Page 11 of Darling
“Who you calling girl, girl?”
“But he probably isn’t down to fuck, right? I mean, that much was clear when he said thanks but no thanks to the blow job? He’sprobablyjust curious about the painting.”
“Mmm, no, I don’t think it does,” she says. “I think it just means he didn’t want a blow job.”
“Who doesn’t want a blow job, though?” asks Theo with a frown.
“Exactly my point!” I hit my glass off his.
Amata rolls her eyes. “Men. Well, and this might be a little out there, why not call him and find out? Tell him you’re done with the painting and you’re interested in selling it. At the very least, you make some money from a hot, rich British guy—and not in the way you usually do.”
“I actually don’t know if he’s rich,” I muse.
“Well here’s your chance to find out.”
“I don’t care. I’m not looking for a fucking sugar daddy, Am.”
“Yeah, okay, working girl.” She scowls. “Might be nice nothaving to worry about rent, that’s all. So, whatareyou looking for from James Bond then? A quick fuck? Because that’s literally your job, which means you’re looking for something else, something more, something like arelationship. And before you get into one of those, you best check he can pay his own way because I will not let you date some useless fuckboy.”
I laugh at this. “He is the least fuckboy guy I’ve ever met. You don’t need to worry about that.”
“Okay, well, good. So,” she says, “is it a relationship? Is that what you’re looking for from him?”
Is it? I don’t know. He intrigues me. More than most guys do. I’m attracted to men, obviously. I like fucking them, sexting them, and looking at them. But my experience dating them has been... well... sort of painful. Christian is hot, sure. Older, like I prefer. So that comes, on the whole, with a guarantee of maturity—definitely what I prefer. But it’s more than both of those things. There’s something about his way of existing that I like; something gentle and calm. A quiet steadiness that makes me wanna curl up in his arms and take a nap. After fucking him, obviously. There’s something in his eyes, too, something sad, I guess—his dead wife, yeah, I know—which makes me want to find a way in. A way to make him look less… sad.
I shrug again. “Maybe I just want to sell him my painting.”
When I get home a couple hours later, tipsy and horny, I make myself shower off the bar and change into clean shorts and a T-shirt before I send the text I’ve been thinking about all week. All month, if we’re being real. I stare at the painting across the room, sat up like a sentinel outside my bedroom door. There’s a chance he’ll hate it. My art isn’t to everyone’s taste; sometimes it’s not to mine, but this will be the first time I’ve essentially done a portrait and had that person see the end result. Except for Jeremiah. But I don’t include him, ever. I try not to think abouthim, generally.
I hadn’t saved his number in my phone, because I didn’t trust myself not to send him a dick pic or something when I was out and/or horny. So after I’ve snapped a few pictures of the painting, I take the pin out of his number and carry it with me back over to the sofa. I’m not sure whether to be cute or businesslike, and what’s more likely to get a response, then I decide I’m being pathetic overthinking it this much.
Me:
Hey, it’s Asher. finished the painting. let me know if ur interested
I attach a couple of the photos and hit send.
When I wake up the next morning, he hasn’t replied, and for about ten minutes, I feel the embarrassment like a sunburn all over my body. But I have work to do today and shit to get ready, so I don’t have time to feel any kind of way about it. So he’s not interested. So he was just being polite about wanting to buy the painting. It’s not the end of the fucking world. Plenty of older, hot, sad British guys in the sea.
I shower and prep thoroughly, eat a very small breakfast of fruit and a granola bar, and set up the cameras in the living room—one by the balcony and another over by the kitchen. I move Christian’s painting into the bedroom because I’m not about to get fucked ten ways from Sunday in front of it.
Carter’s Australian but moved to the States for a guy, another creator whom I’ve also worked with, but they broke up about a month ago. By the looks of it, Carter is trying to fuck his way through every creator in North America in an attempt to prove something to his ex. Or to himself. I’m unsure. We met at a group scene I did for SCX a month or so ago, and we hitit off. Not in a romantic sense—these things are rarely (if ever) romantic—but I liked his energy, and we’d looked really good on camera together, and he was down for shooting some content independent of the studio.
“Man, I really like your place,” he says as he follows me into the living room. “You live here by yourself?”
“Yeah, just me.”
“Damn, boy, you must be making bank.”
I shrug. “I do okay. But rent here is a lot less than NYC, so I’m actually able to save a little, too.”
“Yeah, okay, no need to brag.”
I laugh. “You’re staying with Jayden, right?”
He nods, face going a little closed off. A sign of a story if I ever saw one, one I’m not particularly interested in, honestly.
“When’s your visa up?”