Read My Lips(35)

Holy fucking shit.

Then it’s over, just like that. He pulls away and lets go of me in one fluid motion, jabbing the button to bring the basket slowly back down to Earth.

And I’m just staring at him with what might be the biggest what-the-hell-just-happened expression on my face. I don’t even notice us swaying, nor feel a trace of the fear of heights I just had. All of my attention is one hundred percent Clayton Watts and those lips.

Seriously, though … what just happened?

The basket shudders when it hits the stage abruptly, and Clayton swings open the cage, escaping Bertha as fast as if his pants caught fire.

“Clayton?” I call after him pointlessly. He’s off the stage in seconds, headed down the aisle into darkness. The auditorium doors open, flashing his beautiful silhouette at me for a moment before they shut gently behind him, closing me in with the cold silence and the warm sensation of his lips still on mine.





I can’t do this again.

Fuck, she tasted so good I already want another taste.

No, this can’t happen. I’m not losing my head over a girl, not right now.

But her eyes … Standing that close to her, I could have poured myself into them and made a home.

What the fuck am I talking about?

She’s a sophisticated city girl from New York. I’m the dirty scum of a poor Texas nobody. She can do so much better than me.

Why did I kiss her?? Why would I fucking do that to myself?—or to her? I’m sending the wrong message. A kiss means “come here” when I should be teaching her the signs for “get the fuck away from me”.

And she learned signs. She learned them so she could talk to me with her hands.

I can picture her now, looking them up online and mimicking the hand motions in front of the screen. She did that for you, Clayton. I’m so fucked.

I stop at a giant abstract sculpture made of wire and glass panels just outside of the School of Art and collapse onto one of the benches that encircle it. On that bench for an hour, I stare at the horizon as it ignites with angry shades of orange and pink before being chased away by deep blues, then darkness. That sunset pretty much sums up my mood: up in the air with Dessie’s mouth on mine, I was ignited, and back down on the ground, I’m the shadows.

I pull out my phone and text Brant, asking him what he’s up to. I desperately need to distract myself. My phone shivers twenty seconds later, Brant asking me where we keep the chocolate syrup because he’s got a girl in his room and they “have ideas”. With a sigh, I inform him that we have none, then shove my phone back in my pocket, ignoring his response. That was more distraction and imagery than I needed.

Two girls pass by, and the conversation they were clearly having is paused as they sip the straws of their beverages suggestively, but it’s their eyes that do all the drinking, staring me down as they pass. One of them, a pretty brunette with curls down to her boobs, gives me a wiggle of her long fingers, sporting blood red nails.

I look away, annoyed. Girls like them used to be my thing. I was the expert. I had the skills that Brant was jealous of, even back when we were kids and our voices were still changing.

It’s the strangest thing, for the last memory of your own voice to be that of your twelve-year-old self, an unreliable voice that cracked at the worst of times, a voice that turned rough one day of the week, then boyish and squeaky the next.

But that squeaky voice couldn’t dare stop me from going after all the pretty girls. Little Clayton knew how to talk to them. He wasn’t afraid.

It was little dorky Brant who had all the trouble, and I was the one who coached him that day at Laura’s party. “You can’t think of a girl as someone you want,” I told him—my cocky, know-it-all self who acted like I had all the answers a dumb twelve-year-old would ever need. “You have to see her as someone who wants you.”

“I feel like I’m gonna puke,” whined little Brant. It always annoyed me how much he complained.

“Walk up and ask her why she hasn’t offered you some punch yet,” I teased him, nudging him with my elbow. He pushed me off, annoyed, and I saw the fear in his eyes. It didn’t make me sympathize with him; it made me want to laugh at the scared little fucker. “You’re such a chicken, Brant.”

“Shut up, I’m not.”

“Watch me,” I told him, puffing up my chest. “Watch and learn, little bro.”

We weren’t brothers, but I loved acting like the older brother Brant never had, in all the best and worst ways.

I walked up to that girl he’d had his eyes on ever since fifth grade. It was that easy. I strutted up to Miss Courtney and enjoyed the conversation Brant was meant to have. And at nine o’clock that night, it was me kissing Courtney in the closet under the stairs while everyone else’s fingers turned orange eating Cheetos and playing Twister in the living room.