Page 23 of A Photo Finish
I rest my head against the back of the plushy couch and groan. Maybe the cushions will swallow me whole? Envelop me into the down stuffing so that I’ll never have to see anyone ever again.
“Sorry.” Billie winces. “He went to Hank’s place to go over some stuff. I thought he’d be gone longer.”
I close my eyes. Pretending I can rewind time to about five minutes ago, when my dignity was still intact.
Billie pats my knee. “Don’t worry, Pornstar Patty, your secret is safe with me.”
A strangled noise lodges in my throat. I still refuse to look at her.
“Come on, Vi,” she laughs. “Want me to tell you some crazy sex stories to even the playing field? Because Vaughn can—”
“Please don’t.” I hold one hand up to stop her.
“Okay, then stop being a baby and tell me the rest. You posted the picture . . . and?”
I hear the shower turn on upstairs, and I figure I’m safe to spill for a few more minutes.
“He contacted me . . .” I decide that, even if I don’t really owe Cole anything, I don’t want to betray his confidence with the details of that first message. His offer of payment never struck me as anything other than honorable. A fair exchange for a product—almost clinical, really. Like it made him feel better about what he was asking. And the more I got to know him, the more I realized it was exactly that, as well as a way to maintain his precious distance. Something I’d gone and thrown a wrench into.
“And we ended up talking.” She waggles her eyebrows. “As friends.” Her shoulders droop in disappointment. “For a year.”
“What! A year?”
I nod.
“What did you even talk about?”
I run my free hand through my hair. Whatdidwe talk about? It had mostly been me asking questions or monologuing. But he always responded, and when I thought he was bored or tired of talking to me, I’d pull back. Only to see a message from him pop up a day later, like that was his threshold for when he’d reach out. Something I took to mean more than it obviously did. Sometimes, we’d watch a movie at the same time and type back and forth about it. It was companionship in the most basic sense of the word.
“Everything and nothing.” I say, because it’s true. We talked about books, television, current events, about our families in vague generalities, but we never talked about specifics. Shared nothing that might give our identities away. It was always entirely anonymous.
“So, you guys never . . .” She holds her hand up in a rolling motion, implyingstuff.
I bite down on my lip and look out the window into the dark rainy night. “Once.”
“Once.” Billie grips her wineglass with both hands, sitting up cross-legged now, and nodding, like I’m telling the most fascinating story in the world.
I steel myself, wanting to get this part over with as quickly as possible. “Yes. Once. And it was very one-sided. Which resulted in the end of our . . . whatever it was.” I feel so hot that I’m sure you could fry an egg on my cheek right now.
“What do you mean one-sided?”
Agitation roils around in my gut. This part still bugs me, no matter how hard I try to get over it. Embarrassment is tough to hurdle. “I mean, things got carried away one night. I ended up losing all my clothes on video because I thought I trusted him enough to do that after a year of corresponding. Had the best orgasm of my life. And then Cole refused to reciprocate. He left his screen black the whole time and said he would never partake. All things he had told me in the past, I just thought . . . ” I shake my head with a sad laugh, “I guess I thought I’d be different. Turns out I wasn’t. I deleted the app and never talked to him again. Until the Denman Derby last year when he figured out who I was.”
From upstairs I hear, “Ow, fuck!”
“Were you eavesdropping on us, Vaughn Harding?” Billie shouts to the open loft bedroom, while I look around for a spot to dig a hole and crawl deep inside of it.
“Nope!” he calls back, popping thepwith surety. “Just stubbed my toe.”
“I hope it hurt!”
I groan and scrub my hand over my face. “Okay, that’s my cue to leave.” I set the wineglass on the oak coffee table in front of me and push myself up, feeling pretty used to the walking cast now. I can’t get out of here fast enough.
“Vi,” Billie says with a breathy giggle, “don’t worry about it. He won’t say anything.”
I know that what she’s saying is true. Vaughn is a good guy, an honorable one. But that doesn’t mean I’m keen on him knowing about my sex life. About his brother’s sex life.
Good god.
