by Rosie Danan
“Really? I’d think they’d jump all over the chance to keep you on the books.” She sat on the bleachers. God, everything she did looked so polished and proper.
Josh sat down next to her. “It’s my fault. I signed this terrible contract a few years ago. Didn’t even read it. I got drunk off the idea that someone thought I could do something, anything, well. The loss of revenue from merchandise alone . . .” He buried his hands in his hair.
“Merchandise?” Clara’s voice had gone up an entire octave.
Her discomfort broke through some of his self-pity, lightening his mood. She was a good sport, his new roommate. “Don’t worry, Wheaton. Any time you ask, you’ve got the real thing.”
Clara gasped as she took his meaning and pulled the edges of her cardigan closer together. “What will you do about this contract situation? Get a lawyer?”
He admired her determination to change the subject, but the mention of lawyers went down like a bitter pill. “Nah. I can’t afford a lawyer, at least not one good enough to go up against Black Hat. I assume you know that parts of the porn industry deserve the bad rap. That there are some not-so-nice people with skin in the game?”
“Until I met you I didn’t think there was anything worthwhile about porn.”
He’d figured as much. “As a performer, you’ve got very little say in what gets made. The producers and studio heads pull the strings. I’ve got a solid fan base but not much sway. Believe it or not, women aren’t the primary audience of most pornos.”
“Is that why so much of it is gross? Why don’t the major studios invest in female audiences?” She wrinkled her nose. “Sounds like bad business to me.”
“Are you saying that if the studios invested in the right kind of porn, you would watch it?” Josh conjured up the embers of his signature smolder.
“That question is negligible at present,” she said, crossing her legs at the ankles.
“Damn. You can make anything sound fancy, can’t you?”
She squinted into the darkening sky. “Surely not something completely pedestrian.”
“Are you kidding? You just did it.”
She had the nerve to wink at him. Get this girl out of the driver’s seat for five minutes and suddenly she’s a scoundrel. He couldn’t remember the last time a woman, or anyone for that matter, had surprised him so much.
Clara reached down to pick a weed. “So if you can’t get a new contract, would you quit?”
Josh covered his face with his hands and sighed into them. “I have no idea.” That question had haunted him for days. If Bennie put him off pickles for life, Josh would never forgive him.
“Lots of people transition between careers in their late twenties,” Clara said. Always striving for diplomacy. “You need to make a list. Maybe two. I wish I’d brought my notebook. What’s your primary skill set?”
Josh put his hand on her bare knee. Half challenge, half invitation. He didn’t apply much pressure, just enough to raise goose bumps. The vision of her spread out across the sofa last night made adrenaline pump in his veins. Clara didn’t look down, but he felt the tightness in her body, the rapid awareness. She immediately brought her hand to cover his, and he waited for her to push him away. Instead, she . . . held. For an incredible moment, he let himself believe she might guide him higher until his fingers brushed under the shorts of her overalls to caress the top of her thigh, light as the lazy breeze. She sucked in a sharp breath but didn’t move.
Clara would probably sock him in the mouth at any moment. Was probably gathering her strength for the windup. Her eyes stayed on the field as she sank her teeth into the pillow of her bottom lip. Was it possible that Clara Wheaton liked her sex with a side of exhibition? That knowledge raced straight to his cock. But before he could invest in his revelation, she cleared her throat and put his hand back in his lap. “What else?”
While his heartbeat slowed he racked his brain. “Driving. I could become a truck driver or a pizza delivery guy.” He was only half joking. He loved pizza.
“That’s a start. Keep going.” She jumped at the chance to move the conversation back into safe territory. Her family had probably hired a career counselor for her while she was still in preschool.
“Taxes. I could do the shit out of your taxes,” he said, getting into the game despite himself. He stood and started to climb between the bleacher seats. “You should see the refund I got last year.”
Clara turned to watch him and quirked her mouth to the side. “You’d have to go back to school to become an accountant.”
He’d probably have to wear a tie to work too. “Forget that.”
Just because Clara had started to see past what he did—what he was—didn’t mean the rest of the world would follow suit. Relative success in porn equaled relative failure in the real world.
His head hurt trying to process all these what ifs and maybes. He’d stayed in a shitty contract, not to mention a dying relationship, for years because he preferred the path of least resistance. All he knew was he liked working in porn. Not just the getting-paid-to-have-sex part—though he admitted that didn’t hurt—but the people and the process of making something that others enjoyed. He wasn’t ready for long-term planning, didn’t have that kind of endurance, but Clara kept staring at him expectantly. Like together they could solve all of his problems.
“I know a decent amount about production,” he said finally, making his way back toward where she sat. “Just from being around it all the time, ya know.” He ran his hand over his jaw. “You wouldn’t believe how much editing affects the tone of a piece. Or music selection. I know it’s a porno, so how emotional can ya really get, but I’ve seen some stuff that’s closer to art than most commercial blockbusters. And it’s production that controls casting, sets, even making sure that we adhere to health and safety regulations.”
“That sounds promising.” She jumped on his first sign of interest. “You should produce something.”
“No one would hire me. I’ve got a high school diploma, thirty college credits, and expertise in anal beads. Not exactly a stellar résumé.”
Clara tipped her head back to look up at him where he stood in the row above hers. “Don’t sell yourself short. I Googled you, remember?”
He swallowed hard. As if he could forget.
“One of the headlines that popped up—which I definitely didn’t click on, mind you—said you have over a million fans on your website. If you made something, I bet those people would pay to watch it.”
Josh sank back down beside her. “I don’t know. The porn industry doesn’t exactly cater to women’s pleasure. My skill set . . . if you can even call it that . . . it’s like being the da Vinci of macaroni sculptures. No one gives a shit.”
“You’re an artist, and you’ve found a way to make a living from your art.” Clara turned pink. “That’s pretty enterprising. Most people quit before they ever get a chance to fail.”
Josh couldn’t recall the last time someone had given him a pep talk, especially when the subject matter made them so obviously uncomfortable. “You’re impressive.”
Clara waved the compliment away.
“No, really.” He pulled up a handful of grass and counted the blades. “You’re a study in contradictions. A week ago you’d never heard of me, and now you’re sitting here adamantly defending my ‘art.’”
She lifted a delicate shoulder. “What can I say? I’m a desperate optimist.”
“Is this the part where birds and other woodland creatures come out and sing backup on your ballad about why I shouldn’t abandon the dream of fucking my way to fame?”
Clara let out a bitter sigh and straightened her shoelaces. “Unfortunately, animals hate me.”
“What?” Josh snorted and stood, reaching out to help her up.
“They can smell my fear.” There wasn’t a hint of a joke in her voice
as she took his hand.
“It’s kind of cute that you’re such a little nutjob,” he said, more to himself than to her.
“Cute’s one word for it.” She started back toward the car.
“Wait up.” He moved to stand in front of her. “Hey. Look at what you’ve done in less than a week.” Josh spread his hands out in front of him. “Moved across the country, started a new job, got behind the wheel. Not to mention fooling around with an acclaimed adult performer.” His dimples bloomed. “As far as I can see, Wheaton, you’re pretty damn extraordinary.”
Clara’s shy smile made him want to grab the straps of those ridiculous overalls, yank her mouth to his, and finally taste those strawberry lips he’d been dreaming about since she first walked into his life.
“We should probably head back.” He needed doors between them, ones he could lock.
“Oh. Sure.” Clara brushed off her butt and Josh tried not to notice the way her hands glided down the generous swell.
Fuck. If he wasn’t careful, he was going to end up with a crush on his roommate.
chapter thirteen
TWO WEEKS INTO his self-imposed underemployment, Josh had grown dangerously bored. It was disastrous, having so much free time in the vicinity of Clara Wheaton.
He first noticed the symptoms when he found himself timing his showers to follow hers. Something inside him perked up when he walked in and their tiny bathroom still held the scent of her soap. It was like stepping into a meadow. And if that meadow also made him think about Clara, naked, wet, and covered in bubbles? Well, he shot those daydreams on sight.
It was easy to blame this new, strange behavior on his first physical dry spell in recent memory. Even though his romantic relationship with Naomi had fizzled more than a few months back, up until last Thursday, work had kept his libido in check. His right hand hadn’t seen this much action since he’d hit puberty.
Josh displayed mental symptoms of decline as well as physical. He had grown so desperate for conversation he resorted to waking up early to catch Clara before she went to work.
Unlike Josh, she loved mornings. As soon as he stumbled into the kitchen, she put on cheesy pop music to accompany her as she made coffee and packed her lunch.
He’d never seen so much Tupperware in his life. She even had little containers for the dressing, so small he could fit three of them in his palm. They were almost cute. Baby Tupperware.
Everything seemed to deflate when she left promptly at seven thirty. He felt so useless sitting around that by day three he offered to drive Clara out to her office in Malibu. Josh had nothing better to do. In the evenings, he picked her up and let her drive home for practice. It was pathetic that basically acting as his roommate’s chauffeur gave him a small, twisted sense of purpose, but these days he had to take the wins wherever he could find them.
He still spent most of the day alone with nothing but the possessions Clara left like footprints across the house. Each afternoon a new box of tchotchkes got delivered to their door. While her changes were subtle, they touched every single room. He’d open a drawer to find coasters or oven mitts. Hand towels appeared in the bathroom, along with some kind of basket of dried flowers and twigs.
She might have a doctorate, but where he came from, that shit would not pass as art.
Clara even bought curtains for his bedroom. He opened the door one day to find them hanging jauntily above his window, both charming and useful. Somehow, while working, she still found time to turn Everett’s man cave into something resembling a home. As if he needed further evidence of her competence to press on the bruise of his stalled career.
He’d started running in the afternoons to have something to do. Trying to burn off the itch he felt in his limbs. On those long jogs to the ocean, he tried to think about his future. Tried to brainstorm production partners, and people within the industry who owed him a favor, but even if he could find someone to let him produce, Josh didn’t have a clue what he’d make.
When he returned home from his latest jog he knew, even before he bumped into Clara’s five separate hampers, that she must have run out of clean underwear. The whole house had filled with sweet-smelling humidity radiating from the small laundry room next to the porch.
He balled his hands into fists and immediately moved to open a window.
Tonight, like every night this week, Clara had deposited herself on the couch surrounded by piles of documents. He didn’t know what kind of workload she’d agreed to when she took that job, but it seemed to involve a lot of take-home reading.
Josh rearranged her laundry baskets so he wasn’t barricaded out of his own kitchen.
“You don’t need to separate your clothes into that many separate cycles,” he told her as he deposited one of the full hampers at her feet.
“I know you probably don’t care since you seem to live in jeans and T-shirts,” she said prissily, “but different types of clothes require different water temperatures and speeds.”
“Yeah, that’s the wrong way to think about it.”
“Excuse me?” Clara lowered the document in her hand.
Bending to examine her system of organization, Josh began to sort through her clothes, rearranging items into new piles on the carpet. “Fabric content determines ideal washing conditions, not color. For example”—he held up a soft T-shirt—“cotton is prone to shrinking. You should only use cold water and air-dry cotton of any color.” He tossed a set of shorts over his shoulder. “Linen wrinkles like a bitch, so you should be pressing those shorts immediately after they come out of that washer.” Two pairs of pantyhose tangled together around his wrist. Josh separated them and placed them over the arm of the couch. “Hanging nylon will avoid that aggressive static situation you’ve got going on.”
Lesson over, Josh followed his nose into the kitchen. He opened the oven to investigate the source of a pleasant peppery smell. “Oh, you can do whatever you want with polyester,” he yelled so she could hear him through the doorway. “It’s hard to mess up polyester.” Josh eyed a lasagna bubbling under the broiler. “Can I have some of your pasta?”
“Of—of course. It’s vegetarian . . . and I made the sauce from scratch.”
Josh’s stomach growled. Another symptom. In such a short time, Clara had already gotten him addicted to vegetables. Probably tricked him into some kind of iron dependency with her magical menu that disguised an ungodly amount of leafy greens. Sometimes he woke up in the middle of the night craving spinach.
Clara shook her head slowly as Josh joined her on the couch with a steaming plate. “How do you . . . how do you know so much about laundry?”
“I’ve got more than your average experience. My mom works for a dry cleaner. Has ever since I was little. She browbeat that stuff into me as a kid. Last I heard she’s still there. At this rate, her hands will never stop smelling like bleach.”
“Last you heard?”
“I haven’t seen anyone in my family in a few years. Not since I told them about my job.” Josh blew on his loaded fork. “They didn’t get it.”
The guilt from that moment had eaten at him until he’d stopped returning their calls. He’d even gone so far as to change his number and his email address. He didn’t need lectures or quiet concern.
He cleared his throat. “I guess they feel responsible. I think my mom’s convinced that if she had taken me to church more as a kid maybe I’d work in a bank or something now.”
“I know what you mean.”
He lowered his fork and frowned. Clara was a parent’s dream. Polite, respectful, studious. What more could her family want?
Pain washed across her face. “I resent my own mother for taking my family’s decisions so personally. She wears other people’s mistakes like scars. Like she’s keeping score of all our crimes against her. I had a clean ledger until I moved out here and veered off the chosen course. But now . .
. it would be easier to face her if she lowered the bar.”
Josh never considered the cost Clara might have paid for her freedom. That they were both running from something. That they might have something in common after all.
“I’m not mad at my mom,” he said. “Not exactly. I get where she’s coming from. No parent dreams of their kid growing up and making porn. But it’s hard, carrying around the weight of her disappointment. I think if she and my dad supported me, even if they didn’t understand, hell, even if they didn’t like it, it would be easier to bear the rest of society looking at me like I’m dirt under their shoe.”
“Do people really look at you like that?”
“I mean, not everyone knows what I do. It’s not like I’m walking down the street handing out dick-shaped business cards.”
Clara covered her mouth with her hand. “Do you have those?” Her eyes had gone almost completely round.
“No. Although it’s not a bad marketing idea. People find out anyway. It almost always comes up at parties. My buddies from high school think it’s funny.” He gave a small, bitter laugh. “I don’t mind the scorn so much. At least those people usually keep their distance. The handsy ones are worse. The ones who think my job turns my body into public property.”
“You mean people grab you?”
“Oh sure. You ever had a guy brush against you on the subway when you know he could have avoided it? Or maybe you’re standing at the bar and some bro puts his hand on your lower back to ‘scoot by’?”
“Ugh, yes.” She glared.
“It’s like that. I get a lot of unwelcome hands in places I’m too polite to mention. When people find out I perform, they stop seeing me as a man. It’s like in their eyes suddenly I’m a big fat Christmas ham. Everyone wants to carve off a slice.”
“I’m so sorry,” Clara said.
Josh stared at his food. “Lots of people have it worse. Almost every woman I know working in the industry has stories about experiencing harassment, even abuse.” How many times had Naomi come home spitting because someone tried to take advantage of her? Tried to make her do things she didn’t want to and often had explicitly refused? Josh tried to use what little power he had to protect her, but the power imbalance remained overwhelming, and besides, he couldn’t protect everyone.