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.
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.
I held my phone that whole night, caressing it like a chocolate addict with the world’s last Snickers.
Now here we are, sharing lunch in the dense noise of a hundred people shouting, laughing, and yelling at each other from across booths and tables. As I suffer in the chaos, I peer over the table at Clayton eating his sandwich and realize with a start that this experience is drastically different for him. Where I’m assaulted by the relentless onslaught of noise, Clayton only knows peace.
He smirks at me across the table after taking his first generous bite, chewing with a strained expression on his face.
Well, okay. Maybe there’s a form of inner peace that he may presently be lacking.
After he swallows, he says something to me, his mouth half-blocked by his fish fillet sandwich, hands propped up at the elbows and his meal hanging loose between them.
I can’t hear him. Oh, the irony. “What?”
He lowers his sandwich, revealing his sexy, plush lips, then speaks louder. “So you know Kellen?”
I kinda knew that, of all topics to enjoy, Kellen Wright would be the first thing he brought up. “Yes,” I say, nodding for emphasis.
“Nice guy?” he prompts me with a lift of his brow, taking another humungous bite of his sandwich.
The way his mouth moves, his jaw tightening and relaxing in his massive, muscular efforts of chewing, is so fucking erotic that I can’t stand it. His lips alone are art. Add that to the whole visually-stimulating workout of his teeth and sharp jawline, and I’m about as distracted as a lunch mate can possibly be. I’m already having fond recollections of how his mouth worked mine when my lips were his meal.
“Nice,” I agree vaguely, nodding again, then help myself to a bite of my grilled cheese.
He asks me a question through his full mouth. I catch exactly zero words of it, lifting my eyebrows in confusion. He swallows hard, then lifts his chin and repeats, “Did you two date?”
I roll my eyes. “My dad … mentored him,” I explain, punching the word.
“Your dad? The one who pulled a string?” he goes on, his face wrinkling as he chews.
“Yes. That dad.”
His eyes pull away suddenly, and I see a flicker of darkness in them. I’ve become so adept at reading the little expressions that play war games across Clayton’s face. The jolt in his eye bothers me.
“What?” I prompt him, but he doesn’t seem to be paying attention, lost in a thought.
Kellen and I met during one of the shows my dad was designing in New York. For the first few days that I knew him, I thought he was a member of the chorus. Then I learned he was a lighting intern of sorts, but thought he was shy. When a Friday night rehearsal came to its end and the last stage light was shut off, Kellen kissed me unexpectedly in the dark behind the fold of a curtain where I was sorting props, proving to me how very not shy he was. Then he tried to talk me out of going to the cast party two weeks later where I would then discover how not single he was. It was one of my first lessons in how faithless and fickle city men can be, constantly shopping for the next best thing while gripping their girlfriends so tightly.