Page 54 of Fake It For Him

I knew he wasn’t happy about it, but as I turned back to my cabinet and looked at the vibrant, rich, joyful color, I decided I liked it. The chalk paint we were using was easy to work with and the color was lustrous, which made me wonder if I had learned something today that I might be able to apply in my own place once I got one.

In my mind’s eye, I pictured the last apartment I’d stayed in when I had been in Rome and I tried to imagine that kitchen with turquoise cabinets. Or olive green. Maybe even a vibrant purple.

A smile ghosted across my lips as I thought about it. Having a place I could make my own—with or without painting the cabinets—would be amazing. While my wanderlust and my bank account hadn’t provided me with much opportunity to do that kind of thing until now, I was feeling the strange urge to have someplace I could lay down roots.

The ants in my pants would probably never allow me to stay in just one place forever, but if I had a home base, someplace I could return to after my travels, that would be amazing. I sighed softly, wondering for the first time whether it really had been wanderlust fueling me all these years.

After talking to Calan last night, it occurred to me now that it might’ve just been fear. If I wasn’t stagnant and I kept moving, it was so much less likely that anyone I knew would find me. Maybe it’d been a combination of the two, wanderlust and fear.

I’d always wanted to travel and see the world. That part of my soul hadn’t only appeared after I’d wrecked Spencer’s life. It’d been there since I was a kid.

Plus, as a travel writer, my pieces were better if I had been to the place I was writing about. Desktop research was great and all, but it couldn’t account for everything.

The pieces I wrote were different, and it was because I immersed myself in the cultures of the place I was writing about. Even if it was just a story about a landmark, there were people around. People in the backstory. I tried to connect with all that, to find out what the landmark meant to those people and how it affected their day-to-day life.

Apart from that, there were other things I wouldn’t know from research alone. Scents, sounds, feelings, all of which I also liked including in my pieces. Like the way certain monuments brought a sense of peace and serenity as soon as you saw them and were shrouded in a heavy kind of silence despite the amount of people visiting.

Or how walking into the Colosseum had conjured up ghostly visions of the men who had fought and died there. For me anyway. It’d almost been like I could hear the crowds chanting and feel the ground vibrating beneath my feet.

My favorite pieces to write, however, were about cultures and places that were off the beaten track. I wrote about the capital cities and their most iconic landmarks because those pieces always sold well, but once that was done, I ventured off into the mostly unknown.

For the last few years, that had been enough for me. The thrill of the chase, trying to find something to write about in a way no one ever had, had been my one true love. The thing I looked forward to most.

Now, I didn’t know. I just wasn’t feeling as much of an itch to get my feet back on an airplane as I thought I would.

On my hands and knees painting the trim near the floor, I was oddly content exactly where I was. With Kara and Mikey’s banter in the background and the earthy scent of the chalk paint wafting to my nostrils on every inhale, I felt at peace.

Until Kara decided to turn the conversation to me.

“What time did you get home last night? I didn’t even hear you come in, but I thought you were only going shopping and to lunch. I tried waiting up to see what you’d bought, but eventually, I gave up.

“Oh, uh, it was late,” I said. “My shopping bags are behind the sofa, though. I’ll show you later. Freya is a beast with a credit card. She bought me so much stuff and she refused to take no for an answer.”

Kara’s short blonde curls bounced as she shot up onto her tiptoes and peered over at the sofa like she was going to be able to see my purchases from all the way over here. “That’s some friend. How is it that you’ve been back in town only a couple of weeks and you’ve already got a Sugar Mama, and I’ve been here all along but I still don’t have one?”

I laughed. “She’s not a Sugar Mama and she’s not a friend. Not really, anyway. Although…” I trailed off, not sure how much more I could tell them without opening myself up to another lecture from Mikey. Technically, I had already broken the Faux’s contract by telling them about the arrangement. Calan knew I had told them the basics, but still, revealing more might be pushing my luck.

Kara stared at me expectantly though, an eyebrow arching as she set her paintbrush down. “Although?” she asked. “What happened? It had to have been a good day out if you stayed with her that late.”

“I, uh, I didn’t stay with her,” I finally admitted, my eyes on the trim I was carefully edging my brush over. “She dropped me off at Calan’s pretty early and I was going to take a cab home from his place, but then the night took a surprisingly good turn.”

Her eyes lit up. “Good in the orgasm way?”

My cheeks heated as I shrugged. “Well that too, but it wasn’t just that. We talked.”

“You talked?” She frowned. “How is that possibly a good turn?”

I sighed and finished off this part of the trim before I sat down on my butt on the kitchen floor. This seems to be my weekend for that.

“It was good because we finally talked for real,” I said slowly, trying to articulate how I was feeling about it this morning. “All this time, most of our conversations have either been hostile, cryptic, or superficial, but last night, he finally opened up and so did I. It felt great, not only getting through to him but being able to talk through so many of the things that have made us who we are.”

“Wait,” Mikey said suddenly, his eyes going wide as he snapped his gaze to mine. “You told him about Spencer, didn’t you?”

“What?” Kara frowned and tutted her tongue at him. “Don’t be stupid. She wouldn’t have—” She cut herself off when she looked at my face, her eyes going just as big as Mikey’s. “You told him?”

“I did. It was time. Besides, after everything he shared with me, it felt right to do the same.”

Mikey’s head shook, and it was clear that he was bothered by this. His nose wrinkled, his brow puckered, and his legs started bouncing even while he was sitting cross-legged on the floor.