6. Malcolm #3
Stephanie finally manages to find her courage and leaps onto my lap.
Once she’s on firm footing, she keeps climbing.
She lands on my laptop and raises herself up on her hind legs, her little paws clawing the air for my attention—the signal that she wants to be held—not that it’s subtle.
I grab her and tuck her under my arm before she gets any more embarrassing.
“Is she always like that?” Bailey asks, clearly amused.
“I told you,” I mumble.
She sits back and appraises me. While she’s doing that, I glance at Ryan, and he looks away, turning to look at Bailey.
“You know,” she says to Ryan like I’m not here. “If he took off his shirt…”
“He’s not interesting enough,” Ryan says shortly.
I whip my head over to look at him. “Not— what ? I’m not enough what ?”
“No offense, Malcolm , but you’re too uptight to be a TikTok thirst trap.”
“Aw, give him a chance,” Bailey says then gestures. “The dog? Come on. You’ve gotta see it.”
See what, exactly? “Wait,” I say. “What are you guys talking about?”
Ryan sighs heavily. “She wants you and the dog to give financial advice on TikTok. Shirtless.”
I laugh awkwardly. “No, she doesn’t.” I look at Bailey.
“The dog kinda seals it. I can write the content. All you have to do is say it and post it.”
Hold on. “Did you call me uptight?” I ask Ryan, still stuck on that, and just generally not keeping up with their apparent mind meld .
“Yes.” He looks at me directly. Well, me and Stephanie. “I said you’re not interesting enough to pull together a big following in a hurry. Maybe if we had six months?—”
“Excuse me? First, I’m uptight, and now I’m not interesting? Why don’t you take your shirt off?”
His face goes red so fast, it’s like someone threw paint on it. “She’s not my dog, bro.”
My rage flares at the “bro.” “She’s not my dog either.”
“Tell her that.”
“Boys…” I hear Kaylin say from the living room couch. Her tone is motherly with a note of warning.
“Maybe he’s insecure about his body,” Bailey says to Ryan. “Do you have a dog?”
“I’ve got?—”
“I’m not insecure ,” I argue, cutting him off, then to Bailey I say, “You love this, don’t you? Objectifying a guy?”
“Kinda, yeah. Look, you’re not my type, but you’ve got a good tan. I assume there’s a set of muscles under there.” She waves a hand vaguely at my shirt. “We’d need a great handle,” she says, like this is the idea, and we’re running with it.
“He can’t do it,” Ryan insists.
“Why do you keep saying that?” I ask, growing more offended by the second.
“Because you’d have to remove the rod from your ass first.”
Never in my life have I been accused ? —
“At least I don’t let people put?—”
“Hey!” Kaylin’s voice rings out sharply, and suddenly she’s behind me, taking the dog away and flicking my earlobe. I shut my mouth.
Bailey leans forward. “Are you guys beefing?”
Why do people keep asking that?
“They used to be stepbrothers,” Kaylin says, telling my business to a total stranger .
“No shit?” Bailey eyes us both. “That explains the lack of manners. It doesn’t explain why you don’t think he can pull off a TikTok video without even giving him an audition.” She aims this last part at Ryan.
He’s still glaring ominously at me, knowing exactly what I’d been about to say. I’m so fucking glad Kaylin stopped me, grateful all over again that she stayed after I told her I needed a break. I do not deserve her.
“Fine,” Ryan says to Bailey, sliding his attention to his laptop screen. “Give him something to say and see how it goes.”
“I didn’t agree to this,” I tell him specifically.
“You’ll probably suck at it anyway, so I understand why you wouldn’t want to, golden boy.”
Low fucking blow.
“Asshole.” I stand up and rip my shirt off over my head. I’d tell him he can suck my dick, but he might actually take me up on it. I shudder. Ugh. Why does he get to me like this? I refuse to give him the satisfaction of being right. I am not uptight.
“Okay, okay,” Bailey says appreciatively, checking out my abs and somehow managing to ignore the tension. “This works.” She gestures at me and looks at Ryan who is very deliberately not looking at me.
“Give him something to say,” he mumbles. “You’ll see.”
I cannot wait to prove him wrong. My competitive streak has come online, and I refuse to back down.
Bailey types something into her phone and hands it to me. It’s an AI answer to the question “What’s a great stock market tip?”
“Are we planning to use AI for this?”
“It’s an audition,” she says. “And don’t disrespect Google. I learned everything I know from the internet.”
“Are you gonna film it?” I challenge Ryan who still hasn’t looked at me .
“Um…I can,” Kaylin says. “You need the dog, right?”
I watch her approach with Stephanie. She looks very unhappy with me. Not the dog. Kaylin. She hands me her Yorkie, though, and takes her phone out of her back pocket. All of a sudden I realize I’ve never done anything like this before. I get an instant case of stage fright.
“What do I do?” I ask anyone who’ll answer.
“Just read the top paragraph and look like a hot guy holding a dog,” Bailey says.
Ryan snorts but hides his mouth behind his hand.
Doing my best to ignore him, I look down at the phone. It says: A great stock market tip for long term success is to invest in a diversified portfolio and stay committed to your long-term goals, avoiding emotional and short-term trading.
“We’re gonna need better material,” I say. “Everyone knows this.”
“Not everyone,” Bailey argues because I can’t say anything right apparently. “And this is practice. Make it sexy.”
I gape at her. “What?”
“I told you,” Ryan says to her.
“I heard that,” I snap.
“I figured since you’re five feet away, but go ahead,” he taunts. “Show us what you got. Be sure to incorporate the dog, or it’s pointless.”
“This is ridiculous,” I say. “What does Stephanie have to do with anything?”
Bailey laughs. It’s the first time I’ve heard the sound come out of her, and the way she giggles would be endearing if I weren’t standing in the middle of my living room shirtless with three people staring at me waiting for me to read the most boring line of text ever written and “make it sexy.”
I look at Kaylin who’s got her phone aimed at me. “Are you filming already? ”
She nods.
“Great.” I run a hand through my hair and reposition the dog to make her more visible. In a deep, slow voice, which I guess could be sexy in the right context, I read the stupid line of advice.
Bailey is wrinkling her nose at Ryan when I look over at them.
“What?” I bark.
“Maybe you could lean against the wall or something?” she says.
“What was wrong with that?”
She shrugs. “It was…uptight.”
Ryan takes a breath I swear to God is a preface to I told you so, and I stop him. “Don’t say it.”
He bites his cheeks and gives me a look I’ll probably never understand except it’s shitty.
Bailey stands up like she’s going to direct me. “Lean on the wall and give the advice to the dog.”
“That’s gross,” I argue.
“It’s cute!” she says.
“I’m not sure,” Kaylin says, backing me up. “It could be kinda weird.”
Thank God.
“But I agree about leaning on the wall,” she adds.
“Lean how?” I ask her.
“For fuck’s sake.” Ryan sighs. “It’s like you’ve never seen a fucking TikTok video.”
“Give him a minute,” Bailey chides.
Ryan does not, in fact, give me a minute.
Instead, he pushes his chair back from the table and walks past me.
I watch as he lifts an arm, exposing his inked triceps, and presses his upper arm to the wall.
Meanwhile, he shoves his other hand in his pocket and does something with his body that stretches him out like an unwound snake. It’s?—
Something.
“Lean on a wall,” he says slowly like I’m new to English. “It’s not financial analysis.”
I could punch him. I really could. I could punch him in his pretty fucking face and break his stupid perfect nose and give him two black eyes.
I get that he’s smarter than I am. I know I got into Stanford because my father went there and knows people.
But now all I can think of is that financial statement I couldn’t make heads or tails of.
Glaring hotly at him, I fume, but because I also need to prove I’m not a fucking moron, I lean on the exact same wall, mirroring his position, hip out and everything, except while holding the dog. When I meet his eyes, his lips twitch as my arm flexes on the flat surface.
His gaze falls down my face, then my chest. As I warm all over, he pushes away from the wall. He nods to Kaylin. “Stand where I was,” he says to her.
What does that mean? Did he like what he saw? Should that be making me feel better? Because it is.
Thank God I don’t have time to think about it because a second later, I’m looking into the camera lens of Kaylin’s phone. She raises her eyebrows and smiles. “Mmm…much better. Now what was that you were saying about diversifying my portfolio?”