Page 21 of Making His Bones

Galileo clapped. “We are pivoting, Tiago! Welcome to the new world of bros!”

B

“So when I was working on Unchained, some gossip troll got ahold of one of my old porn flicks. He published a link to it on Twitter. #GrayWhaleyUnchained. It backfired on him, though, because everyone said how poor I must’ve been to resort to that, and what was wrong with gay stuff anyway?”

“But you were underage!” I cried. We sat out by Gray’s fire pit in the backyard. It was gas, of course, so he’d just held down a button and voom, it came on. It was pretty charming, I have to admit. Gray had nuked some chicken tenders and we dipped them into kung pao sauce. He’d removed his cut and just lounged in a loose wifebeater, untucked from his khakis. Even so, he managed to look magnificent, his cheekbones high, his biceps tanned and taut. I had seen him lifting weights one morning in the living room, shirtless. I gasped. He looked at me, and I kept on walking. Making coffee, I realized I hadn’t seen anything like that in years. Over a decade. I was profoundly affected.

“But that’s the point! Everyone felt sorry for me, obviously at the end of my rope, and when I tweeted well yeah, I started out just modeling, and then I was sent to this place where it was modeling with an older man—the fee was a lot higher—and one thing led to another. It just increased my popularity.”

“Sex tapes,” I giggled.

He pointed at me with a can of Pellegrino. “Exactly!” He sipped, then looked thoughtful. “Which is not to say it’s a good thing. But it exists. Has existed since time began. Underage boys run out of their homes for one reason or another have had to resort to lots of things. Think of those boys wandering around in the desert.”

“If anyone finds the bodies, the feds probably don’t say. Dead, illegal teenaged drug mules aren’t important these days.” Gray finished gulping the Pellegrino and set down the empty can. I said, “You know, if you want to drink those beers, go right ahead. I’m sure you’re not going to turn into a partying maniac staying out until six AM.”

“Like your husband?” Gray asked.

I supposed it was time to talk about myself for once. “Yes,” I admitted. “I guess he had those symptoms before I married him, but I was so in love I ignored it. I already hated cocaine—I did it for a year or so, believe it or not. Couldn’t see why people would want to lie in bed all night with their heart pounding.”

“Or just get up and continue partying.”

“Yes, but eventually you have to pay the price, right? Not sleeping at all is even worse. I just don’t understand all those speedy drugs.”

“Alcohol isn’t speedy. At least after a few hours it isn’t, after everyone gets done talking at O Dark Thirty.”

“Yes, and neither is heroin. I guess he’d go party, and take a nap at whoever’s house, then wake up and keep going. His business suffered. He flipped houses, and he was never there to help remodel.”

“What a Casper.”

“Excuse me?”

“Casper. A guy who always vanishes when there’s work to be done. Army lingo from my brother.”

“I didn’t know you had a brother. Hm. It just occurred to me. Brandon definitely knew who sold the heroin in Seeker. How ironic.”

“I was just thinking the same thing.”

“And no, I don’t talk to him anymore. He moved into Munds Park to open a nightclub.”

Gray laughed. “Sounds like he should move to LA. Partying all the time? Opening a nightclub? Very familiar.”

I saluted Gray with my Pellegrino. “Go ahead and drink your beer, Gray. I won’t get weird.”

But I did get weird. I got extremely weird when Gray got up and went inside, because I was watching his ass. How the globes undulated under the tight fabric. Khakis were better than jeans, I thought, because the fabric was thinner. Let the other hunks have their jeans. I realized I would climb Gray like a tree.

I hadn’t felt that in over ten years.

It made me very uncomfortable.

I was your average slut before I hooked up with Brandon. I mean, who wasn’t, in Seeker? Or, I should say, in Arizona. It was just the hardscrabble life we all lived. I had sex with a lot of guys, never really enjoying it, just wanting to be wanted. Oh, this guy wanted me enough to call me again. That was always such an empowering feeling. I always had more guys than my roommates. Probably because I was a slut.

Then Brandon came along. Six foot five, with thick, glossy black hair, his parents from Italy. He was just too glamorous to be believed. At twenty-one, I didn’t stop to wonder why his dad had to buy houses for him to remodel and flip. I figured out too late that Brandon’s cocaine problem had made him unemployable.

But I was loyal to a fault. I had never really wanted any man before him. Nor have I since.

Now this was a strange feeling with Gray. My pussy stirred and clenched, almost as though I were masturbating in my chair. It seemed to take him a long time to reach the sliding glass door. His shoulders strutted in a leonine way, his arms long and graceful.

Zoomio.