Page 25 of Stuck with the Grump

The call ended and within minutes my phone started blowing up with messages. More than one was telling me that I looked good on a pole, or some variation of the same sentiment.

When I opened the messages from Tyson, various screenshots of my head photoshopped on stripper’s bodies greeted me. I grinned and shook my head at the pictures. Camille had done a good job making sure the photoshopping looked seamless.

“What the fuck?” Leigh shouted before she started cackling in the other room.

I left the dining room and found her still sitting in front of the fire. Her phone was plugged into a battery pack and she was scrolling through videos, watching me shake not my ass for the camera.

“What is this?” she asked, looking over her shoulder at me.

“Well, it might be some damage control that Camille is doing because I am the biggest idiot to ever walk the earth.”

Leigh smirked and shrugged, turning back to her phone to watch another video. “I’m not going to argue with that one.”

“I am sorry, Leigh. I should have told her to bury it the moment those pictures hit the internet. You don’t have to forgive me but I’m sorry.”

“I think that these videos could be your redemption. Pictures too. You have to frame this one and hang it over your bed. Women will love it.”

The picture in question was my head on the body of a pig in a thong. I rolled my eyes and sat down beside her, grabbing the roasting stick and piercing a hot dog.

“Tell you what, I’ll have that picture put on a billboard.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “You would do that?”

“If it meant that you wouldn’t be mad at me anymore, absolutely.”

“This doesn’t mean that anything changes between us physically. I still think that no strings attached would be good in theory, but in practice, it’s a horrible idea. You’re Tyson’s best friend and his business partner.”

“How about we settle for being friends for now then?”

She smiled and nodded, putting her phone down to hand me a hot dog bun. “Friends sounds nice.”

11

LEIGH

Horninesswasabitch.

Even after mywe’re just friendsspeech earlier, the one I had spent all day thinking about, I still wanted to get Clarke on his back and ride him. Instead, after we ate another dinner of hot dogs, I locked myself away in my room and dragged out all of my notebooks and several candles.

There was still so much to do to get my business off the ground, but the list was growing shorter every day. However, as the list grew shorter, my data plan skyrocketed. I couldn’t imagine what my phone bill for the month was going to look like.

After hours of staring at the screen, I opened a new page of the notebook and started sketching out what the inside of my gallery would look like. I wanted somewhere wide and open, where I could build walls and tear them down at will. A warehouse would be ideal but it couldn’t be too far from the city. People wouldn’t frequent an art gallery that was too far out of their way.

“How goes the business planning?” Clarke asked, stepping inside my bedroom and sitting on the edge of the bed. “You look like you’re lost in thought.”

“I have a couple artists lined up for when I open—who knows when that will be—and some others in consideration. Right now, I’m trying to figure out the perfect gallery space.”

“What do you want the space to look like?”

“It needs to be big and open with huge windows to let in all the natural light.”

“Isn’t that bad for the art?”

“It would be, except the artists I would feature near the windows would use things like archival inks. Direct sun exposure isn’t great, but I’m imagining these big billowing and gauzy curtains that filter some of the light out.”

“You’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this perfect place,” he said as he leaned back into my pillows and linked his hands behind his head. I looked at the muscles in his arms as they strained against the fabric of his shirt.

Telling him we would just be friends is the worst decision I have ever made,I thought as I crossed one leg over the other, trying to stop the pulsating in my core. It would be all too easy to cross the room and start something with him again.

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