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  “Honey, I’d be insulted if you didn’t,” I told him. I shrugged into the silk robe I’d brought along. Jack had wrapped a towel around his lean hips. We were both drinking sodas that Scott’s assistant had brought up from the shop downstairs while the photographer himself pulled up the first set of shots onto his laptop to preview for editing.

  Jack stretched out long legs on the chaise in one corner while I took a spot in a comfy armchair. We’d spent the past hour mostly naked and entangled. I’d met him only two hours ago. He felt like one of my oldest friends at this point.

  “You work with Alex, right? Olivia’s husband,” Jack asked.

  I sipped soda and rolled my head on my neck to crack it. “Yep.”

  “Yeah, my girlfriend is like, her best friend.”

  “Sarah?” I laughed. “Wow, small world.”

  “Yeah, tiny.” Jack nodded.

  “I don’t know her,” I added. “I mean, I’ve heard Olivia talking about her, but we haven’t met.”

  Jack nodded. “You have a boyfriend? Or a girlfriend? I guess I should’ve asked that, sorry. Didn’t mean to be whatever you call it, genderist.”

  “I don’t. Never had a girlfriend, thought about trying it once or twice but I’m kind of hardwired for cock. The last boyfriend I had was a long time ago.” I leaned back in the soft chair and forced away thoughts of Esteban. He’d never been a boyfriend.

  “How come?” Jack leaned forward, elbows on his knees.

  I shrugged. “It ended badly. Haven’t really wanted to have another since.”

  “How long is a long time ago?”

  I paused, sort of embarrassed to say it aloud. “Something like four years.”

  “Whoa.” Jack shook his head. “That’s too bad.”

  I laughed. “It’s okay. Really. I haven’t suffered for lack of a boyfriend, trust me.”

  “Come look at these,” Scott said from the desk.

  Jack and I got up to see what Scott had done. He’d pulled up a black-and-white shot from earlier in the day. Jack on his knees, my fingers in his hair. Scott had captured a small, assessing smile on my face. Jack’s eyes closed, his mouth slightly parted. His cock not yet erect but clearly getting there.

  “Beautiful,” I said, meaning Jack.

  Jack snorted soft laughter. “Pretty hot, man.”

  Scott didn’t look at either one of us. His fingers continued smoothing and shifting the image in tiny increments. Enhancing, not changing. I loved the way he made me look. I’d worked with a few other photographers who always tried to make my tits bigger, my belly flatter, my ass rounder. Scott always made me look just like I do, only a little…better.

  He looked over his shoulder at us with a grin. “Pretty, huh?”

  I hugged him from behind and pressed my cheek to his. “Gorgeous. And I look okay, too.”

  “Are you kidding?” Jack said. “You look fucking amazing.”

  I gave him a small smile. “Thanks.”

  “You guys need more of a break? I have a few more things I want to try.” Scott twisted in his chair. “You up for it? I want to take you outside.”

  We were both up for it. And let me tell you, I’ve never really been an exhibitionist, but there is something awfully exhilarating about stripping down to bare skin out in the middle of the woods with a totally attractive guy wrapped all around you. We had fun, too. Splashing in a small waterfall, both of us with teeth chattering and goose bumps. Lying out in the sun to dry, our fingers linked companionably while we chatted, and Scott took picture after picture.

  “Good,” he said finally with another look at his camera. “That’s it. We’re done.”

  Back at the studio, Jack and I hugged goodbye. We exchanged numbers and promised to keep in touch. Scott made sure we both took postcards for his upcoming gallery show, which would, he promised, feature some of the pictures he’d taken today.

  “I’ll be there,” I promised.

  “You’d better,” Scott said and kissed me firmly on the mouth, then the cheek, and hugged me close to whisper in my ear, “I don’t see you often enough. You okay? What’s going on?”

  I shook my head. “Nothing.”

  He gave me a suspicious look. “Uh-huh.”

  I wasn’t going to tell him about Esteban, especially now that I’d been so unceremoniously dumped. “Really. I promise. I’ll see you at the gallery show.”

  “You’d better see me before that,” he told me, and I said I would, though I think we both knew it wasn’t likely.

  He gestured to me just before I left. “Look at this before you go.”

  He showed me the rest of the shots he’d taken. Even without editing, they were stunning. Anyone who didn’t know that Jack and I had been strangers at the start of the day would’ve thought we’d been lovers forever.

  “You’re beautiful,” Scott said, slow-clicking through a series of images. “Look at you.”

  I looked.

  I saw what he meant. Lines and curves and shadow. Tits and ass and lips and hair. There was beauty there, all right. But it was like looking at a picture of someone else. I was a stranger to myself. That woman in the photos was someone adored and cherished and worshipped, and that was no longer me.

  CHAPTER 7

  Funny how best friends just know when something’s wrong. I hadn’t talked to Alicia in weeks beyond a few texts, but that didn’t matter. The second I saw her number on my screen I answered, and within minutes we were laughing as much as we always had.

  “So, what’s new, what’s going on with you? Feels like I haven’t talked to you forever,” she said finally. “I got a Connex invite to Scott’s gallery show. I guess you’re going to be in it? Sexy pictures. Woo woo.”

  “If you’re into that sort of thing,” I said archly, as though Alicia hadn’t been my best friend forever and hadn’t gone with me on a late-night run to the hardware store to pick up laundry rope and carabiner clips for a booty call. “Weird he invited you, though.”

  “He probably invited everyone in the area, one of those blanket invitations. I can’t be there, unfortunately. I thought about it,” Alicia said. “My mom would love it if I came home. Can’t get the time off. Bummer.”

  “Well, shit,” I said. “That sucks.”

  “I know, I miss youuuuu,” she cooed. “When are you coming to Texas?”

  “It’s hot in Texas,” I told her.

  “The men are hot in Texas,” Alicia said. “You totally need to move out here with me. We can be roomies!”

  I’d lived with her already for a few months just after college. That our friendship had survived it was more a testimony to how nice and patient and forgiving Alicia is than anything else. Some people are not meant to live full-time with other human beings, and I’m one of them.

  “You know I can’t do that,” I said. “Where would I find a job as good as the one I have?”

  She sighed. “True. Lucky bitch. But you could come visit me, Elise. It would be fun. And I miss the hell out of your face. You get vacation time, don’t you?”

  “Sure. Oodles of it. Alex is a big fan of vacation.”

  We chatted a bit longer about when would be the best time for me to come out—not in the summer, I told her. Not until after William’s Bar Mitzvah, anyway, and in the fall, the days in Texas wouldn’t be so brutal. “I’m a wilting flower, you know.”

  “Oh, you,” she said with a laugh. “It’s not so bad. You stay inside, that’s all. Yay! I can’t wait! And neither can Jimmy.”

  I paused. “Who’s Jimmy?”

  “Guy I want you to meet.” I pictured her blinking innocently. “You’ll like him.”

  Alicia knew what I liked, so it was a good bet she was right. Still, the thought of it, of meeting some random dude she was trying to set me up w
ith…hot cowboy or not, I wasn’t into it. “Alicia…”

  “It’s been ages,” she said immediately. That was the good and bad thing about besties. They always know what you’re trying to say even when you don’t say it. “Forget about him.”

  “I can’t.” I owned it at once. No sense in pretending otherwise, not with her. This girl had held my hair after too many shots of tequila. She’d given me her last tampon. She’d been there all through that delirious agony that had been my last real relationship, and she’d been there after, too.

  “Then get over him,” she said without hesitating. “He’s not worth it, Elise.”

  “I know he’s not.”

  “And you can’t help it anyway.” She sighed, sounding disgusted, but not with me. “Yeah, I know.”

  “I know you know.”

  Alicia’d had her own doomed love affair. She referred to him as Mr. Darcy the way I called mine George. Not their real names. Literary references, a code of sorts we’d invented in college to refer to boyfriends. Hers to Pride and Prejudice. Mine to Of Mice and Men.

  “Have you heard from Darcy?” I asked.

  Alicia snorted. “Yes. Of course. Every few months, like a herpes outbreak.”

  “Oh, gross.”

  She laughed. “We had a real go-around the last time, a couple weeks ago. He had the nerve to ask me if I wanted to Facetime with him—”

  “No,” I interrupted. “Seriously? What the fuck?”

  “Right? He said he was, and I quote, ‘curious,’ about my life.” Alicia was silent for a second then sounded both angry and sad. “I told him I had no desire to have any kind of conversation with him anymore. I said it hurt too much to talk to him like we were casual acquaintances who’d barely meant anything to each other. He told me he didn’t mean to hurt me, but it wasn’t fair of me to get angry with him for making, and I quote again, a ‘good faith effort at reaching out.’”

  I groaned. “Clueless.”

  “Moron,” she agreed, sounding more sad than angry this time. “I told him that I was sure he didn’t mean to hurt me, but neither does a door when it slams my fingers. And I don’t put my fingers in a door on purpose.”

  “No kidding.”

  “Then I deleted and blocked him,” Alicia said.

  “You didn’t! Oh, girl.” I was impressed. Mr. Darcy had been in and out of Alicia’s life for a long damn time.

  She sighed. “I had to. I was just…done, you know? Finally done. I wish you could get there with George, Elise.”

  I did, too, but I suspected it wasn’t going to happen. I’d let him slam that door on my fingers over and over again, if only he’d talk to me one more time. If only.

  We changed the subject after that. We talked about her job, not so new anymore, but still worth the move. We caught up on some gossip about people we’d gone to school with. I filled her in on the increasing family drama surrounding William’s Bar Mitzvah.

  “Oh, your mom.” Alicia sighed. She’d known me since the third grade. That was all she had to say.

  I laughed and groaned at the same time. “Yeah. I know. I’m just waiting for the shit to hit the fan. So far it’s been okay, other than the hissy fit she threw about the date.”

  “Oh, God, what was that?”

  I told Alicia how Evan and Susan had tried to set the date for William’s Bar Mitzvah a week later than it was now going to be for some reason I didn’t know and didn’t care about—a Bar Mitzvah could be held anytime after the kid’s thirteenth birthday, so if they wanted to give him an extra week to study or so it didn’t compete with something else, it was nothing to me. But apparently, my sister, Jill, had a schedule conflict, my mother threw a hissy and the date had been moved to accommodate it.

  “You’d think that would be enough, right, one huge fucking showdown at the start.” I shook my head. “But there’s more coming, you’d better believe it.”

  “Come to Texas,” Alicia teased. “Avoid it all.”

  “I can’t do that to the kid. Or my brother. Someone here has to be sort of sane,” I told her. “But after it’s all over, I promise I’ll visit. Not setting me up on any dates, though, you have to promise me that.”

  Alicia sighed. “You’re no fun.”

  “How fun would it be for me to visit you and go out on some lame blind date?” I demanded.

  She paused. “It could be a double date.”

  “Oh.” That was a game changer. “You’re seeing someone?”

  “Yeah.” She paused then said nothing though I waited.

  “I would’ve thought you’d have told me that right away.” I wasn’t hurt, exactly, but I did wonder about the hesitation. It was true we didn’t talk as often as we had in the past, but every time we did it was like no time had passed. Now her finally kicking Darcy to the curb made total sense.

  “If you ever bothered to log in to Connex,” she said lightly, “you’d have seen it.”

  “Wow. Wow,” I repeated. “He’s Connex relationship worthy?”

  Alicia laughed. “Yeah. He is. His name’s Jay.”

  We talked for the next forty minutes about Jay, until she had to go. She made me promise again to visit, and I agreed. I meant it, too.

  “You could’ve just told me, you know,” I said. “I’m happy for you.”

  “It felt weird, that’s all. We were both kind of united in our despair for a while, you know? Shit. I’m sorry, that sounded terrible.”

  I laughed. “No. I get it. Misery loves company.”

  “I didn’t think I’d meet someone I could really…you know.” Alicia sounded shy. “Love. Again. I didn’t want to. And I know you don’t want to, either, Elise, but…”

  “Hey, look. It’s good. I’m glad for you. I’m okay, really. I’m not a celibate old maid or anything, Alicia. I date. I’ve been dating someone, on and off.” The words tripped off my tongue before I could call them back. More of a lie than I’d meant to tell her, but hell. If I exaggerated the type of relationship we’d had, it was out of pride, not deceit. “It’s not serious, or it wasn’t, but his name is Esteban.”

  “Ooh, Esteban?”

  “He’s Spanish. I mean he comes from Spain.” Before she could get too excited, though, I added casually, “But we broke up recently. And it wasn’t bad or anything, just didn’t work out. So really, you don’t have to worry about me. I’m back on the horse.”

  “It’ll happen for you, too. I know it,” Alicia said with the optimism only the newly in love can manage to muster.

  I didn’t try to dissuade her. We said our goodbyes and hung up, promising to keep in better touch. She had a new boyfriend, so I figured it was a promise meant to be broken. And that would be okay.

  Showered, tucked into bed, I tried not to look at the clock. The later it got, the harder it would be for me to fall asleep. Not for the first time, I thought about taking pills, but if there was something I hated worse than insomnia it was the idea of being dependent on something to guide me into dreamland. A couple shots of Fireball whiskey would’ve done the trick, but I wasn’t going to rely on booze, either.

  I counted backward to no avail. I slipped a hand between my thighs, hoping an orgasm would ease me into sleep, but though I came within a few minutes, the climax left me melancholy and gasping against annoying tears rather than passion. I rolled onto my stomach and punched my pillow then buried my face in it to breathe in the scent of the lavender oil I’d sprinkled on it before I went to bed.

  Who was I to fault Alicia for not telling me about Jay sooner? I should’ve told her months ago about Esteban. We could’ve giggled over him, swooned a little, even. She’d have been happy for me, even if my relationship with him had been solely based on sex and not emotion. Even if he hadn’t been a boyfriend, I could’ve shared him with her, so that maybe now that it was over,
we could’ve at least talked about him. Now, all I had was my own discontent to keep me awake.

  Anyone who’s had chronic trouble sleeping collects tricks to help them get to dreamland. I’d already tried my standbys, counting backward and orgasm. My mother would’ve advocated warm milk. Gross.

  Led by my heart, my hands found my phone before my head could stop them. I opened the message app. My fingers typed. Erased. Typed again.

  I told George about Esteban. Everything—how we’d met online. How we fucked, the things we’d done, the places he’d let me take him and where he’d taken me. How I’d found myself thinking of him in the odd moments of quiet when my mind turned to whatever it would, without my conscious effort. I told him how we broke up…and that I’d never loved Esteban. That I would never love anyone the way I loved him.

  I hit Send.

  He didn’t answer.

  CHAPTER 8

  Three days had passed since my conversation with Esteban in the front seat of my car. I hadn’t blocked or deleted him from my contacts, but I was still surprised when my phone chirped at me as I was changing out of work clothes and into something more suitable for a pint of ice cream and some streaming episodes of Queer as Folk on Interflix. Five minutes later and I wouldn’t even have noticed, because I’d already put my phone on the charger and hadn’t planned on taking it downstairs with me.

  I held it, looking at the notification but not reading the message just yet. I let my thumb hover over the screen. One swipe and I could delete the message, unread. But then I’d have no idea what he said, and while curiosity might’ve killed the cat, not giving in to it was more likely to haunt me forever.