“It is about us.” I bend down to kiss him. “They wouldn’t have picked you if our work sucked. And you know what?”
He watches my mouth. “Hmm?”
“I don’t need a Buzzfeed article to tell me how sexy you are, but it’s still pretty amazing they picked you. And you picked me, so I’m feeling good right now.”
He pulls my arm so I fall into his lap. “You’re amazing.”
“You know, there’s a lot of pressure on us now. Our next post has to be seriously good. None of that bobby pin bullshit.”
He grins. “It’s the onesie one.”
“The onesie one?”
He gestures over my body. “The leotard thing. That’s our next photo.”
I instinctively glance at the computer and Sadie pops into my mind. I said I was okay with what I saw, so I need to be. There isn’t enough room for both of us to be paranoid about past partners. He has more reason to be distrustful, even though I’d never pick Rich over him. Finn, on the other hand, hasn’t ever made me feel insecure about our relationship. “Right. The bodysuit. It’s good, but is it good enough as a first post for all those new followers? Let me see which caption you chose.”
He pinches my chin. “It’ll be perfect. Don’t worry.”
“But—”
“I’ll handle it, babe. I want you to enjoy this moment.”
“I am. Remember that day I said I wanted to hit ten thousand followers by mid-January? Before this article, we’d almost doubled it. Now we’re closing in on forty, and it’s barely February.”
“Is this you enjoying the moment?” he asks.
It is. Watching the numbers grow excites me. Knowing all those people are not just reading my words, but relating to them. Feeling them. I hate to admit that the thrill doesn’t end there. The article said it, and forty-thousand people agree, so it must be true: the photos are sexy. And they’re of me. I can’t wait to see what happens when we post the next series of Butter Boudoir images. Just as I’d suspected, they’re the most provocative yet. “I think with Valentine’s Day around the corner, we can double that number by March.”
He looks skeptical. “Eighty-thousand?”
“No. A hundred. Pick a day in March. We need a goal to keep us on track.”
“Jesus. That’s the population of a town.”
“We can do it, Finn. This is the kind of thing I was talking about. We can do more with more.”
He scratches his chin but nods. “Okay, but . . .” He runs his hand down my thigh. “Can you give me a teensy bit more motivation?”
“If we hit a hundred thousand by the date you pick in March . . . I’ll give you blowjobs until my jaw falls off.”
His eyes widen. “March first.”
I laugh. “Are you sure? Day one? You’re going to take that risk?”
With an eye roll and a chuckle, he sits back. “Fine. How about March eleventh? It’s my birthday.”
A smile warms my face. I had no idea. I’ll have to think of something good to surprise him with. “I love March eleventh.”
That’s just over a month away. With what we’ve accomplished today, and with what’s to come, I just know we can do it. Our own little town.
But then, as is becoming standard since I stopped my antidepressants, it doesn’t take long for my high to even out and let doubt in. We can no longer pretend this is a hobby. Now, we have a real following, opportunities to get sponsors, and the ability to charge for advertising. If we play our cards right, this could mean a new life for us—and our art. It also means we have something to lose. And as Finn grows more recognizable, I’ll have to share him with the world, watching from the sidelines, hiding behind a mask of my own creation.
27
Finn squats, examining a box on the floor of my apartment labeled Books. “It’s all in the knees,” he explains. “You have to protect your back.” After counting to three, he hoists the box into his arms and stumbles backward a few steps. “What the . . . there’s nothing in here.”
I can’t help laughing. “You can thank Rich. He didn’t return any of my paperbacks.”
“Maybe next time get a smaller box,” he teases. “I think this is the last of what I can fit in the car. We’ll have to come back for the rest next weekend.”
“That’s fine. We’ve got time.”
While he takes the last of today’s stuff downstairs, I get out a six-pack I bought for this occasion. I pop the cap from a bottle, and it clatters on the counter, the noise echoing off empty walls. It should be strange to see my place this barren, its eggshell-colored walls looking sad and splotchy, but it hasn’t been my home for months. The important things are already at Finn’s. We moved some last weekend, some today, and we’ll do the rest next Saturday since it’s the last weekend before March. That’s the way to move.
Finn walks through the front door with a pizza. “I ran into the delivery guy downstairs.”
“Perfect timing.”
I trade him a beer for a slice, and we stand at the counter to eat.
“When we get home, leave those on,” he says, nodding at my outfit.
“What, my overalls?”
He winks. “And the bandana.”
“The bandana is to keep sweat out of my hair,” I say. “Not to be cute.”
“Then definitely wear it, because what I’ve got in mind will leave you all kinds of sweaty.”
“Ew.” I toss a piece of crust at him. “Gross.”
He laughs and wipes his mouth on his sleeve. “How come you never got roommates?”
“I’ve never had any.”
“Never? But that’s like a rite of passage into adulthood.”
“My dad didn’t want me to. He offered to pay for me to live alone, and I’d be an idiot to turn that down.”
Finn shakes his head. “It’s good to live with people. You learn weird things about yourself, like that you fucking hate the smell of sautéed Brussels sprouts.”
I smirk. “Lucky for you, I don’t eat Brussels sprouts . . . roomie.”
“So what’d your dad say when you told him you were giving up your apartment to move in with a smutty photographer?”
I take a long pull from my bottle. Finn looks smug, because he knows I haven’t done it yet. Just the thought makes me perspire, so it’s good I’ve got the headscarf. “I’m telling him next week.”
“Right. You said that earlier this month, Hals.”
“I will.” I just need to figure out a way to present it so it doesn’t look as though I made this decision rashly, without thinking it through. “I was going to the other day, but he lost another client. I swear, when I finally worked up the nerve to enter his office, his face was purple with rage.”
Finn shakes his head, but it’s not as if he’s guilt-free.
“And what about you?” I ask. “Are you going to tell Marissa I’m the live-in maid next time she comes?”
He crams the last of his pizza into his mouth but continues to be gross by speaking. “You know, you haven’t checked your phone in a few hours.”
“Smooth topic change.”
“I’m just saying, I’m impressed. That’s a first.”
I pick a pepperoni off and eat it. It’s not a first. The daily count of new followers is higher than ever thanks to the Buzzfeed feature a couple weeks ago. We’re already at seventy-five-thousand followers, and one-hundred’s just around the corner. The article’s nearly doubled what we had, which is astounding, but we’re starting to plateau.
“I spent a lot of time looking through hashtags last night,” I admit. “I was trying to find new ones for us to experiment with, maybe tap into a new audience, but . . . I kind of fell down a rabbit hole of sex.”
“So that’s why you woke me up in the best way possible at two in the morning.”
I blush, remembering how it felt to have him come to life in my mouth. “I was excited.”
“And now?”
I shake my head at my pizza. “I don’t know. Now, in the light o
f day, I’m . . . not.”
Finn puts down his beer. “I told you to stop looking through that shit. What’d you see?”
“It wasn’t the comments.” I don’t have to ask what he means. I ruined our Valentine’s Day dinner date earlier this week. While Finn was in the restroom, I checked our account. Someone had commented that busty girls look fat in lingerie, and I read it with a mouthful of chocolate lava cake. I nearly spit it all over my plate. By the time Finn returned to the table, I was convinced that person was right. I was too fat, too gross to be half-nude in such a public forum. Finn threatened to delete the account if I didn’t promise to stop reading comments and messages. It didn’t matter that all other feedback about our Butter Boudoir shoot was good. Better than good. That comment haunted me for days.
I agreed to Finn’s conditions and turned off push notifications. I’ve still been checking things regularly, just not several times a day like before. “I was looking at accounts similar to ours,” I explain. “They post less than we do but have hundreds of thousands of followers.”
“We’re brand-fucking-spanking new, Hals. What we’ve done in a few months is incredible.”
“I know. I just wonder. What if we posted twice a day for a while?”
“You going to quit your job and pose for me for a living?”
“Maybe.”
He gives me a look that warns me not to go down this path, but sometimes, when it comes to this stuff, Finn needs a push. He gets business, but he doesn’t always know how to mix it with his art.
I shift my hip against the counter. “We’re already getting a few sponsor requests a month. The more followers we have, the more money we can command.”
“And is that what this is about for you? Money?”
“You know it isn’t.”
“So why are you bringing that up?”
“It’s a bonus. Imagine if one day, you and I did this for real. As a living. We get a five-thousand-dollar sponsor every month, and that’s just to start.”
“It’s a nice idea,” he admits. “I just don’t want you getting your hopes up. Things are going well, so let’s just keep doing what we’re doing.”
“Posting twice a day is doing what we’re doing. It’s just doing it more.”
He sighs and looks out the window over the sink. Under the harsh kitchen lights, the lines around his eyes are obvious. “It’s supposed to be a little warmer this weekend. We should do something. Get out of town.”
“Finn.”
He turns back to me. “We don’t have enough material to post more. As it is, we’re shooting every weekend and some weeknights.”
“I know. And we’re running out of body parts.” And captions. I tense with the thought. Something has to give. The only thing I’ve been able to write about lately is Finn, but it’s personal, not anything I want to share. Not even with him. It’s about my boyfriend, not a faceless sex partner like the fantasy we create for people.
Finn narrows his eyes. “So what do you suggest?”
I’ve given this a lot of thought. Finn isn’t just getting recognition for his work. Since last month, girls have started requesting him, the sexy photographer. I know he’s seen it, even if he hasn’t mentioned anything. “There’s only one photo of you. The one in the suit.”
He shakes his head. “I’m behind the camera, not in front.”
“They want more of you, babe. You’re the one bringing in all these people.”
“Me?” He laughs. “If you think that, you’re even more modest than I thought. This account is all about you. Fuck. You got a marriage proposal the other day.”
I try not to smile but fail epically. “I did?”
“It’s in the messages.”
I’ve been avoiding those, but now I’m tempted to look. “Well, yes, I have fans too, but they’ve seen so much of me. All of me. But you? Or even us, together? That picture you took while unbuttoning my collar from behind—they love that one.” I put my bottle down and go to him, touching the hem of his t-shirt. My fingers are wet from condensation, and they leave a damp spot. “I love that one.”
“We did that in the heat of the moment. It was a quick, easy shot. I can’t do a whole session that way, setting up the camera and then posing for the timer.”
“Then let’s hire someone.”
He slow-blinks. “To take the photos? Are you kidding? I’m the fucking photographer. This is my work.”
“No, no, no.” I flatten my hands on his chest and lean into him. “I wasn’t saying that at all. I mean we can hire another model. If we don’t shoot his face, they won’t know it’s not you. Or maybe they will, but just having something fresh will revive us.”
“Revive us? We just had a marathon month.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Not really.”
“He and I would pose together, and you’d direct us. You’d have complete control.”
“You want someone else’s hands on you,” he deadpans.
“It’s just business, babe. You can even pick the model, I don’t care who he is.”
“I’m not going to pick a man to—” His chest expands with a breath. “I don’t even . . . is this about yesterday?”
I have the urge to pull away, but I don’t. I don’t want this to turn into a fight. “What about yesterday?” I ask.
“You know what, Halston.”
I drop my eyes to his chest. Finn was commissioned, for a lot of money, to shoot a local socialite’s boudoir session for her fiancé. If that’s not bad enough, she was made famous by stealing that fiancé from her best friend. I would’ve let him do it, but he accepted without consulting with me. “It’s not about that.”
“I told you, you have nothing to worry about. I’ve literally not thought about another woman since I met you.” He lifts my chin by his knuckle. “The money I make is ours, not mine. Come to the shoot with me. You can be the director.”
“I’ve heard she’s dumb, but I’m sure she’s not that dense. She’ll know who I am,” I point out.
He frowns. “Do you want me to cancel it?”
I’m not worried about her. I’m anxious about what this means for us. Finn’s website is getting traffic now. My designer did a great job. It even has a Press section, and there are more than a couple articles in it. Me? I have nothing. Even though Finn mentions me in every interview, there’s no website with my name on it.
If Finn starts taking other jobs and shooting less for our account, what does that mean for me? What do I even have, professionally speaking, without this? I never even dared to fantasize that one day, I might write for living, until Finn came along. But the truth is, that dream is smoke and mirrors. I haven’t actually written anything in months, nothing worth sharing, at least. What if this is it for me, but for Finn, it’s just the beginning?
“Don’t cancel it,” I say. No matter how low I feel, I would never ask Finn to jeopardize his success for me. “I trust you, and this isn’t about her—it’s about us.”
He rubs his thumb over the corner of my mouth. “Tell me more about that.”
“I want more for us. I want to quit my job and be with you all the time.” At the beginning of our relationship, I might’ve been embarrassed to admit that, but now? I know Finn loves hearing my stalker-ish thoughts.
He steps even closer to me, running a hand down to the seat of my overalls. He pulls me against him. “All the time, huh? And you’re not worried about the ramifications of hourly sex?”
I arch an eyebrow at him. “The ramifications?”
He shifts, pinning my hips to the counter with his. “You’ll have to help me with these overalls . . . unless there’s some secret flap down there for easy access.”
I get a coat of goosebumps but try to focus on the task at hand. “Imagine it,” I tell him. “You don’t have to take any more shit jobs photographing spoiled brats. I don’t have to leave our bed at seven in the morning.” I slip my hand into the waist of his jeans, trailing my finger
along his hip. His Adam’s apple bobs when he swallows. “We sleep in. We shoot a new photo or two every day. I sit at the window and write while you edit. We cook breakfast . . . for dinner.”
He groans.
Without bothering to undo his pants, I squeeze my hand into his underwear and take him in my fist. “We make love whenever, wherever. That’s our life. If we can build this business even bigger.”
Finn assaults my mouth with a hungry kiss.
I have my answer. He wants me, he chooses me—for now. If I can bring new life into our work, I’ll buy myself a little more time. As long as our follower count goes up, so does Finn’s career. But I’ll still be here where I started. If I don’t find a way to keep up, I risk getting left behind.
28
It’s not until I’ve hung up my jacket and emptied my pockets in the foyer that I hear voices. Specifically, one voice. And it’s much too deep to be Halston’s. I head to the studio.
Halston swivels in my office chair when I enter. She brightens with a smile. “There you are.”
I put down my camera bag. “I thought we were doing this at seven.”
“No, I told you six.” She comes over to me, links an arm around my waist, and gestures to the couch. “Finn, this is Ken.”
Ken King—supposedly his real name—sets a steaming mug on the side table and stands to shake my hand. “Nice to meet you. I’m looking forward to this.”
Looking forward to touching my girlfriend—I’m sure he is. Halston found him on Facebook, a friend of a friend and a working model with a similar build to mine. He’s even got some light brown scruff. I touch my jaw and look down at Halston. “Can I talk to you?”
“Sure.” Her breath smells like coffee. She smiles at Ken. “Excuse us.”
I lead her out with a hand on her upper back, shooting Ken a glance on the way. I close the studio door once we’re in the hallway. “He’s been here since six?”
“Just about.”
“And you let him in? You should’ve waited for me.”
Slip of the Tongue Series: The Complete Boxed Set Page 100