Page 31 of Love at First Sighting
I am also terrified that in ten minutes, El is going to be atmyapartment, where I sleep and live and shower and my fridge is mostly full of inexplicable amounts of salad dressings andcondiments. El, who must be used to McMansions and thirty-dollar smoothies, and smart fridges that know when you’re running low on kombucha. Fuck, I don’t evenhavekombucha.
El and I are nothing, just horny daydreams and flirty text messages and thoughts of what could be ifIweren’t nothing, when she’s everything.
So, I scrub the toilet again.
I return to my room and shove the few remaining dirty T-shirts into my hamper, spray way too much Febreze even though the room doesn’t smell bad, and try to figure out how I can make my bedroomaestheticin the next four minutes. What if she has to shoot content here?
I picture El’s bedroom as a cream-colored wonderland with all the right accent colors and throw pillows. It probably smells like fresh cucumber, like she does, and shedefinitelyhas a mattress that conforms around and caresses her body the way I want to.
What’s a girl like her going to think about my room? From the simplest bed frame I could find on Amazon to a few shoddy dressers and a nightstand. There’s practically no decor, just a closet full of black suits and white shirts and a picture of me and my dad at Disneyland when I was a kid. No place has felt like home enough to settle in since he died.
From moment one, I’ve known El is out of my league. More beautiful, more charismatic, more magnificent than I could ever be. She lives a grand, picture-perfect life of excess and glamour. But something about her seeing physical proof of how little I have—how little I am—cuts deep.
I give El the gate code and directions to get to the apartment and then scrub the toilet one more time in a panic.
When there’s a knock at the door, I begin to sweat, but I swallow the fear and inadequacy and answer.
“I wore sneakers this time,” she says proudly as the door swings open.
And she did. I’m taken aback by her look as a whole. It feels so…unlike her, but I’m not complaining. She’s wearing a pair of dark pants, a black T-shirt, and what looks like a letterman jacket with the G-Babez logo emblazoned on the chest. When she asked what I needed from her, I told her Leonard was a gamer who didn’t leave the apartment much, and clearly she knew what to do.
“Do I…look okay?” she asks. “I wasn’t sure about the outfit. It’s a little different from my usual—”
“Are you comfortable?”
“Yes?”
“Do you feel good in this?”
El thinks it over, like she’s supposed to come up with some filtered answer, but finally nods. “Yeah. I do.”
“Great. Then I think you look perfect.”
El shifts in place and gazes up at me with the smallest hint of a smile on her lips. “Cool. That’s…great. Okay, I have a plan.”
I invite her inside.
She eyes the living room and kitchen, which look like they do in every apartment in Los Angeles: white, open concept, with gray vinyl floors made to resemble wood. Leonard isn’t much of a decorator, either, but our two pieces of decor are a small frog butler statue we keep our keys on and a full wall of collectible Funko Pops no one is allowed to touch.
“Um,” I begin, hiking a thumb at my door. “That is my room. We can go in there and wait for Leonard to finish uphis match. He shouldn’t be too long. Bathroom is right there, in case you need it. It’s clean, I promise.”
I awkwardly lead her toward my bedroom and nudge open the door. I’m half expecting some low whistle of disapproval or outward cringe. Instead, she swoops around me and homes in on the photo on my nightstand. It was for my eighth birthday, in the dead heat of summer. The only thing I wanted was to go to Disneyland, after the roller-skating venue where we’d planned to throw a party was compromised in a brutal water main break.
El smiles and runs her finger around the edge of the frame. “You were cute.”
“Am I not anymore?” I tease.
El turns back around and rests her hands on my tie, loosening the knot at my throat. Her touch is so gentle yet demanding, and I want to encourage her to keep going. Start with the tie, make it to the buttons, my pants. Leonard would be happy to go for another match in his game.
“?Cuteis not the word I’d use,” she says. My eyes drop to her lips. Perfectly curved and full, probably tasting like cupcakes or cherries or some saccharine shit I’d eat up. I don’t need to think about this when she’s so close to my bed and is holding me under her control. “So, what’s the plan?”
“We need to convince Leonard to get us into the archives. I’m fairly certain my dad’s file is there and IknowLeonard’s clearance is high. And he’s good at hacking things.”
“Can you hack an archive?”
“He says he can hack anything digital. He one time hacked into the servers at the Esports World Cup to protest being knocked out in one of the semifinal rounds.”
El nods, impressed, as Leonard shouts, “Victory is ours, brothers!” through my paper-thin walls.
