Page 94 of Flipping the Script

I needed to try to humanize Jesse. Make him seem like a normal guy and not the perfect image Carl had created. But I also had to be careful to not piss Carl off or make it seem like I was lying to him.

This was a delicate tightrope I was walking. Hopefully I didn’t fuck everything up.

“I saw you,” he accused, finally looking up at me. Tears shone in his eyes. “I saw you with him. In the woods. And at Envy.”

“In the woods? You were there?” Did he mean at Ben’s or at my cabin?

The thought that this guy had been to my cabin freaked me the fuck out, but I couldn’t let him see that. Not until I knew the whole story and was sure he was going to leave Jesse alone.

He nodded.

“And you saw us?” I prompted.

“Mostly heard you.” He shrugged. “It was dark. But I saw enough.”

So he’d been at Ben’s, not my cabin. That was reassuring for me, but also kind of terrifying in its implication. Ben’s place was out of the way and pretty isolated. It wouldn’t have been easy to follow Jesse up there, watch him while he was at the party, and follow him home, all while staying hidden.

How long had this guy been stalking Jesse?

“And you were at Envy?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer. I needed him to keep talking so I could get the full story out of him.

“I needed to make sure no one tried to seduce him.” He glared at me.

“I didn’t seduce him.”

“You did! And you took him to the back room where anyone could have seen him. You don’t care about him like I do. You can’t love him like I do.”

“That was wrong of me,” I said carefully. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

He blinked a few times, like he hadn’t been expecting me to agree with him.

“Jesse is special,” I continued, hoping to fuck this was the right tactic. “He deserves better.”

“He does! And I can give that to him. Iwantto give it to him. But he’ll never love me if you’re around.” He sounded so anguished it was hard to not feel sorry for him.

“You were his client?” I asked softly. I still wasn’t completely sure what he meant by that.

“I was so much more than that.” He sighed. “At least I thought I was. But I wasn’t. I thought he felt what I did, but it was a lie. He wasn’t my boyfriend. He’s just the guy I paid to pretend he was.”

He’d paid Jesse to pretend to be his boyfriend. Did he mean like an escort?

No, that couldn’t be right. No way in hell Mr. Robot would be an escort.

Or maybe his robot facade would be the perfect thing for someone in that business. He knew how to play whatever role people wanted him to. I’d seen him do it since we were kids.

He didn’t lie or pretend to be someone he wasn’t, not really. It was more he tailored his personality to whomever he was with at the moment and could turn on different personas to suit the situation.

“Did he ever tell you it was real?” I asked softly, my mind still spinning with questions.

Carl shook his head. “But I could feel it was. It is,” he corrected quickly.

“Do you love him, or do you love the idea of him?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” Carl gave me a shrewd look.

“Did you ever see him when he’s grumpy?”

“Grumpy?”

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