Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Flynn
Mrs. Rawlings leads me to a high-end clothing store. I’m not a shopper, but I’m sure the inside of this place is much nicer than the inside of a jail cell. So I open the door and glance down the street as she steps inside.
“I’ll be right back,” I mumble, eyeing the end of the block, where June is taking a photo of her tour group in front of a sculpture.
“I promise,” I add without waiting for Callie’s permission before I sprint down the sidewalk and cross the street, holding out my hand to give an apologetic wave to the man in the BMW who has to slam on his brakes so he doesn’t hit me.
“Let me take it,” I say to June as she holds up her phone to take pictures of the group posing with their bikes.
She squints at me.
“Then you can be in the photo too,” I say, taking her phone and nodding for her to get in the picture.
“I don’t need to be in—” she starts to say.
“Just say thank you and get over there.” I grin with way more confidence than I had at the gallery.
She slides into the middle, and I take several shots. Then one of the tourists asks her about a nearby restaurant, so I quickly add myself to her contacts, including a goofy selfie, then I set a reminder on her phone for eight o’clock tonight: Call Flynn, the sexy guy from the gallery.
“Thanks,” she says with a laugh when I hand her phone back to her. “I was going to take a selfie with them in the background. It’s the customary tour photo. You ruined that.”
I shrug. “This one will be more memorable.”
“Why is that?” She slides her phone into her crossbody bag.
“Because you’ll always remember who took it.”
“Is that so?”
I glance toward the clothing store and mumble, “Yeah. Listen, I’m Flynn, by the way. And I have to go, but I’m sure I’ll see you around.”
“Don’t count on it. The Twin Cities have close to four million people.”
I jog across the street before looking back at her. “Oh, I’m counting on it.”
June bites her lower lip and grins. I’m back! The temporary glitch in my brain from the gallery has vanished.
Callie is nowhere in sight when I step into the store filled with boring music, a pungent cologne stench, and displays of men’s clothes that look entirely too layered. Who wears two shirts and a jacket at the same time with shorts and leather loafers?
“Can I help you?” A bald guy with a measuring tape draped around his neck eyes me over his reading glasses low on his bulbous nose.
“I’m looking for a woman about this tall.” I gesture with my hand at my shoulder. “Blondish-gray hair, and—oh, there she is. Never mind,” I say, stepping past him toward Callie, who’s next to a display with her arms full of clothes.
She eyes me with an unasked question. I’m getting really good at reading her, and this is only my first day.
“The girl with the bike helmet, the one at the gallery? She needed me to take a picture of her and the tourists.”
“Welcome. Can I get a dressing room started for you?” A young woman, who looks like Barbie, asks while taking the men's clothes from Callie.
“Thank you,” she says to the woman.
“Is Mr. Rawlings meeting us here? Because those clothes are not my style.”
“Flynn,” Callie says, “I don’t think you have a style, but we’ll find one for you.”
“Jeans, a T-shirt, and black boots are a style. Probably the most classic style,” I say.
She ignores me while browsing more racks of clothing.
I obey. Ruff. Ruff. Try on clothes. She picks the winners, and we leave with bags of shit I’m calling uniforms because I have no desire to wear them around my friends. They’d probably steal them right off my back and sell them.
“Dude, did you rob a store?” Monroe asks after I open the apartment door and toss the bags of clothes onto the sofa, which doubles as my bed.
This place always smells of fabric softener. Naomi, his girlfriend, thinks all of Monroe’s clothes reek of gas and grime. He’s a diesel mechanic, so that tracks. Personally, I’d rather smell gas than fabric softener or overpowering perfume.
“No,” I say, grabbing a beer from the fridge while Monroe washes the dishes because we don’t have a dishwasher, and Naomi gets pissed if this place isn’t clean.
“I took a customer’s car for a joyride and got caught.
So now he owns my ass unless I want to be charged with grand theft auto, which is not what happened. But who’s going to believe me?”
Monroe pauses his scrubbing. “So he took you on a shopping spree?”
“No. His wife did.”
“Are you banging his wife?”
I smirk behind the can at my lips. “No. She supposedly doesn’t like sex.
I think it’s an issue isolated to wealthy people.
Maybe when you have the money of a king, it’s more satisfying than sex.
” I take a long pull of my beer before shrugging.
“Poor folks like us have to fuck. It’s really the only form of pleasure we can afford. ”
Monroe snickers. “One hundred percent. So, are they adopting you or what’s the deal? Why do they care what you wear?”
“Mmm, that reminds me.” I set my beer on the counter, pull my phone from my pocket, and search up muse.
I don’t think my job has anything to do with Zeus and Mnemosyne, so I look at the second definition.
The source of inspiration for a creative person.
“I’m the muse for this rich dude’s wife,” I say.
“They live in an old mansion overlooking the lake. Huge garage. Fancy cars. And supposedly he thinks she’s going to kill herself, and I’ve been hired to inspire her to …
I don’t know. Not kill herself? So she bought me clothes to wear. Ridiculous clothes.”
I empty the bags onto the coffee table littered with weird things like fake plants in a vase atop a stack of books and some sort of stone statue of a chubby dude.
Buddha or some shit like that. It’s all Naomi’s.
“This shirt was over five hundred bucks,” I say, holding up a lime green bowling shirt with weird-ass designs on it.
They might be seahorses. “It’s printed silk. Ever heard of that?”
“It’s butt ugly,” Monroe says.
“I know. And linen pants.” I hold up the light gray pants that I will never wear when I’m not inspiring Callie. “Isn’t linen something you sleep on or use to wipe your mouth?”
He laughs, drying his hands with a towel while shaking his head. “Don’t know, man. I’ve never had linen money.”
“Italian leather loafers.” I pull the shoes from the box.
“The lady at the store said to wear them without socks. Can you see me wearing leather shoes without socks?” I toss them onto the sofa and sigh while parking my hands on my hips and inspecting the rest of the preppy wardrobe.
I wonder how much I can sell it for when this gig is over?
“What do you do to inspire this rich woman?” he asks.
“Good question. Today I drove her to a gallery to pick up a painting she had framed. Then we shopped for these clothes. After that, I returned the van to the shop, got chewed out by my boss for the joyriding incident. But then he hugged me, which was uncomfortable, and said Mr. Rawlings would be good for me.” I collapse onto the sofa covered in clothes.
“How long do you have to work for them?”
“Dunno.”
“How much does this muse job pay?” Monroe opens a bag of Doritos.
“No clue. I didn’t exactly have a choice in the matter. He said my needs will be taken care of. Whatever that means.”
Monroe slowly chews on a chip, gaze pointed toward the floor.
“What?” I ask, because I know that look. He’s not telling me something.
“I’m surprised they don’t have you live with them.”
“Why would I live with them?” I shove the clothes back into the bags and kick them under the coffee table so Naomi doesn’t do her annoying throat-clearing thing while scowling at me until I read her mind.
“I mean,” Monroe shrugs, “if they offered you a room, you’d never be late to work, and you’d have an actual bed. Probably your own bathroom. Rent free.”
“It would feel like a prison—someone always scrutinizing me.”
“Like Naomi?”
I frown. “Let me guess. She wants me out even though she doesn’t want to admit she’s living here, and you secretly don’t want her living here.
I’m your last defense. The buffer zone. If I move out, she’ll replace your furniture and buy plants which need to be watered.
will deliver packages with her name on them.
And you’ll be banned from taking a shit in your own apartment while she’s here. Oh, wait. That’s already happened.”
“That’s not entirely true,” he mumbles after shoving a chip into his mouth.
“Stop lying. You know I’m right. Last week, you ran down the street to take a dump at the gas station because she was soaking in the bathtub, and you’re too damn weak around her to just perch and drop a load on the goddamn throne you pay for every month.
The Rawlings have a toilet in their garage. That will be you someday.”
“Says the guy who has never had a girlfriend.”
“I get laid,” I say, lacing my fingers behind my head.
“Yeah, well, I don’t have to wear a condom.
” Monroe puts a chip clip on the bag and returns it to the top of the fridge.
“And I don’t have to go out every night like a caveman hunting for food.
No pickup lines. No wondering if a boyfriend or husband is going to find my dick in his girl and beat the crap out of me while I’m fully exposed.
” He eyes me, knowing that’s a low blow.
“So,” he continues, “if I have to run down the street every now and then to take a shit, it’s still better than your situation. ”
“I’ll have you know, I met someone today. She could be the one.”
He laughs, plopping his skinny ass into the worn brown leather recliner. “I doubt it, but spill.”
“Why do you doubt it?”
“Because you have a terrible habit of oversharing way too early. Did you tell her you grew up in foster care?”
“No.”
“Does she know how many broken bones you’ve had? The number of scars on your chest and back? All that shit?”
“No.”