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Hell.
Relief absolutely flooded me.
“My daughter adores your work, Corey.” That was Franklin.
I drew a deep breath and focused on Sloan’s arms around me. It was insane how his touch recentered me. Deep, deep breaths.
“Hell, all my students,” Tate said, stunned. “You know what I do for a living, right?”
Yeah, I knew. He was a special ed teacher, and Franklin’s autistic daughter was one of Tate’s students.
I’d caught up on the gossip.
“We’ll move on for now,” Tate told me. He was recovering from his shock, I guessed. “I’m genuinely sorry—I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I’m just—in awe. Your work makes such a difference, babe. But anyway. Last but not least on the list—”
“I’ll do the calendar,” I blurted out. “With Sloan. Sloan and I will do it together. He’s even better than I am.” I looked back at him, having forgotten the small matter of asking if it was okay. “Can we, Sir?”
He smirked faintly and kissed my cheek. “Absolutely.”
Sweet relief.
“It’s settled!” Tate was happy. “We can discuss the details later, because I’m thinking rather than an auction for the calendar, we can set a semi-outrageous price tag and coerce everyone into buying one.”
I snickered and fell back against Sloan’s chest again.
CHAPTER NINE
The rest of the munch was sort of a blur. I was totally overwhelmed, but in a strange way that didn’t bother me too much. Not in the anxious-headachey kind of way, at least. Maybe that would come later…? I didn’t know, and I didn’t care. I felt good, a little dopey, a little tired, and very happy.
The amount of information, though…
Other than what they’d already covered, followed by all the members who wanted to contribute to the auction, plenty remained. Such as two events, the auction itself, and our next Game.
To get back on track, we were going to host two Games in December, the first one right as the month began or the following weekend, and then one closer to Christmas.
Now in November, we had the auction and a couple smaller events I wasn’t sure we’d attend yet. Greer mentioned he might host a demo once the temporary place was up and running.
Macklin came over after a while too, and he apologized for doing what he’d done so publicly. But I was over it. To be honest, it felt kinda good to have it out in the open. Obviously, I had to spend a few minutes elaborating to Greer, Sloan, and Archie, and that was fine. For some reason, I’d worried people would either make fun of me or…I didn’t know, treat me differently somehow.
And if I were even more honest with myself, which was hard to say out loud: “Since this started with me just wanting to make my cousin feel better, I didn’t put any thought into the actual illustrations. A toddler could’ve drawn them, and that was kind of the point. But to be recognized for your shittiest work and have millions of people saying the doodling is awesome for the wrong reasons… Blah. It just wasn’t what I’d imagined when I decided I wanted to work with illustration.”
Sloan gave my leg a squeeze. “I think I can relate to that. Becoming a tattoo artist wasn’t my original plan. But we’re still bringing our art to people who appreciate it, aren’t we?”
“Exactly.” Greer agreed with him.
I shrugged. “I guess. But calling my dinos art is a big stretch.”
“Now I have to see them,” Archie said abruptly and dug out his phone. “What do I search for?”
“Attention Deficit Dinos,” I replied.
“Either way, I’m impressed,” Greer said. He stole an abandoned piece of chicken from my plate. “Do you know how rare it is for people to make a living on art and shit like that?”
And shit like that.
I grinned.
“Smooth, honey.” Sloan smirked.
“Fuck smooth.” Greer smirked right back, then returned his attention to me. “So how does this work? Do people subscribe to updates?”
“No, I post them for free on my Twitter,” I said. “Lane’s the business brain. He saw the potential once I had, like, half a million followers, so he set up a web shop for me, and that’s… Yeah, that’s our business. I provide the content, and he sells merch.”
So far, anyway. I was trying to convince him to do his own comic on my Twitter; we could share it, ‘cause he was an excellent writer. He’d helped me plenty when I’d run out of ideas.
“That’s brilliant.” Greer bobbed his head and looked for another plate to raid. Sloan’s abandoned bacon disappeared.
So much for him not eating a lot anymore.
Sloan rubbed my leg a little. “You mentioned wanting to create your own graphic novels. Seems like a fan base of four million would make a terrific audience.”
I’d entertained that idea before, but my followers seemed to have three poorly drawn dinosaurs on their brains. If a dino update garnered approximately two hundred thousand likes, one of my random illustrations got maybe two thousand.
