Page 8 of Bailey Bangs Her Brother's Best Friend
And I’m not sure yet if it’s going to be better or worse.
Silas
The problemwith agreeing to photograph Bailey in lingerie is that now I can’t stop thinking about it.
Like right now.She’s eating focaccia and laughing with Hunter, completely oblivious to the fact that I’m mentally cataloging the way light hits her face.Photographer brain, I tell myself.Purely professional.
I’m such a liar.
I let the two of them play darts while I escape to the bar.Hunter’s the best player in town, but Bailey’s close, and I leave them to their sibling rivalry and join Kit and Morgan at the bar.
It’s getting late, and the crowd that was here for dinner has mostly eaten and left.Morgan’s deep cleaning one of the ice bins, his head disappearing inside it while he dries it with a chamois.
When he pops back up and catches sight of me, he grins.“Oh good.You can help me convince Kit that we should raise prices for Buffed & Polished.”
Next to me, Kit rolls his eyes.“We don’t even know how this season is going to go yet.”
Buffed & Polished is Kit’s genius side hustle where the four of us clean houses shirtless to music.Pure domestic porn.We’re popular with bachelor parties, bachelorettes, and Mrs.Donner, who requests the cowboy package monthly for her eighty-nine-year-old mother.
I know.You wish you had one near you, don’t you?
We’ve got plenty of bookings this busy season, thanks to word of mouth and a successful first winter last year.Business was much slower in spring and summer when tourists stop coming in swarms.
“Isn’t that a good thing?We’re gonna be so busy soon.”
“Yeah, but we only had three bookings last month, aside from Mrs.Donner.”
“You can do seasonal pricing,” I point out.My other businesses are different—I sell more houses in early summer, then do senior portraits and engagement shoots in summer and fall.
I don’t do weddings.Here doesn’t have any great venues.
And no one’s ever asked me to do boudoir sessions.
Until now.
The irony isn’t lost on me.I take my shirt off for money once a month and nobody bats an eye.But Bailey asking me to photograph her in lingerie?That’s the thing that’s got me twisted up inside.
Maybe because when I’m doing Buffed & Polished, it doesn’t mean anything.But this?With Bailey?This means everything.
I glance back at Hunter and Bailey.A quick scan of the scoreboard tells me that Hunter’s closed out everything but sixteens, and she’s behind by—I do some quick math—thirty-two points.She needs triple sixteens to win.
My eyes fall to her ass as she steps up to the line and prepares to throw.Bailey’s wearing tight jeans, the kind that accentuates the curve of her hips and leaves little to the imagination.But imagine I do.
I imagine lacy thongs and sheer robes.Soft light from my bedroom window catching on bare skin.The way her curves would look through my camera lens—all shadows and highlights and absolute perfection.
She throws.A triple sixteen.Of course.
Fingers snap in front of my face.“Dude,” Morgan says, laughing.He leans over the bar looking into the back room.“What are you staring at?It’s just Hunter and Bailey back there, right?”
JustBailey.My friends can’t even fathom staring at her.To them, she’s Hunter’s little sister, someone to protect and tease in equal measure.
But I’ve never been able to see her that way.She was smart and funny and so goddamn beautiful it hurt to look at her sometimes.
I’ve gotten good at hiding it.At being the reliable best friend who gives good hugs and doesn’t cross lines.
In three months, every single one of those lines is getting obliterated.
Morgan’s still waiting for an answer.I force myself to focus.
