“Yeah I noticed that. The sexist stuff, not your dad owning that company. What in the rolling flipping chairs, Grey!”
Well, he took that better than I thought he would.
Chapter 10
“honey, life it just a classroom”—New Romantics by Taylor Swift
March 2024
My heart stopsbeating the second Grey’s face pops up on the screen, not because I am happy to see him, but because his hair is wet. Wet as in completelydrenched, water still dripping down from the strands.
Before he gets one word out, I hear the water running in the background.
“ARE YOU IN THE SHOWER?!”
Grey smiles into the camera, then turns his head to look behind himself to check. “Yup.”
My mouth stands wide open, but my jaw drops once more when he takes a few steps back, now standing right underneath the stream. The camera doesn’t reach below his belly button, but the image in my head is building itself up without my permission anyway.
How dare he?
Honestly, how dare he pick up the phone when he’s in the middle of showering? Standing there in all his naked glory and yet still not giving me a show.
That man knows very well how I feel about him, so doing this is plain rude.
It’s just a shower. Everyone showers. You shower. Your best friend showers. Grey’s best friends shower. Grey showers.
With you watching.
With me watching.
It’s nothing I haven’t already seen, and yet this right here seems far more intimate than we’ve been before, even when we’re states apart.
“How was your day?” he asks, putting some shampoo on his hand before he massages it right into his scalp. All I do is watch and wish it was me who was rubbing shampoo into his hair, then sneak in a little kiss before rinsing it back out.
I clear my throat, blinking away the image of Grey and I showering together. “Great, actually. I took the U13 out for some McDonalds after their game. It was the first time they have won this season, so I thought some celebratory McDonalds wouldn’t hurt. Hannah, the oldest of them, challenged me to an eating competition. Whoever ate less chicken nuggets in five minutes would pay for them. I won, but I ended up paying anyway because she’s a kid, you know?”
“Sounds like fun.”
“It was! Though my stomach would love to disagree. I swear, I ate like thirty Chicken McNuggets. Afterward, I downed about two bottles of apple juice because I felt like dying. In hindsight, the apple juice might’ve not been my best drink choice, but I love apple juice, so I’d never regret choosing that one over anything else.”
After having rinsed out the shampoo, Grey turns around to grab a blue loofah before he’s facing me again. He then pours some soap onto it, foaming it up. “Thirty nuggets in five minutes. That’s quite impressive.”
“You think?”
He looks directly at the camera. “Yeah. It’s not every day you hear someone say they atethirtynuggets in such a short time.”
That might be true.
“Did you talk to your dad yet?” I ask, changing the topic. After I found out his father is pretty homophobic, I spent all of yesterday reading articles and interviews, seeing it for myself. And as it turns out, Dad was right. Ji-Hoon Li said his fair share of homophobic things in the past, and the stores really do separate boys from girls clothes more than other stores do. And the prints…
I didn’t ask Grey whether he’s helping his father take down mine and decided to go with my gut feeling. Grey isn’t his father, and it’s not his fault his dad is an asshole.
However, I did ask Grey why he’s on no-talking basis with his parents and he told me his dad was mad at him, but he never said why. I have my assumptions though.
“No, but I do plan on visiting him as soon as I find some time for it. It’s about time we have a talk.”
“And that would be when exactly?” Grey going to visit his dad to talk means he’ll be in Malibu, which then means I get to see him.
