Page 38 of Playboy For Hire

“Really?” Tessa raised an eyebrow. “That’s hard to believe. He’s gorgeous.”

“Hey, thanks,girlfriend.”

“Just because I have a ‘boyfriend’ doesn’t mean I’m dead,” she said matter-of-factly. “Anyway, what do you care? Raf likes dudes. He’d never be into me.”

That was a good point. Raf had broken up with his boyfriend a few months back, after said boyfriend moved to New York. He hadn’t gotten back onto any apps yet, but he would eventually, and Tessa was right. It was hard to imagine him having a hard time finding matches.

On the other hand, it was also hard for me to imagine Quinn having trouble. He’d acted like he wasluckyto have pulled that sentient wad of chewing gum on his date, when it was obviously the other way around.

But then, I didn’t get that about Quinn in general. He acted like he was hideous when he was actually good-looking. The birthmark just added interest to his face. Sure, it was noticeable the first time you saw it, but after a few minutes it just faded into the background.

Quinn seemed to thinkhewas the sentient wad of chewing gum, for reasons I couldn’t fathom. Even if his family made him feel shitty growing up, he had eyes, didn’t he? Couldn’t he look in the mirror and see he was a catch?

Not that I was into him, or anything. But I was still able to tell who was attractive and who wasn’t. You can’t hide that kind of thing. Just like I thought Quinn would be able to tell that Tessa was pretty, I was sure Tessa would agree with me that Quinn was—

“Hey, where’d you go?”

Tessa’s voice interrupted my train of thought. She followed it up with a snap of her fingers right in front of my face.

“Hmm?” I looked over at her.

“You just went all silent and broody again. In the middle of our conversation.”

Whoops. I needed to find some way to stop thinking about Quinn. I couldn’t keep getting sidetracked like this.

“Sorry. Just thinking about what happened.”

“Which was…?”

“He went on this date,” I said, feeling the words out as I went. “And he’d been kind of down on himself, and I thought maybe I could just kind of…go too? For moral support?”

“Like a double date?” Tessa asked.

“No, no. He didn’t even know I was there. I just wanted to like, hang out in the background. In case he needed me.”

“Like a stalker?”

“Not like a stalker, jeez. You’re making me sound crazy.”

What I’d done to Quinn wasn’t stalker-y, was it? After all, I was trying tohelpQuinn. And it wasn’t like I was trying to date him myself.

“Well, stop acting crazy, and it won’t sound like you are.” She tossed her hair. “So anyway, you follow Raf to this date without telling him and then what happens? You didn’t crash the date, did you?”

I made a face. “When you put it like that, it sounds way worse than it is.”

“So youdidcrash it.”

“I was just trying to help him,” I insisted. “Raf’s not that confident about how he looks—”

She folded her arms across her chest. “That is extremely hard to wrap my mind around. I’ve met Raf.”

“You haven’t seen him since the breakup.” Which was true. But I really hoped Raf and Tessa wouldn’t run into each other now, at least not until I’d had a chance to untangle this web. “He’shaving a lot more self-esteem issues, and he looked kind of subdued, and I thought if I went over and pretended to be his ex—”

“You didnotdo that.” Tessa looked horrified.

“I just wanted to make him seem desirable.”

“By making it seem like he has a crazy stalker ex-boyfriend? Yeah, I’m sure that went really well. How did he take it?”

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