Page 50 of Real Fake Husband

The drawing looks exactly like me, and the shading is on point. My face, my shoulders, my abs, my dick, and nuts.

Perfect. Fucking. Perfect. Fucking detailed too. Veins and all.

I flip through the pages, looking at the rest of her work. The way she draws the human body is stunning. She doesn’t embellish (I can tell)—she doesn’t try to make it perfect. She catches all the subtle curves and nuances of the human form.

I continue to scan through the pages. Most of what I see are bits and pieces of a person from when, I assume, she didn’t have a model in front of her. Or did she? Someone’s arm, someone’s torso, a pair of eyes. Wait, are those my eyes? Hard to tell. There seems to be a subtle scar over the eyebrow, which mirrors the one I got when I was a dumb teenager. Not from the night of my first joy ride, but later that week when I’d been forced to help fix the bike and wasn’t watching what I was doing.

I get to the start of the sketchbook, finding full nudes of some dude, which pretty much makes me lose interest. I will say he’s got nothing on me, and the sneering expression on his face tells me right away that he wears turtlenecks and jumps in the pool holding his nose.

“What are youdoing?”

I spin around as Josie stands there in her robe, her wet hair slicked back from her face. Her eyes are as wide as saucers.

“Anything you’d like to tell me?” I ask calmly, opening to the naked drawing of me and showing her.

“Oh, my God. Cal!No,” she shrieks. “Wait! Please!”

She tries to take the book from me, but I hold it out of her grasp. She jumps to no avail. I’m taller and easily stretch out of her reach.

“Cal!”

I make sure to keep it open to the sketch, growling, “I gotta say, you’ve got a lot of talent. Of course, it helps when your subject is as devilishly handsome as I am.”

She stops trying to grab the book. “Okay, look,” she says, still panicked, her cheeks flushing in embarrassment. “I know this seems creepy. But please,pleaseknow I didn’t mean to walk in on you. I was going to get my uniform, I knocked on the door, twice I might add, and you didnotanswer!”

“So you walked in, saw I was naked, and couldn’t resist drawing me?”

Her face twists.

It’s evident that she’s trying to figure out how to talk her way out of this.

She just groans and buries her face in her hands. I’m not sure if she can’t come up with an excuse or if she’s given up trying. “Yeah, pretty much. To be honest, I wanted to get even with you for burning that drawing of mine when we were kids, but then…things got out of hand.”

“That’ll teach you.” I’m not angry in the least. I’m flattered. I really am. I’ve never been drawn before, and this girl has a shitload of talent. The sketch is dead on, and she even took the time to include my tattoos.

“Hey, I’m not ashamed of my body,” I tell her. “Clearly, you can see that I’ve got it going on.”

Her cheeks are flaming red, and she groans in annoyance. “Oh, please stop talking. I’m having several déjà vus and can’t even be mad at you. Seriously. I’ll do anything if you do not tease me about this.” She’s drumming her fingers on her thigh.

Anything?

That’s what she said?

The way she said it strikes a nerve.

Hold on.

It sounds like she’s pleading, almost begging me not to make fun of her. I know it’s in our nature to give each other shit, but the past is the past, and there’s no use revisiting days gone by, let alone waking dead and buried ghosts. I’d never tease her about something she obviously has a passion for. I can tell she’s uncomfortable, and I feel like an asshole. That wasn’t my point. I struck a nerve I didn’t even know existed. I’ve never seen Josie like this. She is a fighter, defiant and rebellious as fuck, the most confrontational woman I’ve ever met, always ready to raise hell.

I must have hit where it hurts.

She let her guard down.

And she let me see.

“Look, I’m teasing about you sneaking around drawing me—not about the drawing itself. The drawing is great. You did an awesome job.”

Her eyes meet mine. “Thanks,” she mutters.

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