Page 29 of For the Cameras
“You probably should, sooner rather than later,” he said. “It might suck, though. People are pretty private online. Especially when it comes to things like this.”
“Tell me about it,” I said.
“I’ll just say one thing,” Jamie warned. “Don’t fuck him.”
He may as well have just plunged a knife into my heart.
“Don’tfuck him?”
“I’ve been talking to you for three minutes and I can already tell it would be a bad idea to hook up with this guy,” Jamie said. “He’s shy in real life? Probably wants a real boyfriend, which you aren’t interested in?”
My heart lurched. “He’s very sweet.”
“So keep it in your pants,” Jamie said. “How would you feel if someone fucked you and then you found out they’d been secretly messaging with you for God knows how long?”
I lifted an eyebrow. “Well, I’d absolutelylovethat, are you kidding? I live for that kind of thing. Hell, it would probably make me even more turned on and I’d go in for round two—”
“Okay, okay,” Jamie said with a laugh. “I forgot you’re a freak of nature.”
“I prefer the termextremely sexually open, but sure, I’m a freak, too,” I said.
“Tell him the truth,” Jamie said. “You know what you need to do.”
I heard a soft knock on my door around seven o’clock. I swung it open and found Adam standing there, holding not one buttwotwelve-packs of beer, flushed and adorable and so fucking hot it made my guilt flare up again within about two seconds.
“Damn, you really brought enough for a party, didn’t you?” I said.
He nodded, shifting on one foot as he struggled to hold both packs, one on top of the other. “Wanted to have some variety. I think I got too much.”
Don’t fuck him.
God, he is cute, and that does not mean you should try to fuck him.
“Here. Let me grab one,” I said. “No such thing as too much.”
“Oh, that is helpful,” he said, relief in his voice. “Carrying these all the way down Spruce Street and up your apartment stairs was a bit of a mistake.”
“Come on in. Kitchen is this way.”
Having Adam in my house felt a bit like I’d invited royalty into a college dorm room. I kept my apartment nice, and it was always clean enough to invite a hookup over without shame.
But Adam wasn’t a hookup. I led him through the living room and into the kitchen, both of which I’d spent the last hour cleaning. Suddenly, my eyes darted around everywhere, wondering what he’d think of my place. What he’d think ofme. The bookshelves I had in the living room seemed sorely lacking in substance—I had a bunch of graphic novels, old comic books from when I was a young teen, and a smattering of fun novels that friends had given me over the years, and I’d only read about half of them.
My furniture wasn’t as fancy as his, the rooms here were smaller and the ceilings were much lower than the ones at his house. I wasn’t ashamed of my apartment living, but it was strange to wonder how Adam would view all of it.
“This is so incredible,” Adam said as he set down the beer on my kitchen table. “Is all the art in here original?”
“Um, most of it is mine, actually.”
“Yours?” Adam asked, his eyebrows raising. “As in, you painted all of it?”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s not anything that impressive, I promise you.”
“Chase, it’s incredible,” he said, looking around at the paintings I had hung up in the kitchen and back toward the ones lining the walls in the living room. “You’re really talented. The ones of the cities are so detailed.”
I had a couple of paintings of city skylines—one of New York City and another of Singapore.
“Those paintings took forever,” I said. “Detailed pains in my ass, honestly.”