Page 154 of The Influencer

“We’ll figure it out,” I tell him again.

He lets out a rough laugh. “Right.”

The Jackson Pierce collaboration gives me an instant surge in popularity, and I do my best to ride the wave of it while keeping up with rehearsals, my self-care routine, and my increasingly amazing relationship with Asher.

He just needed the one drink apparently to wallow in the idea of missing me, and then he bounced right back. Honestly, I think the fact that I’m still flirting my fabulous ass off online is keeping him spicy and demanding, but I’m not complaining. According to the almighty spreadsheet, I need to do about one collaboration with another popular content creator every two to three weeks to continue to grow my wealth. Asher even thinks eventually I may only need one a month if I’m able to keep growing my platform on Instagram. With the tour coming up, I’m like duh—obviously because Gideon York, so I’m basically set.

I get back to work, Asher continues to be unfazed by it, and we go on to have incredible sex and even more incredible snuggling. We’re basically attached at the hip when we’re not working, and I, for one, love it.

It turns out Asher doesn’t have a cuckolding kink, he’s got a borderline porn addiction. He prefers seeing the finished product on a screen rather than watching the real action in person. I think it’s hilarious, but I don’t tell him that, and I’m very careful to explain to my partners that my nipples are off limits.

September is a fucking blur.

October is a blur with baseball because Adam’s team is in the playoffs, so I learn some things about RBIs and ERAs. And then all of a fucking sudden it’s November. The wedding, the tour—all coming up in fifteen to seventeen days, and that’s when Asher starts looking for a new apartment.

And things get real. Real fast. What I notice first, beyond his secretive Zillow searches, is the growing distance. It’s not physical—I’m pretty sure Asher would sooner die than let me be more than eight feet away from him when we’re both at home together, but we’re not talking like we used to. I mean, we talk, but it’s not fun. It’s not easy. He liked us when we were easy, and I’m wondering if it’s me or him that’s making conversation hard, but what I know for sure is I’m back to chewing my nails and freaking out.

He’s at it again when I come home from rehearsal on the night before the bachelor party, but he closes his laptop when he hears me enter the room.

“How’s the search going?” I ask pointedly. He sucks at hiding things and lying.

“Good. How was your day?”

“Tiring.”

He follows me into the bedroom where I strip off my clothes in preparation for a shower. Leaning on my dresser, he watches me remove each article of sweaty, skintight clothing. I haven’t brought up his house hunting much, and I don’t intend to press him about it now. It’s one more thing we don’t talk about. The list is growing. It now includes the tour, Olivia, his old apartment, the fact that I’m still desperately in love with him, and my outfits.

Which leaves general well-being, the weather, baseball, and the wedding.

“Need company in the shower?” he asks.

“Sure,” I say, losing my dancer’s belt which is just a fancy term for jock strap.

Over the last two weeks, I’ve started to understand what he meant when he once told me he felt dead inside emotionally. I don’t feel dead, exactly, but drained dry. Wrung out. My love for him is just as large and feral and inconvenient as ever, but it’s fucking starving. His touch is all I get, so I take it any chance he offers it. It’s the one thing we’ve got going on that reassures me that having occasional sex with other men really isn’t the issue at hand here. It’s the fact that I’m leaving, and he’s letting me go.

The problem is, I’m starting to believe he wants me to go. That he’s ready to begin his new life without me and find what he’s really meant to have. Freedom to live his life on his own terms for once. Outside his brother’s shadow. Without the girlfriend who was slowly sucking the life out of him. Without me who would probably wind up doing the same thing. Minus the withholding sex part. I could never…

It’s hard not to feel rejected, though. I tell myself the feeling is a lie—an echo of past trauma. After all, I’m the one leaving, not him. He’s never done anything but accept me exactly as I come, support me, and even cheer me on. But he doesn’t love me. If he did, he would have told me by now. I’m not sure he can do love again yet. For him, I met him at the right time—I gave him what he needed to be able to change his life and break free. But for me, he came along just in time to fuck me up good and thoroughly.

When I think about being without him, I can barely breathe.

I shut off all these thoughts the very best I can while he soaps up every inch of my body. He grips me by the hair to tip my head back so that he can kiss my throat as the water sluices over it. I focus on the grip he gets around our cocks as he works them over together with a thick layer of conditioner until both of us are panting into each other’s mouths and spilling all over the place. I weather the ravenous hunger of his mouth as he pins my hands to the tile and kisses me as hard and as deep as I know he can.

I leave the shower clean and worshipped to the point of sanctification, yet heavy with the weight of all the things we haven’t said. And I’m sick of it.

As he lies back on the bed contemplating food delivery options, I put on a pair of Calvins and my black robe. When I emerge from my closet, he looks up from his phone and asks, “Tacos?”

I shake my head and sit at the foot of the bed. He’s always hot after a shower (I mean that in the corporeal sense), and he’s lying on top of the covers with only his boxer briefs on. They’re gray, and somehow, they make the non-erect bulge inside them look pornographic. I try to keep my gaze up and not let the slut in me slither out again.

“Why are you looking at apartments?” I ask, because tacos can go fuck themselves. I know I said I wasn’t going to press him on it, but I’m not going as his date to the party with him tomorrow until I know where this relationship is headed. And if it’s headed in the direction I think it is, I might not be going either way.

“Because I need one?”

“Why?” I ask. “You’re in one, aren’t you? Have been for months.”

He puts down his phone and gives me a long look. “You’re leaving in two weeks, Jade.”

“But this place isn’t going anywhere. I still own it. All your things are here.”

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