Chapter 21 #2
As soon as we hang up, I order Chinese food family style from a delivery app. I have no idea what Riley might want when he wakes up, but if he’s anything like me, his stomach is about to eat itself alive, so I order a few of the most popular dishes.
Once that’s taken care of, I drop my phone on the coffee table and scrub my hands over my face as I sink back into the chair.
Why wasn’t I thinking about how work would fit into all this when we were…
whatever we were doing last night? Because work and Riley are two totally different things, my brain supplies helpfully.
I’m not sure how that works, though—we literally met because of work.
But at the same time…what I feel when I’m with Riley isn’t like anything I’ve felt before when I’m working.
“Everything okay?” Riley’s concerned voice comes from the top of the stairs, startling me.
“Hey, sunshine…sorry, did I wake you?”
“No, I just woke up and you weren’t there and I worried something was wrong.
” He makes his way over to the couch and curls up against the arm, tucking his feet up under him.
He looks adorable, hair all mussed and eyes sleepy.
I pull the blanket off the back of my chair and hand it over to him, and he wraps up in it like a little burrito. “Are you hungry? I ordered Chinese.”
“That sounds amazing,” he yawns, snuggling deeper into the blanket. “What time is it, anyway?”
“Just after nine.”
“God, we slept so long,” he says with a frown. “Guess this day was a bust.”
“It kinda was,” I agree, “but I’m worthless on travel days anyway, especially with an early morning flight like that.”
Riley lets out a deep sigh, the weight of everything that’s happened today visible in the dark circles under his eyes, even after hours of sleep. “Tyler seemed like an asshole, but I definitely did not have eviction on my bingo card for this year. I’ll start looking for a place tomorrow.”
I don’t want him to start looking for a place tomorrow.
I want him to stay here. I just got him, and I’m not ready to be apart from him yet.
I want to spend my evenings watching television cuddled up together on the couch, and I want him to be here when I come home from work, and I want to wake up to him every morning.
I can’t tell him that, though; he needs to do what he feels is best for him. Instead, I say, “It’ll be okay, I promise. And it’s really no big deal for you to stay here. Besides, I could use the company. Jess is always telling me I’m too much of a lone wolf.”
“Thanks,” he sighs. “For this, and for having my back today. I thought you were gonna punch that guy.”
“Oh, believe me, I wanted to.”
“Stand down, killer,” Riley laughs. He tilts his head and studies me thoughtfully for a moment. “Boyfriend, huh?”
I blush and glance away. “You caught that, did you?”
“I liked it,” he admits softly. He stretches out one leg and nudges at my knee with his foot playfully. “I want to be your boyfriend.”
“Well, you’d be the first,” I confess, swallowing over the sudden lump in my throat. I catch his ankle before he can pull his leg away and begin to massage the arch of his foot with my thumb.
Riley’s eyebrows rise. “Ever?” His tone is laced with disbelief.
“Yep. Ever.”
“How is that even possible?” He pulls a hand out of his blanket burrito to gesture wildly in my direction. “I mean, look at you.”
I shrug, uncomfortable with the compliment. “I just never found anyone I was interested enough in. And a lot of guys wouldn’t be cool with my line of work.”
Riley nods thoughtfully, pulling his foot away and lifting the other for the same treatment. “I could see that. But you never wanted to date anyone in the industry?”
“Not really.” I grimace at the thought. “All those guys just feel like…coworkers. Most of them are great, and we even hang out sometimes. Like Dante. But I just never thought of it beyond that. Nate and I hooked up once, but that was mostly an experiment after too much tequila. We were good friends by then, so we figured…why not.”
“You and Nathan?!” Riley sputters. “Wow. Did not see that coming. Kinda glad I didn’t know on our first collab. The idea of that would have been so distracting.”
“It was a one-time thing,” I reiterate. I don’t want him thinking I have some kind of latent limerence for Nathan. “And what about you, anyway? You said you had a boyfriend before coming out here.”
“Yeah, he was my first and only.” Riley shakes his head, wiggling his toes to encourage me to continue his foot massage. “We really didn’t have anything in common. It was mostly just a proximity and convenience thing. Not a lot of choices where I’m from.”
“Were you in love?” Jesus, Luke, don’t ask questions you don’t want answers to.
“No way,” Riley says quickly. “He was really nice. We had a good time together while it lasted. But neither of us was sad to see it end.”
“Did you guys live together?” Fuck, I guess I’m on a roll then.
“Nah. It was honestly more of a friends with benefits situation; except we weren’t really friends before it started, and we aren’t really friends now that it’s ended.”
I’m a little relieved at that, not gonna lie.
He’s quiet for a minute, brow furrowed in contemplation. “Do you think it will be weird for us to live together?” he asks hesitantly. “Even if it’s just temporary?”
“I’m okay if you are,” I say honestly. “I don’t want to push you into something you’re not comfortable with, but I want you to stay, Ry. I had the best time with you this weekend. I’m not ready for it to end.”
He grins. “Me either.”
My phone buzzes, notifying me our dinner is almost here, and I drop Riley’s foot and jump up so I can be ready and waiting at the door for the delivery. The conversation was a welcome distraction, but now that I’ve got food on my mind again, I’m pretty sure I’m about to die of starvation.
After leaving the delivery driver with a generous tip, we get all of the takeout cartons spread out on the coffee table and pick through a little bit of everything.
I crack open a couple of beers for us before we settle back onto the couch to eat.
“So, what’s your usual schedule like?” Riley asks me. “Like, when do you usually work?”
That’s a question I’ve never really had to think about before.
I take a bite of Kung Pao chicken to buy some time.
“Well, I have a collab coming up in a couple of days with Axel Oliver. I usually do a couple of new collabs a month and throw in some solo stuff, too. Schedule photoshoots, network for new scene partners, stuff like that. I just kind of take each day as it comes.”
“Cool.” He nods. “I’ve got one coming up with Beau Brady next week, I think.”
“Oh, I’ve worked with Beau,” I say, sipping at my beer. “He’s a cool dude.”
He blushes then, suddenly fixated on his beef and broccoli. “I know…I might have maybe watched that one a few times.”
“Oh, you liked that one, did you?” I smile. Thinking of him watching my videos all these years always gives me a little self-esteem boost. “That was a while ago, I don’t really remember much from it. But I remember he was a good scene partner. You’ll be in good hands with him.”
Riley bites his bottom lip, contemplative. “Is it weird to talk about this stuff? Like, if we’re in a relationship?”
“I don’t know,” I say honestly. “I’ve never been in this boat before. But for me, work feels like something different than what we have, even though what we have started as work. Does it feel weird to you?”
He purses his lips and lets out a little hum, thinking.
“It really doesn’t,” he determines. “Like you said, it feels like what we have is its own thing, and work is just work. I think sex and intimacy can be separate things. Like, I didn’t feel any intimacy at all when I collabed with Benji, but I felt a lot of intimacy just sleeping next to you.
And I like it that we have that intimacy when we have sex.
I’ve definitely never felt that with anyone else.
Not the same, anyway. Maybe intimacy is more like a sliding scale, whereas the actual physical act of sex is like a fixed point. ”
I do my best not to smile like an idiot when he says he’s never felt like this with anyone else. “How’d you get so wise?”
He grins at me through a mouthful of noodles and shrugs. His cheeks are puffed out like a chipmunk, and he’s the cutest fucking thing I’ve ever seen. He washes it all down with a gulp of beer before asking, “So, should we set some ground rules then?”
“Probably not a bad idea,” I agree. “Like what?”
“Well, I think since we’re both okay with talking about work, we should do that,” he reasons. “As often as either of us wants to. I think open communication is key.”
I nod. “Makes sense. I think with that, we should also have veto power if one of us has bad vibes about the other’s scene partner.”
“Definitely,” Riley agrees. “Should we have rules for our own sex versus collabs, too?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, do we still want to do collabs together?” he asks. “Or do we want to keep our sex life private now?”
I mull that one over. There are pros and cons to both, I suppose. Our videos together have been my top sellers, and I think they have been for him, too. But I also don’t mind the idea of keeping things just between us. “What do you want to do?” I ask finally.
He bites his lower lip thoughtfully. “I think I’d like to collab with you still. If we’re going to be working with other people, I think it could be helpful for us to work together, too.” He smirks, and it’s a little devilish. “Plus, I like watching our videos. We’re hot together.”
“We are,” I agree with a laugh. “Okay, so we still work together when we want to. Anything else?”
“That’s a pretty good start for now,” he muses, leaning forward to dish out a second helping of food.
“And you already know about my rule of not working with anyone under the influence. If we’ve been drinking and we’re feeling good, I’m totally cool with fooling around. But I don’t want to record it.”
I nod. “That’s probably smart. No cameras when we’ve been drinking.”
Neither of us can think of any other ground rules we want to set at the moment, and we finish our meals in comfortable silence.
“I’m glad I ordered a lot,” I comment, sitting back and rubbing my full belly. “We’re both big boys with big appetites.”
“Speak for yourself,” he sniffs, “I’m petite.” I eye him up and down, his biceps bulging as he shovels the last of his food into his mouth, and I laugh. Whatever he wants to tell himself.
I can’t remember the last time I felt this happy.
I’ve made myself a pretty good life out of this career, and I’ve never felt like I was missing out on anything.
But now, with Riley sitting across the couch from me, sharing a meal together and talking about our relationship, I realize how wrong I’ve been.
Maybe it’s for the best that I didn’t know this existed.
I don’t think I ever could have been as happy with my life as I was if I had known this was out there and I didn’t have access to it.
“Ooo, ‘plan for many pleasures ahead,’” Riley reads out from his fortune cookie, waggling his eyebrows suggestively. “What’s yours say?”
I reach for the remaining cookie and crack it open, smiling as I read: “‘Expect the unexpected.’”