Shut Up and Model for Me (51 page)

"I don't know what you want me to say," I tell him.

"What I want you to say?" I can see the vein throbbing in his temple, and as much as I hate to admit it, sadness swells inside of me. This is why I've kept my life a secret from my parents for so long. As much as they're ready to shame me the second I step off my course, I don't want to lose my family.

"I want you to tell me that you're done. I want you to tell me that you're done being a deviant, a
pornography maker
, an adulteress, and that you're ready to grow up. That you're ready to go to graduate school and close your legs and only look upon the naked body of your future husband."

Tears sting my eyes, but I do a damn good job of holding them back. "No way."

"
Excuse me
?"

"You don't own me. I'm an adult now and I make my own decisions. I come back here and stay with you every year not because you have a hook in me with my inheritance, Dad. I come back here every year because you're my family, and I love you. But just because I love you doesn't mean that I'm going to quit a job that makes me happy."

Mom clutches her chest when I say
happy
. "Happiness isn't in your paycheck, Britain. You can find something more fulfilling, even if you make less money."

"The money isn't what makes me happy." I lean forward for effect, so they understand. "I love my job. I love every second of it. I won't give it up. I'm sorry."

They're both silent for a moment, like they're letting my words sink in. "Then you can leave," says Dad. "Today." His eyes are watery. I've never seen him this close to crying before.

My throat is so tight that it would be impossible for me to say anything, so I don't. I nod and stand, swiveling on my toes and marching to the stairs like a soldier off to battle.

"And leave your camera," Dad says.

///

I tear apart my room.

I go through every drawer, making sure that I take everything I'll want. I might never be allowed back here.

I shove it all into my huge suitcase. Unwashed clothes and stupid trinkets. I pick up my dress from last night, the one that got me into so much trouble, ball it up, and throw that into my suitcase as well.

When I turn, Cam is standing in my doorway.

"What?" I bark.

"Nothing. Just can't believe you fucked him is all."

"Well get over it," I say. "Because I'm going to keep fucking him, and there is nothing you can do about it."

"I never took you for an idiot, but apparently you've forgotten the kind of guy Jaime is. The kind of guy you grew up with. He'll leave you, Brit. The second he has the chance, he'll leave you for the next hot piece of ass that walks by."

I grab a frame off my nightstand and hurl it at him. He ducks out of the way just in time, and it crashes into the wall. "Says the guy who betrayed his childhood best friend so he wouldn't get caught stealing."

The blood runs from Cam's face faster than I can blink my eyes.

"I know what you did," I spit. "I know you stole the money from Dad and then blamed it on Jaime so you wouldn't get caught. I know you did it because you blew a large chunk of your inheritance at a bachelor-party-gone-wrong in Vegas and didn't want Dad to find out, so you threw Jaime under the bus. And I know Jaime never spoke a word of the truth until he told me because
he loved you
. You were his best friend and even though you stabbed him in the back, he would never rat you out."

Cam opens his mouth, but when nothing but silence comes out, he snaps it shut again.

"And I won't rat you out either, because you kept my secret. But that doesn't mean I ever want to speak to you again."

"Brit," he croaks.

"Leave. Me. Alone."

He listens. My coward of a brother listens.

When I'm done packing, I drag my lone suitcase down the stairs to the foyer. My parents are nowhere to be found. I slip out the door to their lavish mansion as quietly as I can, stuff my suitcase into the back seat of my beat-up Jeep Cherokee, start the engine, and leave my parents' house forever.

///

Evan opens the door. Her eyes flit to the suitcase behind me. "Oh, Brit." She frowns.

I crack like an egg.

She pulls me to her and I blubber snot and tears all over her Victoria's Secret T-shirt. I tell her everything in the midst of my sobbing, and I honestly have no idea how she can understand a single word that leaves my mouth. But she does.

"Jaime's here." She ushers me inside the house. "He told us a lot of what happened last night and this morning. About Micah being a fuckwad and how your mom caught you and him. I didn't know about them finding out about your photography, though."

"They made me give up my camera. Since Dad bought it and all."

"You should have stolen it."

I laugh, and she takes my suitcase from me, nodding outside to the lone boy standing by the infinity pool and staring out at the ocean.

"I think he's waiting for you," she says.

I walk outside, and the second the glass door shuts behind me, Jaime spins around.

"Goddammit," he says when he sees that I'm crying, and runs to me, scooping me up in his arms and holding me to his chest. "I'm so sorry. This is all my fault. I tried to explain but your dad just told me to get out."

"Not because of you." I pull away from him and tell him how my parents found out about the photography.

"It's okay." I nod, like that will somehow reassure him. "This is me and if they can't love me for who I am and what I want to do, it isn't my problem."

He reaches out, tucking my hair behind my ear and cupping my jaw. Against the blue of the ocean and the sky, his eyes are so warm today. They could melt me.

"I love you," he says. "For who you are, and what you do."

He catches me off guard, and all I can think to utter is, "You don't have to say that to make me feel better."

He chuckles and kisses me. Every muscle in my body relaxes, and I drown in him. I have no idea if minutes or hours pass, his tongue gently toying with mine, teeth nipping at my lips. He finally pulls away and I say, "You know, you can't say things like that without me being somewhat clingy and wanting the official title of your girlfriend."

He takes my face in both of his hands. "I want you to be clingy. And I want you to be my girlfriend."

"Good." I wrap my arms around his waist. "Because I love you too. For who you are, and what you do."

"Your shameless adulterer model?" He grins.

"My shameless adulterer model," I repeat. "For as long as you'll be mine."

Epilogue

Jaime started school two weeks ago. We'll switch off weekends visiting each other, when we can. But I want him to focus on school, and he knows he needs to.

I'm willing to wait, even if that means I get to see him less. I'm confident about us. The fact that we were able to pull through after Boston says something.

More than something.

Evan and Dallas have already left for Cambridge, and I'm back in the studio—my home—preparing for another audition round. Andrea and I have been hard at work tweaking the storybook. So far, my editor loves it.

"It's incredibly empowering," Beatrice tells me over the phone. "Empowering and sexy as hell. I love how dominating the women are. And I love the queer shoots. I feel like this is going to be received very well."

The nervousness that's been eating away at my stomach since I left my parents begins to ebb. "Oh thank God," I breathe.

She laughs. "Relax, Miss McCulley. Buy a bottle of champagne. Take a bubble bath. Go on a date. You deserve it."

When I hang up, I tell Andrea, "My editor just ordered me to go on a date." I waggle my eyebrows. "You up for the challenge?"

"Hmmm..." she ponders. "I don't know."

"Delilah!" I yell.

"What!" she screams from upstairs.

"You wanna go on a date with me?"

"Depends. You gonna sex me up?"

I sigh. "You girls are no fun."

Someone rings the doorbell.

"I don't want to go on a date with you because I know someone who does."

I narrow my eyes at Andrea, and head for the door.

When I open it, I say, "Fuck off."

"How sweet of you," says Jaime. He's dressed casually—jeans and a t-shirt—but he's holding a bouquet of daisies.

"You told Andrea you were coming and not me and now you're trying to suck up to me."

He steps inside and pulls me close. "That's exactly what I'm doing."

I take the flowers from him. "These are nice." I place them on the couch armrest. "But you should kiss me already."

And he does. I open my mouth and moan as his tongue sweeps across mine.

"Don't mind me." Andrea darts from the room.

Jaime pulls me over to the couch and sits me down. "I had news that I thought would be better told in person."

"You're pregnant. Listen Jaime, I'm young and hot and really can't be a father right now."

He places a finger on my lips, silencing me. "Your dad offered me a job."

"He did
what
?"

"Offered me a job. As an accountant. Cam... Cam came clean. Told him everything that happened with the money, how he was the one who took it. And your dad offered me a full-time position."

"Out of guilt," I say.

He shrugs. "Probably. But that doesn't matter because I turned him down."

I gape at him. "Why the fuck would you do that? Do you know how much money you could wrangle out of him?"

"A lot, probably, but that doesn't matter. He hurt you. And he didn't accept you. And since I love you, I wouldn't be happy with myself working for him."

"But..."

"And I might have told him that I had another job lined up, one with a pretty photographer who may or may not be making a name for herself."

My jaw drops. "You told my dad that you model for me?"

"Not that I model for you, although I'm sure he'll find out that I'm your sexually fluid go-to guy eventually. I mean accounting. You're starting a business. Let me help you."

"I can't afford you, silly."

"I don't care."

"Business partners make awkward bedfellows."

"We’re already business partners. That's how we
became
bedfellows."

He grins crookedly, and I lean in, kissing him softly. "Jaime Rivera, will you accept this shitty position as my accountant for a company that isn't really a company, shooting amateur softcore porn that for some reason people like and then dealing with the moneyish stuff? I'll pay you with naked parts of me."

He holds up his pinkie, and I wrap mine around his. "I'm good at moneyish stuff."

"I know."

"And I'm good at a lot of other things too," he tells me with hooded eyes. "Stuff that
can
deal with money, but also doesn't have to deal with money at all."

I bite my lip. "Remind me again what you're so good at."

“Slow Motion”

Dallas

There is something really sexy about watching a woman fumble with hanging a picture frame, especially when said woman is dressed in a loose tank top and boxer shorts that are riding up her ass.

And when said woman is the sexiest being on the face of the earth.

Evan’s hair is piled on top of her head and wrangled in a scrunchie that looks like it’s from the damn eighties. She wears her glasses and a pair of mismatched knee-length socks. I’m supposed to be grading term papers. I have a pile of them stacked on the coffee table in front of me, but it’s really hard to keep grading when the bottom of Evan’s ass is peeking from her shorts and I’m starting to get hard.

She really has to do so little to get me hard. It’s a curse.

“Will you stop staring at my ass and help me?” she growls, swaying dangerously on the fold out chair as she battles with the oversized frame in her hands. I’m up in a heartbeat, sending papers flying everywhere and nearly knocking over the coffee table while I’m at it. I run to Evan, pressing myself up against her backside and helping her steady the frame.

The piece she picked out to hang up in our apartment is so completely Evan. Well, first she wanted to hang a piece of erotic photography, a favorite one of hers that was taken by one of Britain’s idols. But I told her that might make things awkward if our parents decide to visit.

So she decided on a classic marine invertebrate from “Art forms of Nature” by Ernst Haeckl, reimagined in vibrant color by a modern artist. We really couldn’t afford it, but she wanted it. She
needed
it. Plus, it’s our only bit of décor in our 600 square-foot, one bedroom apartment.

“I feel your dick on my leg,” she says. “Are you always horny?”

“I’m a guy.” I steady the picture frame. “You want help or not?”

She sighs. Together, we balance the frame so it slides onto the nail in the wall. Her shoulders relax and she slips off the chair. “And with that, I am so ready for bed.”

Evan’s in her last year of her graduate program at Harvard. Since she’s an intellectual masochist, she’s also teaching. We both want to get our PhDs in biology at the same time, so I’m waiting a year until she graduates, teaching at a community college in the meantime.

All this really leaves time for is sleep. And sometimes, not even that.

I decide to give up on my grading for the evening and follow her into our bedroom, which is about the size of a large closet and fits our bed and a laughably small desk. Evan’s laptop is sitting open on the the desktop, her Skype app illuminating the screen.

“You missed a billion calls from Britain,” I tell her.

“I’ll call her tomorrow.” Evan falls onto the bed on her stomach and releases a beastly groan.

I lie next to her and close my eyes, listening to the noise of her breathing until I mumble, “Wanna do it?”

She laughs, but it sounds more manic than anything. “Oh my god, we’ve turned into one of
those couples
.”

“We’ve
been
one of those couples.”

“You might as well put a ring on my finger and a baby inside of me and bury us in a nice pile of debt while you’re at it.”