by Alexa Davis
I wanted to get into costume design. Jackson had even agreed that long-term, a better plan was needed than simply “looks good in clothes.” I had fought learning to sew when my grandmother had taught me. But, once I got to Los Angeles, and New York, and anywhere else there was work for me, I’d come to appreciate the value of that skill and earned a deep respect for the ins and outs of the fashion world you didn’t find on the runway.
I sat in my plane seat, grinning like an idiot, as I went over my conversation with Jackson the night before. He’d managed to make me feel intelligent and talented and, without once telling me so, beautiful. He didn’t ask me for pictures of my breasts, or send me any R-rated pictures of himself (thank God). I felt a frown start to pull at my mouth and schooled my face blank again. Just because he hadn’t gone through all the typical male responses, didn’t mean he thought I was ugly. Even if he did, I wasn’t about to start wearing my mother’s perpetual bitch face. She was stick thin and could wear anything, but she looked at least five years older than she was. If I was going to stay in the business, I needed to fight that part of my genetics and maintain youth and healthy living as long as possible.
The forty-minute flight was an eternity of having my phone in flight mode. The little commuter plane didn’t even have wifi, so I couldn’t check my emails or work while I was en route, and I was already flipping out a little about how to make my next paycheck, even before the prize money hit my account.
I had my phone out and turned back on before the plane finished taxiing to the gate, scrolling through emails and missed messages. Nothing from Jackson yet but, for all I knew, he was still sleeping off our late night, and I wouldn’t have blamed him. Upside, I had two casting calls for bit parts and had gotten a job in a music video. It wasn’t my favorite, but I appreciated every bit of work that came in, even if I had to struggle to find my gratitude. I replied to my agent while I was waiting for my bags, and got into my Uber app for a ride home.
Chapter Four
Jackson
I slept for three or four hours, but it was fitful and restless, so I finally gave up and headed downstairs. Thankfully, Mom or Rachel had set something aside for me, and Patty sat me down at the family kitchen table with a fresh, steaming cup of coffee that was nearly half cream in my extra-large Captain America mug, just the way I liked it.
I checked my messages as I stuffed my face with biscuits and gravy with a few slices of thick-cut bacon. I was surprised to see that C.J. had called me, and not at all unhappy to find out that she wanted to talk again. My sleep had been hijacked with images of her, the sound of her voice, even her laugh. Not that it was the first time I’d wanted to get to know a good-looking woman better, but it was my first celebrity getting to know you.
Looking at the time, I figured she was on her flight, so I got my boots on and went for a ride to clear my head. I was only a couple weeks away from starting school again and somewhere along the way, I’d got bored with life. I loved the ranch, but he older I got, the more time I spent with my computers. Because I was the youngest, no one had ever made me muck stalls or break colts. There were no expectations of me to excel or achieve. It was like no matter what I did, it would never live up to the guys who had come first.
When I was a kid, it was great getting praised every time I belched or broke wind. Then as I got older, it stopped being novel that everything I did got cheers, but nothing seemed to matter. They didn’t even complain when I spent days alone in my room, coming out only to refuel my caffeine-addled body, or ever ask if I was doing well in school. I thought for a moment, but couldn’t remember if I’d even bothered to call home when I made the dean’s list. Talking to C.J., I’d felt adventurous, brilliant, and worldly. She was articulate and funny, and driven to succeed on her own, without the support of her own family.
I rode over the fields where my parents kept their adopted wild mustangs, and found myself outside the new training facility that my oldest brother, Danny, had built for his race horse. His horse master, Pete, and jockey, Verica, were outside the stables talking as Verica brushed out the mane and tail of Danny’s pride and joy, Texas Tango.
Pete glowed as he watched over the tiny woman and I had to admit to myself, he looked ten years younger when he stood by her. I liked her well-enough, but she was horse-crazy to a level I would never understand. Which, only made the Pete, Verica combination make even more sense.
Lago Colina belonged to them, more than it felt like it did to me. I loved the land, but I was about to put in my last year of college unless I went for my master’s. The next summer, I needed to have another place to go because I just couldn’t keep moving back home and hiding away until it was time to leave again. Out in the middle of nowhere, it just got too easy to be a hermit in my room.
The night before, I’d realized exactly how out of it I was. All my recent movie experiences had been pirated, the most fun I’d had was taking advantage of a website glitch that allowed me to put rainbow banners and pro-gay messages on a Westboro Baptist page, and the only time I ate solid food was when my mom brought it to me, or her assistant, Patty, dragged me down to join the family.
God. I was turning into a stereotype. I waved to Pete and turned around. There was a streamer conference in California coming up, in a couple of months. I briefly wondered exactly how creepy it would be to C.J. if I showed up there while she was doing her cosplay thing. I dismissed the thought. It was definitely too creepy. Still, I wanted to talk to her again, and more importantly, I wanted to see her, face to face.
I got back to the house and hopped online while I checked my phone again. I’d missed a call from C.J., and caught myself grinning at the sound of her voice as she thanked me for talking the night before, and apologized for keeping me up so late. If we’d been in the same state, it would’ve been the perfect day after a first date. I rethought heading out to the next big convention. It was worth the thought, anyway. With the beginning of school imminent, it would be nice to take a last summer trip, anyway.
I called her back and was just figuring out a message in my head when she picked up on the last ring. Caught off guard, I didn’t answer right away when she picked up. She said my name, and I laughed.
“Sorry, I was already past the ringing to the voice mail. I had to adjust.”
She returned my laugh. “I totally understand. Sometimes it’s easier to leave a message. When I get to that point and I’m ready to leave a message, I hope no one picks up.”
“Well, I was just calling to make sure you made it home safe, after being up all night.”
“Yeah, I made it home. I just got done feeding Stiles and was putting my clothes in the wash.”
“Wait, you do your own laundry? I have to admit, I didn’t think celebrities did anything for themselves.”
“Asshat,” she laughed. “I’m sure there are even A-listers out there who can clean up after themselves. I had fun last night. More fun than I’ve had in a while.”
“Me too. In fact, I liked talking to you so much, I toyed with the idea of attending the next conference in California in September, and maybe taking you out for coffee or lunch, if you’re comfortable with that.” I started to sweat in the length of the pause. “Or, maybe we can forget I said anything, and carry on…”
“No, I think it’s a great idea. I was just thinking about how to make it work, and if you wanted to do anything else, how we’d fit it in.”
“Well, I appreciate you thinking you’d want more than coffee with me. Especially considering I’m technically one of your paying stalkers.”
She gasped and scoffed. “Please, never call yourself that again, or we really can’t talk anymore. Ew.”
I laughed, surprised at how loud and easy it was to laugh with her.
“Okay, so, I guess we have a plan. You come out to California for the convention if we don’t get tired of each other before then. We can meet up for coffee, and if we still like each other in person, you can buy me dinner, or one of those ridiculou
sly expensive photos with Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen. “
“Wait, you don’t get those for free? Why are we even talking, then?”
She giggled, and I puffed up like a rooster, instantly grateful no one could see me. She talked to me while she finished unpacking, with her phone on speaker, and I helped her fill the time until she was set to start her stream. I asked her for a picture to use with her profile on my phone, as she was starting up her streaming computers. She promised to send one, and we hung up, only for me to immediately receive a picture of dry, scaly, wrinkled skin. I stared at it for a full minute before I realized what I was looking at. I typed a quick reply of “That’s the hottest elbow I’ve ever seen. Thanks!” and I shelved my phone and started my computer.
She invited me to play with her again, and I got to chat with the other girl and the two guys she usually teamed up with, who were all streamers. It felt weird being one of the people being watched for once, and I was really, really glad I didn’t have the additional stress of having my own stream and trying to entertain people who were probably better at these games than I was.
We had fun, and in messages that only she and I could see, we got flirtier and less inhibited the longer we played. I missed supper with the family, not that they’d noticed, and when I looked out the window, the sky was already turning orange over the tree line. I took my phone off the charger and took a picture, and sent it to her phone. On the other end of my internet connection, I heard her gasp, and then she paused the game to show her audience the view from my window. I felt my face heat up when she referred to me as her “favorite guy” and hoped that I wasn’t expected to say anything.
There was a lot of talk about where the picture was taken, until I finally caved and joined the conversation. There was honest interest in a computer geek and sometimes hacktivist who wore boots and a ball cap, who rode horses and could rope a calf. I’d never talked much about my family life, because as soon as they heard “horse and cattle ranch” people assumed I was a dumb hick. The guys asking me questions probably still thought that. But, they sure as hell couldn’t say that in front of the super-hot model from Oklahoma farm country.
Still, it made me smile to hear guys asking about what kind of truck I drove (Chevy) and if I had my own horses (Coddle Me and Yankee Bastard). In our private chat, C.J. started to tease that she’d have to come see me and do a stream from the ranch, or I was going to have to stream myself. The interest was high enough that, for a split second, I considered it. Then I remembered that my anonymity was both a priority and a matter of personal safety for me, after some of the shenanigans I’d pulled in my home town of Austin in the not too distant past.
I typed to C.J. that she’d have to come see me, and do the stream herself, since the less the local branch of Big Brother Law saw of me, the better. Not that I hadn’t had good cause. My older brothers, Logan and George, had recently begun subcontracting work for George’s father in law and taking on projects for their new company, Hargrave Construction. A competitor had been undercutting them so bad that, to stay in business, George had to call in the family card and take more work than he felt comfortable with from his new in laws.
I’d helped George out in the past, so he came to me, asking if I could track down any evidence that those ultra-low bids were the result of shady dealings of any kind. It had only taken a few hours to blow their computer security wide open, and when I did, I’d discovered that not only were the boys at Austin Building and Supply fudging their quotes with lower quality materials, they’d been bribing city and county officials to take their bids and then padding their own pockets with the difference between the money coming in from the tax payers, and that which was going out to buy shoddy materials.
It had been truly satisfying to have so many sets of cajones in a vise at once and, I had, perhaps, gone a little over board with my very public retribution, in the form of private documents and memos being released with links directly to the people behind them, both to law enforcement and the general John Q. Public. Yeah, that had felt damn good. So good, I wasn’t as careful as I should have been and almost got caught.
No, I wasn’t going to throw my personal IP address out there for any curious internet division law man to start looking into. But I enjoyed the friendly curiosity of these fellow gamers, even if it was based largely on finding out about me, to find out why I was getting C.J.’s attention. Truth be told, I was mighty curious about that myself. I just wasn’t as sure I’d like the answer if I got it.
Chapter Five
Carina
There was something about his voice that set Jackson apart. Every time he joined me in game, my number of female viewers in chat skyrocketed. After a couple of weeks of playing together, even one of my girlfriends, Kimmie, sent me a private message just to swoon over how deep and gravelly he sounded over the mic. Imagining his sun-bleached hair and deep set eyes looking down at me and talking in his “sexier than a Rockstar” voice just about had me undone, and I hadn’t even met the guy face to face. Of course, I wasn’t about to tell him that.
Every time someone suggested that with his gaming skills and that amazing, shale-dipped-in-chocolate voice, he should stream, he changed the subject, or went quiet. He obviously wasn’t interested in that, but he handled the guys like a professional diplomat and I got a ton of messages from people encouraging me to keep him around, because they liked his sense of humor and modesty. They even thought that a home on the range kind of stream might be fun. That was, if we still liked each other in person.
My stomach felt tight and knotty thinking about what I would do if I did stop liking him when we met, or worse, if I didn’t, but he decided I was just some dumb skinny bitch who’d got lucky and been “discovered” in a shopping mall one day on a trip into Tulsa.
I ended my stream a full hour early one afternoon, after asking Jackson if he’d like to spend a little time playing as just the two of us. From a couple thousand miles away, it was about as close to asking him in for coffee as I was going to get. He made me laugh a hundred times over stupid things, and we played until after midnight again. It had been a long time since I’d enjoyed gaming that much and, even better, I was ignoring every message and invitation that scrolled up my computer screen as we played.
It was getting late and we were getting to the end of our run when, suddenly, he dropped me and stopped talking. I checked the Ventrilo room we were in and he was gone, but still in game. After a few tries at asking him where he’d gone, he said a friend had asked him to help her with something, and then he stopped responding. I replied with a few choice phrases that would make my grandmother turn in her grave, and logged off. It had been a long time since anyone had ditched me for another girl and, in that moment, I figured that was all I needed to know about Jackson Hargrave.
I didn’t go so far as to delete him from my phone, but I logged into my stream to ban him there, and went to bed feeling irritable and hurt, but mildly pleased with myself for at least removing his voice from my stream. Stiles the cat cuddled up under my blanket and I watched a couple of YouTube videos fans had uploaded for me on my phone. I made sure I liked them and thanked the fans for taking the time to immortalize my cosplay win, and I fell asleep with my phone still in my hand.
The darn thing started vibrating and woke me up before six the next morning and I scrolled through texts from Jackson, a series of questions that from their time stamps had taken close to an hour for him to send, but to my dry-eyed, caffeine-less morning brain, felt like I was being jack-hammered with meaningless drivel from an idiot who hadn’t realized how good he had it. I viciously hoped that he’d spent the night worrying that I would never speak to him again, turned off my phone, and plugged it in, since sleeping with it had left me with almost no juice.
I made myself a boring, skinny-girl breakfast of egg whites and cantaloupe, and brewed a strong pot of coffee. I rushed through a yoga routine and eventually gave up. I was still pissed that I’d finally found a guy I
liked and he had immediately turned out to be a jerk. I ended up lying flat on my back in the corpse position, with Stiles bumping me with his forehead and purring in a passive aggressive attempt to remind me to feed him. One deep, self-pitying sigh turned into two and, after a few moments, I was breathing deep and even with Stiles purring against the top of my head. I was quickly losing my irritation to my sweet, adopted fur-baby’s ministrations.
I cracked open Stile’s favorite cat food and infused my morning with blessed caffeine before settling in to check emails, beg for work, and budget my winnings so I could afford more costume materials.
My phone was vibrating hard enough that it was shaking itself right off the table next to my pull-out bed when I was cleaning up, but it was Jackson again, and I felt my irritation creeping back. I answered tersely, even more frustrated when he talked right over me, as though he couldn’t understand me being upset at all.
“Look, Jackson, I don’t care who you hang out with. We don’t even know each other. But, if a chick said they had time to give you, then bailed in the middle of it because some random guy had asked them to go hang out, you’d feel pretty damn insulted too. I mean, God, are you twelve? I would have happily helped out too, being personable and good at games is, well, kind of my job, you know?” He didn’t answer right away, and if I hadn’t heard him sigh, I would’ve thought he’d hung up. I took a deep breath, then another, trying to find that calm again.
“Look, C.J., I wasn’t trying to insult you…” Jackson began, but I didn’t want to hear any excuses.