Page 9 of Saving Pookie

"Yeah?" I tongue the inside of my cheek. "Did he look handsome when you were done?"

She chuckles quietly. "He never let me touch his hair again."

I throw up both hands in front of me in protest. "Okay, please stop."

Snip.

"Sorry, I can't do that. We have about an hour until showtime, and we still have a mountain of paperwork to sign. I need to make you as presentable as possible before strolling you into the lion's den."

These people need essential oils in their life. Where is the calm? Where is the comfort? Taking their words at face value, I don't think I would be considered crazy for believing I'm about to be sacrificed. "Are you always this⁠—"

"This high-strung?" She tosses the shears onto the counter. "Only when everything is falling apart, which lately is every fucking day."

"No offense, but y'all are making me hungry for a Xanax."

She dips her head sideways and paws into her purse. "Oh, I can help you with that. I'm on a steady regimen."

I can't help but stare at her, absolutely confused how this is the version of her that's sedated. "I don't actually want your drugs."

"Suit yourself." She pops a tablet into her mouth and swallows it dry before reaching over me and grabbing a makeup brush and whatever kind of makeup is packaged in a folding device. She kneads the brush over a powdery substance and dusts my face. "We're going for a natural look. We don't yet know how you're going to look on camera, so we might need to go heavier next time. Or we might not even need makeup at all." She leans in close enough that I swear I can feel the heat of her eyeballs on my cheeks. "You have gorgeous skin, by the way. I don't see a blemish in sight."

I mean to thank her for the compliment, but I'm distracted by the boisterous sound of what appears to be a stampede of buffalo. A moment later, the door swings open and a lineup of stunning men saunter in.

Chit-chatting. Laughing. Arguing.

And I can't hear a word they say as they make their way to the chairs with their names on them.

Boone sits down first, his jeans high on his waist. He's the only one with visible body hair, rugged on his pecs with a perfectly trimmed happy trail traveling to the hem of his jeans. His voice is a raw and gruff, low-pitched tremor that you'd expect to hear from the lips of a daddy-type. He carries a Southern drawl with well-groomed stubble that's no longer than a day or two's worth of growth.

Gunnar adjusts himself as soon as he sits down, making a scene of the way his junk moves beneath his jeans. He ribs Boone beside him. It sounds like an inside joke, but only Gunnar is laughing. First impressions matter, and that tattoo-painted man is a loose cannon. Born wild, forever wild. The kind of man who tells you flat out he'll ruin your life, and you let him do it anyway. A bad boy who'll have you crying into a pillow a few months down the line, wondering how the fuck you got there.

Dixon slumps into his chair with a yawn. He seems completely out of place compared to the rest of them: reserved, quiet, and slimmer than the rest.

And then there's Maverick, who takes a seat with a smile on his face. A smile that only widens when he catches his own reflection in the mirror. He appears antsy, unable to sit still. He stands back up and struts around the dressing room with his unzipped jeans slung low on his hips, the strings of a pink thong angled on his waist. He's tall, dark, handsome, and probably full of enough shit to clog the entire city's plumbing system. He possesses a magnetic charisma worn on his sharply defined jawline. He's hot shit. He knows it. I'd let him ruin me. Destroy every bit of the life I have left. I'm all too easy a mark.

And then there's Braxton, or who I can reasonably suspect to be Braxton, based on the fact that he's the only one who hasn't claimed his chair other than the absent guy named Kolter. Braxton, what can I say? He possesses total fuckboy energy with wavy brown hair peeking beneath a backwards pink cap. His hair is stroked with natural blonde highlights and shadows. Piercing blue eyes like the seas back home in Laguna Beach. He wears a smile—forced and feigned—all too well.

He doesn't sit down. Instead, he comes up right behind me, meeting me in the mirror before he places a hand on each of my shoulders. Firm, but not too firm. He lowers himself just enough so that his head is right beside mine as he smiles into the mirror. "Hi, new guy."

I'm speechless, not lost for words exactly. Rather, lost for thoughts. All I can mutter is a trembling, "Hi."

He inhales a quiet huff, his smile widening.

And then he takes a seat beside me, digs his phone out of his pocket, and starts swiping through a dating app. Girls. He's swiping through girls, matching with every single one that appears on his screen.

Total fucking fuckboy.

Jules snaps her fingers in my face, and I snap my attention to her, having forgotten she was even there. "You're not supposed to meet the boys—not officially until the cameras are rolling."

I stare at her blankly.

"That means get your ass up," she scowls.

I follow Jules down the hallway that never ends. Before I explain how fast she's moving, I need to take a detour to talk about the gay walk. See, straight people know that their destination is a twenty-minute walk, so they leave twenty-five minutes before they're supposed to be somewhere. Us gays leave ten minutes before and still beat the straights to our destination.

It's not a myth.

It's a fact.