My shoulders rise and go tight. “Well, not exactly like you.” I raise my voice.
“No, okay. She keeps her clothes on for the camera,” they clarify.
“Where are you from, Maeve?” Jessica asks. “Your accent is cute.”
“Dublin, Ireland,” I answer.
“Oh, you’re the one Loncey has been texting,” she says knowingly.
I feel my cheeks blush at that comment. The idea that Loncey has mentioned me to her already feels… unexpected and well, kind of nice.
“They’ve got some crazy idea that Ireland is a country worth visiting. I think they’re just holding out for a European visa from me or something,” I joke. “But really it’s a bit of a shithole.” I wince. “Sorry, Loncey’s ma.”
The camera lifts to give me a better view of their mother.
“No apologies necessary. As I taught my kids, there are no bad words, only bad intentions,” she says, and she gives eachof her children a warm smile. “And my name is Gabrielle. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Maeve.”
“And you. I should let youse get back to your film.”
“Film?” Jessica turns to her friend, then Loncey and repeats the word with my Irish pronunciation. “She saysfilm.”
“What should I say?” I ask, confused.
“Movie,” Loncey explains and their face is back on the screen. “We say movie.”
I roll my eyes and then I’m raised up and I see a view of the three women and Prince on the couch over Loncey’s shoulder.
“Say goodbye to Maeve,” they instruct and the three of them wave and say various types of farewells. I half-expect Loncey to then hang up but they tell me to, “Hold up.” and suddenly we’re on the move again.
“They’re nice,” I say when Loncey is back in their yard.
“They’re my family,” they say. “And Taylor. But she’s sort of like family too, I guess.”
“Don’t you want to join them?” I ask.
“Nah,” Loncey says as they open the cabin door and in a second they’re surrounded by wood again. “I’ve got a ton of editing to do and I’m meeting up with one of my mentees later.”
“Mentees?”
“I mentor a few up-and-coming content creators. People who are just getting started. Queer people. I help them get set up, give them some tips and introduce them to other creators who aren’t going to screw them over.”
“Screw them over? Isn’t that exactly what’s supposed to happen?” I ask, only half-joking as I process what they’re saying. I’d never imagined somebody mentoring another person who wants to get into selling sexual content online but now they’ve said it, I suspect it could be incredibly helpful.
“There’s good screwing of people and then there’s the bad kind. There have been countless scandals over the years of people committing assault on collaborations, not to mention not respecting boundaries, or just being disrespectful in countless other ways. There are a lot of dicks working in this industry, if you’ll pardon the pun.”
I snort. “It’s a good pun.”
“From you, that’s high praise. I’ll take it.”
“How much do you charge for doing that?” I ask, the cogs in my brain turning over.
“The mentoring? Maeve, I don’t charge. That would be… wrong.”
“You just help people in all this spare time you say you don’t have?”
Loncey pulls their pink lips into their mouth and seems to chew on them for a second. “I make time. If it matters, I make time for it.”
I think on that for a few seconds. I’d like to say I’m the same way, but I don’t know how true that would be.
