29. Chapter 29
29
Sophie
“When’s the last time we did this?” Natalie asks, grabbing the cooler from the floor behind the driver’s seat. I roll my eyes at the group chat with the guys and slip my phone back into my pocket.
“Had a beach day? Fuck, I don’t know,” I mutter. “Have we done it since my birthday?”
“Don’t think so.”
“Then about two and a half months.”
“We’ve got to get here more often.” She closes the door, holding her wide-brimmed hat to her head so it doesn’t blow off in the wind. Cooler in her hand, umbrella under the same arm, she looks ridiculous trying to control it all.
Neither of us feels like swimming today, but we have folding chairs, sandwiches, lavender lemonade, and plenty of sunscreen. Trudging through the sand at Malibu-Zuma beach to get close enough to the water is a workout in itself and I’m glad I didn’t try to look cute. No one is going to recognize me and it’s not like Natalie cares what I look like.
“This good?” We’re close enough to enjoy the sound of the waves while far enough not to have said waves reach our toes.
“Yeah, I’m done walking.”
Natalie shoves the cooler into the sand so that it opens toward the ocean while I set up the chairs. When the umbrella is set, covering the cooler and the main parts of our chairs, we settle in. I pull plastic bottles of lemonade from the cooler and hand one to Natalie. Neither of us is hungry yet, so we just sit and enjoy the view and the sounds, sipping on our beverages that are definitely not alcoholic.
Days like this, when I can relax and take time off with my best friend, remind me that my hard work is paying off. I get to be creative, choose my schedule, work with people I want to, and avoid those I don’t like. I get to be my own boss. This is a job, despite what so many people think, but it’s a job I wouldn’t trade for anything.
The crash of the waves is soothing, though it’s not quite loud enough to drown out the seagulls. I dig my bare feet into the sand, finding the cool layer just below the surface. There are days it’s so windy that, even this far from the water, I can feel the mist and taste it on my lips. It’s not quite that strong today, but it’s been picking up.
I decide to take a selfie, smiling and holding up a peace sign. Then I flip the camera around and take a photo of my feet in the sand with the waves in the background. I post it online and then take a deep breath.
I’m still trying to process what happened with Brody and Miles. Together . Brody wanted Miles to join us and Miles did so, not only without hesitation, but with gusto. I never would have guessed that Brody would be comfortable sharing, let alone sharing with his roommate. His best friend. Trading off date nights is one thing, but enjoying each other together isn’t something I had expected to experience.
“We had a threesome,” I blurt suddenly.
My hand flies to my mouth with a slap and I giggle when Natalie turns to look at me. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see her jaw drop and she pulls her sunglasses down so she can look at me over the top of them.
“You mean with…?”
I nod.
“Yeah.”
“Wait, you haven’t- that was the first, wasn’t it? I mean, with two men.”
I bite my bottom lip, trying hard not to smile.
“It was the hottest fucking thing I’ve ever done,” I finally admit, unable to keep the laughter from my voice.
“Sophie, Sophie, Sophie.” She shakes her head and settles back into her seat to face the ocean once more. “Ho-lee shit, girl. And Brody, he’s- he’s like new . How did he handle that?”
“It was his idea!” I squeal.
“What the fuck?”
“I know!”
“That kinky motherfucker. Ok, I take back every bad thing I’ve said about these guys. If it wasn’t clear before, it is now. They’re good for you.” Natalie glances at me again. “ Both of them are good for you.”
“You changed your tune fast.”
“You feel safe with Brody?” she asks, not looking at me, but continuing to focus on the waves.
“I really do.”
“And Miles, he makes you happy?”
“He does.” I smile. His excitement for just about everything he does is infectious in the best way.
“Red flags?”
“I-” I stop. “I mean, probably. Can I keep refusing to see them as red for now? Maybe yellow.”
“Yellow is acceptable.” Natalie nods and leans her head back against her chair with a grin. “Jesus, two boyfriends. And they were roommates,” she adds under her breath. I sigh, relaxing in my chair and enjoying the glint of the sun off of the waves.
“I guess best friends who fuck together…” I muse, but don’t bother to finish the thought.
“Sorry I can’t go with you to Miami,” Natalie says, changing the subject. “Just not in the budget this time.” She might make way more than me, but she budgets a certain amount for travel each quarter. SpicyCon didn’t make the cut.
“It’s fine. Miles is actually going to be there.”
“At least you’ll have someone to venture out with. He’ll get you to leave the hotel room for more than just meals and filming.”
“I’m paying for tickets, I’m going to attend the events,” I laugh, but she’s half right. If I were completely alone, I’d inevitably end up skipping some panels, lectures, or events in favor of staying in my room alone.
“What are you most excited for? Besides filming with new people,” she adds quickly, knowing that’s always my answer.
“There’s a demonstration by an industry veteran on rigging.”
“You want to be the rigger or the rigged?”
Natalie takes another sip of lemonade before reaching into the cooler for a sandwich. She hands one to me first. We prepared this morning, ordering cold sandwiches from one of our favorite places before heading out and picking them up on the way.
“Rigger.” I pull the brown butcher paper away before taking a bite of the turkey sandwich.
“Well, take notes for me.”
“You got it, dude. This was a brilliant idea.” I hold up my sandwich.
“I know, right?” Natalie’s mouth is full of food as she answers and it sends me into a fit of giggles, which she quickly joins .
“I haven’t really checked in with you, have I?” I ask, halfway through my sandwich. “I’ve been so busy with work and the guys. I’m sorry.”
“Oh shut up,” Natalie snorts. “You’ve had a lot on your mind.”
“I’m still sorry. Got any good sub stories lately?”
“Do you actually want to hear what I do to men?”
“I don’t know,” I giggle. “Do I?”
“Probably not.”
“Ok, what about women? I know you’ve been filming. Has any of it been of the fun sapphic variety?” I waggle my eyebrows suggestively and Natalie grins.
“I’ve worked with a few lately who’ve been really fun, but none are local. Just in town for a week or two to film.”
“Well, it’s a bummer you can’t get consistent content with them.”
Natalie shrugs. She and I haven’t made a video together in a few months, wanting to focus more on working with other people so the content doesn’t get stale.
“Most are straight. They travel with their boyfriends or whatever and just take the odd girl-girl scene because they know it’ll sell.”
I feel a pang of guilt. Minus traveling with a partner, that’s me, though I try to have a variety of content available and not just a special scene every now and then.
“I’m not blaming anyone,” Natalie assures me. “Even without doing straight porn anymore, I sell a lot of content. It’s popular stuff.”
“I’m aware. Hell, you could afford our place on your own.”
“Oh, I definitely could. But you cut my rent in half, so I let ya stay. Gives me extra shopping money, you know?” She pulls her sunglasses down to wink at me and I roll my eyes.
“Because you don’t get enough gifts from your adoring fans.”
“Bitch, you just did an unboxing video with like six packages on your page, didn’t you?”
“This is about you , not me.” I chuckle. Before turning back to my sandwich, I try again. “You made me start dating-”
“You’re welcome.”
“-so what about you? Got any hot dates?”
Natalie snorts loudly while taking a bite of her sandwich. She takes the time to chew and swallow before answering.
“I’m in my ho phase. ”
I roll my eyes and we sit in silence except for the waves and the crinkle of the butcher paper around our sandwiches.
“What do you miss about Oklahoma?” Natalie’s question startles me. It’s not something we talk about often, mostly because of my prompt departure, but she brings it up on occasion. I think it’s her way of trying to help me process that I had to flee in a hurry from the place I called home for nearly twenty-eight years.
“Eileen’s,” I say after a moment’s pause. When I catch Natalie’s questioning stare, I add, “Cookies. The best damn cookies in the state.”
“You have so many things to choose from and you pick cookies?” She shakes her head in disbelief.
“They’re really good cookies.”
I spend most of Wednesday resting, doing laundry, and packing. I know tomorrow is going to be a long travel day and I have so much planned in the short span of time I’ll be in Miami. I don’t want to risk being exhausted before I even start.
While my laundry is going, I set about editing some content from the New York trip. Other than seasonal videos, I have a lot of clip drops and posts on my subscription pages scheduled two months out. With the holiday season right around the corner, I have to plan out my posts so I don’t double-drop. I’ve gotten good at keeping a backlog in case shoots fall through or I get sick or some other emergency happens to put me off course.
I pull up the raw footage from the shoot with Tony Gerth and layer it over mine. I line up the audios so that the footage is in sync and I can switch between the two layers as needed. Then I start to cut away the excess with about ten seconds on either side of the splits for dissolves or fine-tuning. Before I really start splicing things together and choosing camera angles, I need to figure out which of us has better audio to keep it consistent. I hit play on some of my footage first, listening closely for speech and the various sounds that come from skin-on-skin contact.
“Sounds good,” I mutter to myself. It doesn’t sound like anything is missing from my footage, so I switch to Tony’s. Instantly, I know the audio on his footage is better. It’s clearer and catches even the faintest sigh. Well, that makes my job easy.
I spend the next hour interspersing my footage with his, careful to keep the audios matched so they stay in sync.
Just as I stand to check my laundry, a text comes through from Brody and I smile down at my phone.
The only issue I have with travel is the amount of stuff I have to take. Two enormous suitcases plus a rolling carry-on and a laptop bag are my usual companions and I’ve gotten pretty good at rolling everything to the check-in counter and away from baggage claim. I still fucking hate it. Thank god for Miles.
He’s waiting for me at baggage claim in Miami, the biggest grin on his face like he hasn’t seen me in weeks. I roll my carry-on over to him, noting with jealousy that he just has a backpack and one oversized suitcase, and wrap my arms around his neck. Standing on my tiptoes, I place a quick kiss on his lips, but when I try to lower myself to my feet, he tightens his arms around my waist.
Miles deepens the kiss and I can feel my cheeks warming at the public display. He must sense my tension because he lets me go.
“How was the flight?” he asks, gathering our bags together while we wait for the luggage from my flight to start appearing on the metal carousel.
“Fine.” I shrug. “I read the whole time.”
“The whole time? I slept for the whole first flight.”
“Once I’m awake, I find it hard to go back to sleep. But I got halfway through a new book.” I nod at my laptop bag sitting on my carry-on.
“What’s it about?”
“You don’t want to know,” I laugh. It’s a romance novel and, despite our careers, I doubt he’ll care much about the ‘porn with a plot’, as some people call it.
“Oh, come on. Humor me.” He crosses his arms over his chest and grins. “We have time,” he adds, raising his eyebrows and jerking his head toward the carousel.
“It’s a dark romance,” I mutter after a few more moments of hesitation .
“A dark romance? What’s that?”
“Well, instead of a cute rom-com playing in my head, there’s blood and death and ‘touch her and die’ and all that good stuff.”
“And?” he asks with a smirk.
“And hella spice.”
Miles chuckles and wraps his arm around my shoulders, pulling me into him and placing a kiss on the top of my head that seriously fucks with my brain chemistry. It’s not a forehead kiss, but it’s a close second. Good thing I’m already his. That doesn’t keep me from melting just a little bit.
“Hella spice,” he repeats and I can hear the smile in his voice before looking up at him. He’s grinning like he has some ideas. I’ll admit that I’m dying to know what they are. “Anything specific?”
“Might tell ya later.”
“I’m holding you to that.”
I sure hope you do.
The heat is one thing here in Miami, but the humidity is suffocating. It’s like New York all over again, but with ten percent more ‘kill me’. Give me LA heat any day. I feel damp instantly when we leave the airport to wait in the pickup spot for the shuttle to the convention center hotel.
The ride is a bit bumpy in the conversion van that serves as a shuttle, but it’s not the worst I’ve been through. I’m just thankful we’re the only two in the van. With our luggage filling up much of the back end, there’s barely any room for someone else’s.
The driver helps us get everything inside and Miles waits by the group of luggage while I check myself into room 321. The woman behind the counter is polite, but I get the distinct feeling that the event this weekend makes her uncomfortable
I head back to Miles, waving the little paper holder with my key cards with a grin.
“Your turn.”
I absently play with the zipper on my laptop bag while I watch Miles speak with the same woman. She seems much warmer toward him–no surprise there, of course. He could probably turn any frown upside down with his praise. I bite my lip, thinking about what that praise sounds like in a bedroom setting. Yep, no frowns when Miles Corning is between your legs.
When he rejoins me, waving his key cards like I did mine, I catch a glimpse of his room number and my smile drops.
“What?” He follows my gaze to his hand. “What’s wrong? ”
“Room 323?”
“Uh, yeah. Why?”
I hold up my hand for him to see the room number scrawled hastily in the given space.
“We’re neighbors.”
“There is a god.”