if he’s all nice to me. His presence clearly didn’t improve Dessie’s day, and it’s led me down a path of possibility that I don’t want to entertain. Are they old flames? Did he have his hands all over her in New York? Is he some abusive asshole from her past? The possibilities burn across my synapses like wildfire.

I give a sideways nod at the glass, then lift my eyebrows. “So you know him?”

She bites her lip, looks to the left, to the right, and then she double-taps the thumb of a fist to her pretty pink lips—Secret.

I nod knowingly. I don’t even know what the hell’s between them and I already want to pummel Kellen until he’s bent in half. “Does he know it’s a secret?”

She nods, though uncertainly. Her eyes are all over the place, thoughts and worries racing across them.

“Why’d he put his hands on you?” I mumble.

What the fuck am I saying? I can’t imagine anything more possessive-sounding to have said than that. Are we in fucking high school or some shit? I want to know what the fuck’s gone on between them. Maybe I’m provoking her to spill.

“Maybe ‘cause you look so beautiful today,” I suggest for her.

Gag me. Someone fucking gag me.

She smiles, her cheeks turning pink. Her eyes averted, she points at her classroom again without a word, then gives me a little wave and walks away. I fight another urge to call after her and say something else dumb. Apparently, I’m just full of dumb words. I’m a dumb word factory.

I want to know what’s gone down between them, but maybe that can wait. Dessie’s talking to me again. That’s fucking everything to me right now.

We’re talking.

I take a breath, half the tension inside me released with it, and I push through the glass doors, taking a seat on the bench outside and letting the morning sun bathe over me.

I get to have a bite with her after her class, and that’s the best news I’ve gotten in days.

And if I play my cards right, maybe I’ll get a bite of her, too.





DESSIE



We share a table in the UC food court. He’s got two giant fried fish fillet sandwiches and I have a grilled cheese.

And the noise here is deafening, even at barely 11 in the morning.

It’s amazing, but also maybe a bit sad, how quickly I forgave him. I think I forgave him. When I got that text Monday night at the Throng, my first reaction was utter, unapologetic thrill. I was so fucking happy to have heard from him, even after suffering nearly two days of radio silence. It was Eric who told me not to answer. “Give him a taste of his own,” he insisted, but I think he was channeling bitterness from his own boy troubles and projecting them onto me.