Read My Lips(49)

I put an arm over the back of the couch. Utterly incapable of enforcing discipline on my hands, I find myself curious about his tattoo. The moment my finger touches his neck, he seems to freeze in place, staring into my eyes intensely as I observe his ink, tracing the shape.

“Why the tattoo?” I mouth to him, hardly using my voice.

“Mmm.” He gives it some thought. “Tattoo,” he mumbles, his mind seeming to go somewhere far away. “Had to watch my back all through high school. When I turned eighteen, I … I decided I wanted to look like a bad-ass no one should fuck with. So I … wanted to …” He sighs and takes his phone out of my lap, typing into it as I continue to trace the ink on his neck. I wonder what that’s doing to him, if anything.

Then, he shows me the screen:



Ur finger is driving me nuts



I grin. He glares at me playfully, but I see the tightness in his jaw. I might be waking the beast again.

My finger reaches his earlobe. I study it curiously and find my mind arriving at a question I’d wanted to ask for quite a while, the most obvious question.

“How long have you been deaf?”

He squints at me, the humor in his eyes traded quickly for solemnity. I wonder if he understood the question, due to his lack of response. I let go of his ear and take the phone back, typing into it:



How long have you been deaf?



He hardly looks at the screen before he murmurs, “Since I was twelve.”

“How?”

“Measles.” He mumbles the word so bitterly that I almost miss what he says. “It spread to my ears, shitty parents, lack of medical treatment, lucky to be alive, blah, blah.”

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.