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“You were right,” he says. “This is awkward.”
I think he means the conversation, but instead he reaches out and flicks on the light and grins. “Much better.”
I blink at the sudden brightness. “I thought you were worried someone will see.”
“I like to live on the edge,” he murmurs, scanning the crowded closet until he spots what he’s looking for.
A moment later he’s overturned two buckets. He sits on one, and then pats the other for me to do the same.
I reluctantly do so, because as weird as sitting in a
cleaning closet with Gage Barrett is, I’m not the least bit tired, and staring at the ceiling above my bunk bed holds no appeal.
“So. Your business.” The buckets are short, so he wraps his long arms around his knees.
I do the same, and rest my chin on mine. “We started it a couple of years ago.”
“We? You and the person you were speaking with on the phone?”
“Marjorie. We’ve been best friends since high school.”
“Where’s home?”
“San Diego.”
“Ah. Not so far from my home.”
“You’re from San Diego originally?” I ask.
He smiles. “Didn’t do your Gage Barrett homework, huh?”
I shrug.
“I’m from the East Coast originally,” he says. “I moved to L.A. when I was nineteen.”
“To act?”
“Yup.”
“Was it hard to leave your family? I sometimes think about leaving San Diego, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to leave my mom.”
His eyes flash with pain at the question, and he looks away for a moment before shrugging. “Sure, I guess. So, you and Marjorie…why T-shirts?”
I’m surprised to realize that I want to know more about whatever caused the shadow to cross his face, but I go along with the question. “Same reason most businesses start, I guess. We just thought there was a market. There’s something so classic about a T-shirt and jeans, but it’s shockingly hard to find one that’s not too short, not too clingy, not too boxy, not too see-through…”
“I don’t mind the see-through.”
“So you’ve said. Anyway, Marjorie and I thought, how hard can that be?”
“How hard was it?”
“Harder than we thought,” I admit. “We knew from the start what we wanted, but finding the best manufacturer was hard. And now that we have it right, we’ve got the next battle.”
“Exposure.”
I nod. “We’re in plenty of boutique stores in San Diego, and we’ve even had a couple of B-list celebrity endorsements. It’s enough to pay the rent on my tiny apartment and afford groceries, but not much more.”
“You want to build an empire,” he says, studying me.
