Chapter 2 #2
“I guess.” Ren did not love the idea of the app, but he also could concede that one, he was fairly desperate, and two, Gabriel was making some kind of logical sense.
How long would he be stuck in this stupid crush if he just stood here and passively waited for the right guy to come along? A guy who would make him feel the same kind of electric spark that Seth did?
He might be waiting a long-ass time, and one thing Ren did not possess in abundance was patience.
“Just think about it.” Gabe’s gaze was shrewd. Like he knew that Ren wouldn’t be able to stop, now that he’d put the idea in his head.
Ren turned back to his onions.
That was the downside of working with Gabe: he knew Ren better than he sometimes knew himself.
Seth didn’t give in to the inevitable for two whole days.
He didn’t want to ask out the cute bartender—who wasn’t Shaw, because he was very taken—at the Funky Cup. He didn’t want to invite the barista at his favorite coffee shop for a drink, because he’d learned the hard way that if things didn’t work out with someone he saw all the time, it got awkward.
So that left the last possible choice.
The app.
Lennox had told him the name of it, and he’d mentally noted it, not really intending to try it. But it was quiet and lonely in his house.
Lennox and Ash had headed to the Funky Cup for a late drink, and they’d invited him to go, but he wasn’t in the mood to socialize.
He definitely wasn’t in the mood to watch Ash and Lennox and the happiness they’d found—and yearn for things he couldn’t have.
It was easier than he’d anticipated to download the app, and then to create a login, but it was much harder to make a profile.
For job, he kept it simple, putting in, “Private security.”
When he hit the interests section, he got really stuck.
What were his interests? He had them, right?
The military hadn’t killed them all, right?
Even if they had, he’d been out for over four years.
He had to have interests, besides work. Finally he typed in, “Sparring and weightlifting. Art.” He did enjoy museums and galleries.
The more bizarre the art installation, the more interested he was.
But when the Protectorate had taken off and he and Lennox had gotten busy, that was the first thing that had fallen off his radar.
Maybe he could find someone who’d like to go with him again.
“Now,” he said out loud as he stared at his phone screen, “the tough part.”
He had no idea what to do about the profile pic. For security reasons, he’d already decided that he didn’t want to show his face, and the last thing he wanted was to post some kind of tacky headless, ab-heavy shot. Everyone would just think it was fake anyway.
He wasn’t in this to just hook up—though it might be nice to work off some of all this sexual tension if he met some guy that he didn’t see a future with—so the picture needed to indicate that.
He took a quick selfie, partially turning away from the camera, using the print of his favorite Picasso as the background, and then blurred what you could see of his face. Turned it black and white.
When he was done, Seth was mostly satisfied with how it had turned out.
He was just a dark-haired muddle—his memorable red hair dimmed—with the shapes of the Picasso print behind him.
Nobody would ever guess it was him.
It was, Seth realized as he finished his profile and saved it, kind of fun to not be himself. He could see right away what attracted people to this kind of anonymity.
There was no time to waste, and Seth started a search on the app, filtering out anyone who didn’t live in LA, and everyone who was really young. He didn’t mind dating someone younger, but he wasn’t interested in some young kid, either.
“No,” Seth said to himself as he started to scroll through the results. “No, no, no, definitely not. Too hot. Too full of himself. Too . . .” He made a face. “Too fake. Is anyone supposed to believe that jawline is real?”
It seemed that doctored pictures were the special of the day, because he had been through two pages of them so far.
He was beginning to be really glad that while he’d touched up his picture, he’d done the opposite. Nobody would ever bother messaging him. Not without him advertising just how hot he was as blatantly as everyone else.
He’d just congratulated himself on taking the first real step to get over this horrible fucking obsession when there it was.
Midway through the third page of results, Seth stopped scrolling abruptly.
“Seriously?” Seth exclaimed out loud.
Out loud.
Like just thinking it hadn’t been good enough.
Ren’s face stared out at him from the screen.
He hadn’t taken a really thirsty pic, because he hadn’t had to. Not with a face like that.
When Seth clicked onto the profile, it said things that he’d have expected.
Like how he was a culinary mashup genius—true, Seth thought resentfully—and that he was into trivia nights, which Seth knew too, because he was a certified creeper who’d spent too many hours purposefully eavesdropping on a guy who wasn’t interested in him.
But Ren’s profile also said that he liked finding the kind of secret spots that you can lose yourself in.
And that right there, encapsulated in a single phrase, was why Seth hadn’t been able to let this guy go.
It was right there, the depth of the man, only tantalizingly hidden, just out of view. Ren might pretend that he was shallow, but Seth knew better.
Seth also knew that this was one hundred percent, not-a-doubt-in-his-mind, Lorenzo Moretti.
And he’d joined the app, it said, only one day ago.
It shouldn’t have bothered him that after he’d turned Ren down, he’d gone looking for guys to sleep with.
That should not have been even remotely surprising. Ren was Ren, and Seth had never really expected him to change. Wanted him to change, sure, but expected? No.
But it still stung.
“Well, fuck you too,” Seth said out loud, throwing his phone down on the bed.
He didn’t need any further evidence that Ren was trying to move on, just the same as he was.
It shouldn’t hurt. It was still a terrible idea to sleep together, especially when they wanted two such completely different things.
But even with his limited experience, Seth had never had a guy work so goddamn hard not to sleep with him before.
Seth stood up and instead of letting himself pace, went to the kitchen.
He’d just make a nice calming mug of tea, which was a practiced task that usually helped him calm down.
If he was really lucky, it would put him right to sleep, and he wouldn’t be tempted to do .
. . whatever it was that he was suddenly tempted to do.
Not message Ren.
No way.
That would be both counterproductive and also idiotic.
The man doesn’t want to talk to you. He just wants to fuck you. That’s all.
Seth filled the teapot with water, and set it on the stove with a loud, satisfying bang.
But what if he didn’t know it was you?
The idea was tantalizing.
Pointless. But tantalizing.
Of course, Seth would end up having to reveal who he was. It wasn’t like they could meet in the dark. Seth couldn’t insist that they wear masks. Though that could be kinda sexy.
And, Seth knew, it wouldn’t matter.
In fact, there was no guarantee that Ren wouldn’t figure it out immediately. He was smart. And Seth, while hiding his face in his profile picture, hadn’t gone out of his way to lie about what he did or what he enjoyed.
Seth drummed his fingers on the counter.
Besides, Ren was just trolling for guys to sleep with.
What would messaging him accomplish? Even if he pretended to not be himself?
You could give him a chance to know you. You’ve never gotten to just talk to the guy before.
Seth took a deep, short breath, and then let it out.
He knew exactly what he’d be trying to do: win Ren over. Convince him that they might have something more than just sexual chemistry.
Before he could change his mind or decide that this was mad and crazy and absolutely the worst idea he’d ever had, Seth picked up the phone and selected the message option under Ren’s profile.
With a face like that, he’d have no end of guys desperate to talk to him and fuck him. He needed to be . . . different.
Somehow.
Hey, he wrote, I thought we were discouraged from using fake or touched-up profile pics.
It was a gamble. Hardly the riskiest thing Seth had ever done in his life, but it got the blood pumping anyway. His chamomile tea was going to be completely fucking useless.
He knew that every single guy who messaged Ren would immediately slobber all over how gorgeous he was.
The only way to play it was to take the opposite tactic, and hope that Ren found that amusing enough that he wouldn’t just ignore him.
Maybe he wouldn’t even answer.
Though Seth thought he knew human nature well enough. And Ren’s human nature?
Well, the guy was still hung up on his rejection from six months ago.
He wasn’t going to take an insult lying down.
Ren was in a bad mood.
A mood he’d been trying to eradicate since Seth had turned him down forty-eight hours ago but that kept persisting despite all his attempts to improve it.
He’d gone out with Sean and Gabe for a drink after they’d closed up their trucks, hoping he might meet someone at the Funky Cup that might distract him, but no dice. The crowd had been quiet, and Ren hadn’t seen anyone who had any shot at making him forget that Seth Abramson existed.
He’d come back alone, Gabriel going to stay at Sean’s house, and had flopped down on the couch, sticking his bare feet on the edge of the coffee table.
He leaned forward, picked up his phone, and because he’d exhausted every possibility except this one, he opened the Flaunt app and started to scroll through all the messages he’d gotten since creating his account yesterday.
He’d known he’d be getting a lot of private messages.