AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I trade him a beer for a slice, and we stand at the counter to eat.
“When we get home, leave those on,” he says, nodding at my outfit.
“What, my overalls?”
He winks. “And the bandana.”
“The bandana is to keep sweat out of my hair,” I say. “Not to be cute.”
“Then definitely wear it, because what I’ve got in mind will leave you all kinds of sweaty.”
“Ew.” I toss a piece of crust at him. “Gross.”
He laughs and wipes his mouth on his sleeve. “How come you never got roommates?”
“I’ve never had any.”
“Never? But that’s like a rite of passage into adulthood.”
“My dad didn’t want me to. He offered to pay for me to live alone, and I’d be an idiot to turn that down.”
Finn shakes his head. “It’s good to live with people. You learn weird things about yourself, like that you fucking hate the smell of sautéed Brussels sprouts.”
I smirk. “Lucky for you, I don’t eat Brussels sprouts . . . roomie.”
“So what’d your dad say when you told him you were giving up your apartment to move in with a smutty photographer?”
I take a long pull from my bottle. Finn looks smug, because he knows I haven’t done it yet. Just the thought makes me perspire, so it’s good I’ve got the headscarf. “I’m telling him next week.”
“Right. You said that earlier this month, Hals.”
“I will.” I just need to figure out a way to present it so it doesn’t look as though I made this decision rashly, without thinking it through. “I was going to the other day, but he lost another client. I swear, when I finally worked up the nerve to enter his office, his face was purple with rage.”
Finn shakes his head, but it’s not as if he’s guilt-free.
“And what about you?” I ask. “Are you going to tell Marissa I’m the live-in maid next time she comes?”
He crams the last of his pizza into his mouth but continues to be gross by speaking. “You know, you haven’t checked your phone in a few hours.”
“Smooth topic change.”
“I’m just saying, I’m impressed. That’s a first.”
I pick a pepperoni off and eat it. It’s not a first. The daily count of new followers is higher than ever thanks to the Buzzfeed feature a couple weeks ago. We’re already at seventy-five-thousand followers, and one-hundred’s just around the corner. The article’s nearly doubled what we had, which is astounding, but we’re starting to plateau.
“I spent a lot of time looking through hashtags last night,” I admit. “I was trying to find new ones for us to experiment with, maybe tap into a new audience, but . . . I kind of fell down a rabbit hole of sex.”
“So that’s why you woke me up in the best way possible at two in the morning.”
I blush, remembering how it felt to have him come to life in my mouth. “I was excited.”
“And now?”
I shake my head at my pizza. “I don’t know. Now, in the light of day, I’m . . . not.”
Finn puts down his beer. “I told you to stop looking through that shit. What’d you see?”
“It wasn’t the comments.” I don’t have to ask what he means. I ruined our Valentine’s Day dinner date earlier this week. While Finn was in the restroom, I checked our account. Someone had commented that busty girls look fat in lingerie, and I read it with a mouthful of chocolate lava cake. I nearly spit it all over my plate. By the time Finn returned to the table, I was convinced that person was right. I was too fat, too gross to be half-nude in such a public forum. Finn threatened to delete the account if I didn’t promise to stop reading comments and messages. It didn’t matter that all other feedback about our Butter Boudoir shoot was good. Better than good. That comment haunted me for days.
I agreed to Finn’s conditions and turned off push notifications. I’ve still been checking things regularly, just not several times a day like before. “I was looking at accounts similar to ours,” I explain. “They post less than we do but have hundreds of thousands of followers.”
“We’re brand-fucking-spanking new, Hals. What we’ve done in a few months is incredible.”
“I know. I just wonder. What if we posted twice a day for a while?”
“You going to quit your job and pose for me for a living?”
“Maybe.”
He gives me a look that warns me not to go down this path, but sometimes, when it comes to this stuff, Finn needs a push. He gets business, but he doesn’t always know how to mix it with his art.
I shift my hip against the counter. “We’re already getting a few sponsor requests a month. The more followers we have, the more money we can command.”
“And is that what this is about for you? Money?”
“You know it isn’t.”
“So why are you bringing that up?”
“It’s a bonus. Imagine if one day, you and I did this for real. As a living. We get a five-thousand-dollar sponsor every month, and that’s just to start.”
“It’s a nice idea,” he admits. “I just don’t want you getting your hopes up. Things are going well, so let’s just keep doing what we’re doing.”
“Posting twice a day is doing what we’re doing. It’s just doing it more.”
He sighs and looks out the window over the sink. Under the harsh kitchen lights, the lines around his eyes are obvious. “It’s supposed to be a little warmer this weekend. We should do something. Get out of town.”
“Finn.”
He turns back to me. “We don’t have enough material to post more. As it is, we’re shooting every weekend and some weeknights.”
“I know. And we’re running out of body parts.” And captions. I tense with the thought. Something has to give. The only thing I’ve been able to write about lately is Finn, but it’s personal, not anything I want to share. Not even with him. It’s about my boyfriend, not a faceless sex partner like the fantasy we create for people.
Finn narrows his eyes. “So what do you suggest?”
I’ve given this a lot of thought. Finn isn’t just getting recognition for his work. Since last month, girls have started requesting him, the sexy photographer. I know he’s seen it, even if he hasn’t mentioned anything. “There’s only one photo of you. The one in the suit.”
He shakes his head. “I’m behind the camera, not in front.”
“They want more of you, babe. You’re the one bringing in all these people.”
“Me?” He laughs. “If you think that, you’re even more modest than I thought. This account is all about you. Fuck. You got a marriage proposal the other day.”
I try not to smile but fail epically. “I did?”
“It’s in the messages.”
I’ve been avoiding those, but now I’m tempted to look. “Well, yes, I have fans too, but they’ve seen so much of me. All of me. But you? Or even us, together? That picture you took while unbuttoning my collar from behind—they love that one.” I put my bottle down and go to him, touching the hem of his t-shirt. My fingers are wet from condensation, and they leave a damp spot. “I love that one.”
“We did that in the heat of the mo
ment. It was a quick, easy shot. I can’t do a whole session that way, setting up the camera and then posing for the timer.”
“Then let’s hire someone.”
He slow-blinks. “To take the photos? Are you kidding? I’m the fucking photographer. This is my work.”
“No, no, no.” I flatten my hands on his chest and lean into him. “I wasn’t saying that at all. I mean we can hire another model. If we don’t shoot his face, they won’t know it’s not you. Or maybe they will, but just having something fresh will revive us.”
“Revive us? We just had a marathon month.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Not really.”
“He and I would pose together, and you’d direct us. You’d have complete control.”
“You want someone else’s hands on you,” he deadpans.
“It’s just business, babe. You can even pick the model, I don’t care who he is.”
“I’m not going to pick a man to—” His chest expands with a breath. “I don’t even . . . is this about yesterday?”
I have the urge to pull away, but I don’t. I don’t want this to turn into a fight. “What about yesterday?” I ask.
“You know what, Halston.”
I drop my eyes to his chest. Finn was commissioned, for a lot of money, to shoot a local socialite’s boudoir session for her fiancé. If that’s not bad enough, she was made famous by stealing that fiancé from her best friend. I would’ve let him do it, but he accepted without consulting with me. “It’s not about that.”
“I told you, you have nothing to worry about. I’ve literally not thought about another woman since I met you.” He lifts my chin by his knuckle. “The money I make is ours, not mine. Come to the shoot with me. You can be the director.”
“I’ve heard she’s dumb, but I’m sure she’s not that dense. She’ll know who I am,” I point out.
He frowns. “Do you want me to cancel it?”
I’m not worried about her. I’m anxious about what this means for us. Finn’s website is getting traffic now. My designer did a great job. It even has a Press section, and there are more than a couple articles in it. Me? I have nothing. Even though Finn mentions me in every interview, there’s no website with my name on it.
