Page 53 of Cool for the Summer

But it’s hard to imagine going back to the city now, embarking on the painful chore of looking for an apartment, doing rounds of auditions, trying to find a producer for my play. It sounds exhausting, and I know where I’ll be at the end of it—the work will be satisfying, hopefully, but everything else... I guess I’m over it, in a way.

Julian in my play is over it, too. Huh. How about that?

I tune in to what Joan’s saying. “…can still act. When I took you on, I told you I could find you opportunities, but the kind of career you were going to have was up to you. I have clients who only book three jobs a year and they’re happy. I have others who aren’t happy if they aren’t overbooked. And it’s okay if you change your mind. I used to be a kindergarten teacher, if you can believe it, when I was young and dumb, until I found my religion—theater. I’ve been an agent for thirty years. I’ll die at this desk, on this phone. But that’s me.”

“You’re amazing,” I say, grateful for the millionth time that Joan signed me after my first so-called agent tried to get me to exchange sex for a part.

“I know. But so are you, kiddo.” She’s a shark when it comes to contracts, but she actually cares. One in a million. “Now, call me when you either have a play for me or you want to book a job. Until then, get some sun, read some books, kiss a boy.”

I laugh. “You got it, Joan. Thanks.” I hang up, feeling as light as one of Beck’s almond meringue cookies. Then I hear a car outside my window; I take a peek and see him climbing out of the GTI. I jog downstairs to meet him in the hall.

“Hey.”

“Hey yourself,” he answers, his eyes flashing happily when he sees me. “What’s got you all bouncy?”

“Had a… reassuring conversation with my agent. How did your lunch go?”

“Amazing. Lani is a force to be reckoned with. She turned her friend Nicole’s designs for wallpaper and throw pillows into a seven-figure business in three years. We talked a lot about planning for growth.”

“See, I told you, cookie empire.”

He grins, pink lips and white teeth, and my gaze fastens on the glimpse I get of his talented tongue when he says, “Maybe so.”

“So, you busy right now?” I hadn’t exactly intercepted Beck to get him to have sex with me, but now that the idea’s in my head, it seems like the best one I’ve had all day.

His gaze strays in the direction of the kitchen. “I guess I don’t have to start dinner for a little while. Why?”

I put my hands on his waist and nuzzle his neck, lightly biting the tendons where his neck meets his shoulder, then soothe the spot with my tongue.

He shivers and laughs and pushes me away. “Right now?”

For a second, I think he’s going to turn me down and I experience a flash of doubt. Am I presuming too much? Trading on the convenience of living with someone I’m attracted to—someone I continue to be attracted to, no matter how many times and how many ways we get each other off?

But then he shrugs. “Okay.”

That’s all the green light I need. I grab Beck around the waist and half carry him down the hall, ducking into the TV room with its conveniently oversized couch. Beck laughs as I lose my balance and we tumble down on the cushions in a pretzel of arms and legs. I kiss the laughter out of his mouth, and he arranges us so he’s lying underneath me, his head on a throw pillow. Sex with Beck is always fun. It’s all about pleasure, from the small pleasures of the noises he makes when I do something that makes him feel particularly good, to the overriding pleasure of losing myself in his soft skin, the welcoming heat of his body when he lets me in. He’s been so generous with me—I want to give him something back. I do a quick mental inventory to see if what I’m offering is practical, decide that even though I haven’t done any special prep, it should be okay as long as lots of lube enters the picture.

Between kisses I ask, “Do… you… want… to… top?”

He rears back and squints at me. “Now?”

“Sure. I’m up for it. But we might have to relocate to a room with lube.”

“Surprising that Jack and Pete don’t have bottles stashed all over the house,” Beck jokes. “Though they probably would appreciate it if we didn’t fuck on their couch.”

“Your room or mine?”

“Yours, I guess. I feel less guilty about Cleo that way.”

I climb off him and offer him my hand to pull him up. We race upstairs, and the second we get to my room and shut the door, I lose my clothes. Beck’s faster than me, and by now he knows where I keep everything, so he’s got condoms and a bottle of lube out on the bedside table by the time I’m pulling aside the comforter. I climb onto the mattress and settle on the pillows against the headboard.

“You do this often?” he asks, joining me on the bed and flicking open the bottle.

“Not a lot,” I admit. “But I don’t hate it.”

“That sounds like a ringing endorsement,” he says dryly. “Donovan, we don’t have to.”

“I know we don’t have to. I want to.” That much is true. I don’t usually have sex with the same person more than once or twice. Beck and I have done almost everything but this, and somehow I don’t want to miss out on knowing what it feels like to have him inside me the way I’ve been inside him.

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