Page 127 of Soul So Dark
“Damn it,” she growls, “did I miss him again?”
“Sorry,” I say with a coy smile.
Shelby knows about my streaming gig, but she’ll never tell on me. She’s my best friend, after all. And, besides that, she likes a good secret. She’s also not a big gamer, so she’s guaranteed not to blow my cover online.
“He’s so hot,” Shelby gawks at the frozen frame in the corner of my screen.
“You can’t even see him!” I laugh.
All she can see on the screen is AJ sitting in his chair wearing fitted joggers and a compression t-shirt. Granted, you can still see the contours of his muscle underneath, but he’s completely covered. Sometimes he wears a black undershirt, other times he’s shirtless or wears a black tactical vest with nothing underneath, and other times it’s like tonight.
But just like Shelby, I’ve never actually seen AJ’s face and I’ve never met him in person. The best part about the image on my screen is that he’s wearing a mask, just like me. I’ve only ever known him as AJ who wears the Ghost mask and he’s only known me as Riley who wears the purple Purge mask.
“Who’re you talking about?” Austin peers down his chest from my bed. He’s so tall, he takes up the entire fucking thing.
“AJ, one of my friends I play games with.”
Shelby’s voice drops an octave. “Friend…” she snickers with an eyeroll.
“How old is he?”
“Don’t know.”
“Where does he live?”
“Don’t know.”
“Is he American?”
“Don’t know.”
“What do you meanyou don’t know if he’s American?”
I give a shrug. “He has an American accent, so I guess he is. But he could be Canadian, or from somewhere else.”
I would never ask, but I have my own evolving hypotheses. At first, I thought AJ might be Italian because he had a giant Italian flag hanging on the wall behind him for a while. Then I thought he might be Middle Eastern because he mentioned his dad travelling to Kuwait for work.
Or he could just be some dude who owns a passport.
“For real, though,” Shelby chimes in, “how long have you known him again?”
I pause, doing the calculation in my head. “Three years.”
Austin looks appalled. “And you’ve never seen his face?”
“No.”
“Because you have a mask kink and now you’re kindred spirits?” Shelby guesses. “He’s the reason you stopped seeing Houdini, isn’t it?”
“Houdini?” Austin squints.
“As in,” I shoot Shelby a pointed look, but I can’t keep a straight face to save my life, “HarryHoudini.”
“That’s his name?”
“No,” I snicker, “his real name is Bailey.”
“He likes—” Shelby stifles a laugh, “tying people up.”
