Page 15 of You, with a View

He’s still shirtless.

I’m still affected.

“You can close your mouth now, Shep,” he says with a lazy grin.

I roll my eyes, running a hand over my stomach, which is growling with all kinds of hunger. “It’s because your shoulders are already red, Spencer. I’m appalled by your lack of sunscreen usage. Do you even know what UV rays do to your skin? You’re going to look seventy by the time you’re thirty.”

He twists to eye his shoulder, humming in dismay. “I put some on a few hours ago.”

“You’re supposed to reapply every eighty minutes.” I smile sweetly when he gives me a dry look.

Keeping eye contact with me, he swipes a bottle of sunscreen off the table and starts applying.

This feels like a test. I keep my gaze firmly planted on his face, but the sound of Theo’s palm gently slapping his skin as he applies the sunscreen pings my most animalistic senses.

“What are you even doing here?” I ask.

“Planting vegetables.” He doesn’t sayyou genius, but his tone doesn’tnotsay it.

“I mean,” I say, infusing the same energy into my voice, “it’s the middle of the day on a Tuesday. Why aren’t you at work?”

In my periphery, his hand stalls. “Why aren’tyouat work?”

“I’m working from home today.” The lie slips off my tongue like silk.

Theo’s expression turns sharp with awareness, his grin sharp with it, too. “What do you know? Me too.”

I believe that about as much as he believes me, but I don’t have time to push. Paul walks out with a tray of food.

“Lunch is served!”

“You should put on a shirt,” I say as I push past Theo to get to my seat.

He runs a hand over his stomach, grinning. “Nah, I’m good.”

Well, that makes one of us.

Five

Theo keeps his shirt off the entire meal. It’s obscene. My eyeballs hurt from the strain of not looking.

Paul picked up sandwiches from one of the best spots in Marin County. The homemade bread is crusty perfection, and at least half of it ends up in my lap, little sourdough snowflakes drifting from my mouth every time I take a bite. It takes everything in me not to pick up each fleck with my finger after I’ve demolished my sandwich.

Our conversation flows smoothly thanks to Paul, who asks about my job (I continue the lie and say it’s great), what I do in my free time (I wing it, sincehikeanddoomscrollaren’t legitimate answers), and how I got into photography.

Here I can be honest and tell him how when I was twelve, I picked up an old camera of Gram’s, which was collecting dust on her bookshelf.

Thomas tried to fight me for it, but I came out of our wrestling match victorious, albeit bruised like a peach. I started using itconstantly so Thomas wouldn’t have access, but it turned into a genuine love. An obsessive one.

Paul smiles at this. “I’m familiar with the feeling. Now that you’re done with your meal, should I go grab what I wanted to show you today?”

“Yes,” I say enthusiastically. Theo lets out a soft huff. Not a laugh. Something rustier.

Paul disappears into the house, and the silence stretches between us.

“So why aren’t you doing your photography thing full time?” Theo asks finally.

I eye him, and the flake of bread caught in his chest hair. Disgusting. I want to pick that one up with my finger the most.

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