Chapter 14
FOURTEEN
PERRY
“Glitter is diabolical,” I said to Rex, taking a sip of my drink. “What did you do?”
“Maybe this is where you decide that I’m the problem, but he wanted to move faster than I was comfortable moving.
When I told him I wasn’t ready to let him move in, he accused me of not caring about him, of cheating on him, all kinds of things.
I thought we smoothed it over, but the next time he stayed over, his parting gift was a glitter bomb. ”
“That’s not at all mentally unstable.”
“What about you?” Rex asked. “What’s your craziest breakup story?”
My stomach dropped into my shoes and my face grew hot, humiliation burning just under the skin. How did I explain to him that I was good enough for men to want to fuck but not good enough for men to want to date.
“In order to have a breakup story,” I began, doing my best to maintain eye contact, like this wasn’t a secret I was trying to hide from or that embarrassment wasn’t churning in my guts. “One must first have someone to break up with.”
Rex was quiet for a minute so I kept going.
“I don’t mind being single, but it’s been fun to see how the other half lives. I’d never even been on a date before all this.”
A serious expression fluttered across his face and he leaned back, his face serious but kind. “I feel like I’m cheating you out of something.”
“Out of what?” I scoffed. “Saturday nights at home alone with my phone? It’s a first date, not baby’s first steps.”
“But shouldn’t it have been with someone you were interested in?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know about that. I mean… is something less special just because you’ve already done it? Like, were the flowers I gave you less beautiful because I’d already given you flowers before? Did the existence of the first experience take anything away from the enjoyment of the second?”
Rex’s features relaxed and he gifted me with a smile that said he understood what I meant. “You’re right.”
“Keep that in mind and we’ll get along just fine.”
“Noted.” Rex took a sip of his drink, then dunked a fry in a pool of ketchup on the side of his plate. “Does your line of work make it hard to date? Can I ask that?”
“You can ask me anything. And yeah, I guess it does. I mean, like… I’m not into dating other models, you know.”
“Why not?”
I looked at Rex and smiled. “Ever hear of the phrase don’t shit where you eat?
I’ve seen other models pull it off, but mostly it’s just mess and drama, and I’d rather not have my personal life and my work life be so closely enmeshed.
But being a model, it can be hard to find people outside of the industry who are okay with what I do.
Like they might not care that I do it, but they don’t want to be with someone who does.
And that’s fine. That’s fair, because I don’t think I have it in me to be sexually exclusive with anyone. ”
“Well, I hope I haven’t set the bar too high for your future dates.”
“I don’t know.” I pretended to ponder. “It’s hard to beat ex-boyfriend drama on the third date.”
“It figures that I haven’t seen him since the breakup and then he shows up when I’m on a date.”
My stupid little heart did a happy dance when Rex didn’t qualify that this was a pretend date. A practice run.
“The universe wanted you to know what bullet you dodged.”
Rex lifted his beer and held it toward me, waiting for me to lift mine and clink our glasses together. “To dodging bullets.”
“To dodging bullets,” I repeated, taking a sip as our gazes lingered, tangled up over the top of our drinks.
By the time our food was finished, Rex and I had managed to drain our drinks, and I wasn’t quite ready for the date to end yet.
Could I have driven? Sure. I’d had a sip of some really terrible wine at the other place and then a beer at The Anchor.
I was probably under the legal limit. Or I could have suggested an Uber, but I didn’t want to let Rex go yet.
“Take a walk with me?” I asked. “I need some time for this beer to work its way out of my system.”
“I could stand to stretch my legs.”
I hurried off and took care of the bill, and Rex met me by the doors. When we slipped outside, the sun had sunk below the horizon but just barely. So it was still light out, but it was fading fast.
Rex slid his arm around me and steered us away from the busier part of the street.
I let him cradle me against his side like he wanted me to be there, and I pretended that he wasn’t pretending at all.
That this was real and we were together and going for a walk after dinner, like it was something we always did. Or something we wanted to start doing.
I’d always looked at couples who did simple things together like go for walks or share an inside joke with a kind of envy that scraped at my bones.
I wanted it so bad. It was easy to forget at times that this was all for pretend.
This was all so we could convince his younger brother and a guy Rex used to be with that he was happy and had moved on.
“What about the guy your brother is marrying? Were you two together long?”
“He was a rebound after Bryson and I split.”
“Why don’t you just tell your brother about it? About the fling, I mean? If he didn’t mean anything to you, then it shouldn’t be a big deal, right?”
“Nigel and I are complicated. Our parents were older when he came along, and I helped raise him. And I do normally believe being honest is the best way out of any situation, but I don’t want to risk blowing up his relationship.”
“You don’t want him to hate you.”
Rex nodded.
“What if he doesn’t? What if you tell him and he doesn’t care? Or what if you tell him and it does blow up his relationship, but maybe it was meant to blow up?”
“What if I tell him and he never speaks to me again?” Rex’s voice was strained like he had to hold it tight or risk a flood of emotions coming out.
“Has he cut you off before? Is that part of the reason the two of you are complicated?”
He let out a sigh. “Nigel didn’t always appreciate having my help in his life. I tried to cut back as he got older, but I think part of him resented me for the time I spent with our parents. And with Mom gone now, Nigel is all I have left.”
“I can understand that. My family is not worth the paper the birth certificate was printed on. My real family now is my work family.”
“Another reason you don’t want to give up your work, I assume.”
The way Rex’s comment hit the nail on the head stole my breath.
Sometimes he felt too good to be true. A man who had experience being poly, who didn’t mind if his partners had other partners, who understood why my work was important to me and why I couldn’t walk away.
If he really were my boyfriend, I’d have to pinch myself.
“My work family is my family. Blue is like a brother to me. Well, a stepbrother, because we still work together from time to time. Lukas is like the dad of the bunch. He’s the owner of one of the studios I work with.
He really walks the walk. A lot of places give a speech about how this is a family and blah, blah, blah, but Lukas doesn’t do that.
He just lives it and shows you that it’s a family instead of trying to convince you that it is. ”
Rex listened as I told him about Leo, who had died tragically, leaving behind a younger brother who Lukas hired as a personal assistant so he could keep an eye on him and help him through the grieving process.
He listened while I explained how Lukas protected him and watched out for him and how he gave Ash a family again.
He listened without interruption while I told him about the times I slept on Lukas’s couch, under the guise of being too tired to go home, but really I’d just been too lonely to fathom going home to an empty apartment.
“And then I got Gumball,” I told Rex. “There was some kind of massive animal rescue that happened a while ago. It was a hoarder situation and—” I stopped and turned to Rex. “You probably know all about it because it was Blue who said he’d helped with the animals when they were confiscated.”
“It was a sad situation. Most of the outcomes were good, but there were a few of the animals who were too sick and didn’t pull through.”
“Shit. I’m sorry. That’s got to be the shittiest part of the job for you.”
“It’s definitely not fun. And Bryson, he didn’t exactly understand that I didn’t always feel like having sex the minute I walked in the door.
I mean, I try not to bring work home with me, but when you have to put someone’s pet down, or you’re not able to save a sick or injured animal, it’s hard to get in the mood. ”
“Ah yes, because everything is less important than Bryson’s penis. What a choad. What did you even see in him? I mean, is he packing? Are you a size queen? Because he was a solid five at best, and you’re hot enough to pull elevens all day long.”
Rex barked out a laugh. “Well, he certainly didn’t make me laugh, that’s for sure.”
We’d walked for some distance, wandering the streets in a lazy pattern that brought us farther away from The Anchor before we started to head back in that general direction.
The alcohol I’d drunk had long since worn off, and I couldn’t blame the floaty feeling on the grapes or the hops.
It was all Rex and the way his arm felt like it belonged around me.
Maybe that’s why I stopped under a newly lit streetlight and looked up at Rex, turning in his embrace so I was facing him.
The Anchor was the next block over, and I didn’t want to get in the car yet, not without kissing him.
The car felt like a period at the end of the date, and I wanted to kiss him before that because it felt like now was the time to do it.
Later it would be awkward, if it happened at all.
I put my hands on his chest, and Rex’s came to grip my waist. Maybe it was dumb to be this openly gay in public, but I needed a taste, just a quick one. I had to know if the floaty feeling would be fed by the press of his lips.
Slowly, giving him time to say no, or stop, or to pull away, I rose on my toes and after a pause, with my mouth just a fraction from his, I kissed him.
Soft from start to finish. More chaste than any kiss I’d had in a long time.
Just a brush of my lips against his, then his against mine when he kissed me back.
And that floaty feeling? I was ten feet off the ground now.
The world faded out, leaving only Rex and the devastating knowledge that I was in like with my fake boyfriend.