Page 34 of Man Hands
This woman. I need one more kiss, so I help myself. Her lips are soft beneath mine, and her body molds to my chest soperfectly.
I was having a really shitty day until just this second. But she kisses like a dream. My brain goes offline until she takes a step backward and looks up at me shyly. “Thank you for therosemary.”
“It’snothing.”
“Did you get thevideoback?”
Fuckity.
“Yes and no.” I sigh. “I now own the video, and my agent is slapping every website that posted it with a takedown notice. But social media has already spread it around pretty well. We’re doingourbest.”
Her eyesgetsad.
“My publicist has a few ideas, though.” I shift my weight from foot to foot and put the shrubbery down on a kitchen counter. Laminate top, unfortunately. My favorite girl could use anupgrade.
I do this wherever I go—I mentally renovate every room I’m in. Can’t shut it off. Occupationalhazard.
“What ideas?”sheasks.
Right.
“Can we sit down?” I ask her. This isn’t a conversation for standing around the back door. Besides—there are knives in this room. She might use one of them on me after she hears my publicist’ssuggestion.
Brynn leads me through to a living room. The blinds are drawn, so it’s dark. But I can tell the moldings are original and the plaster ceiling work is prewar.It’scute.
“Well, hello,” her friend Ash says from the couch. “I just remembered somewhere Igottabe.”
I’ve barely opened my mouth to greet her when she shoots out of the house with a blown kiss at Brynn, and vanishes. We hear the sound of camera shutters clicking, and Ash’s voice saying, “Oh, fuck off. Unless you want to buy a house. Then cometomama.”
The sounds die down, leaving Brynn and I eyeing each other in the dim light of the room. “So,” she says quietly. “You weresaying?”
A nervous chuckle escapes my chest. “Becky—my publicist—thought that if there were a couple, uh, more respectable news stories out there about us, the, uh, videomightfade.”
“You mean…” When she frowns, the cute little forehead furrow returns. “Photos of us together, with ourclotheson?”
“Yeah. That’s a good start. The magazines wouldlovethat.”
She chews her plump lower lip, and I’d like to chew it too. “Whatelse?”
“Well…” I don’t even know how to say it. “Becky thought…” I clear my throat twice in a row, but it doesn’t get easier to say. “If you and I were engaged, it would be a big story. The media would runwithit.”
“Engaged?” shesqueaks.
“Right. At least for pretend.” I hate the word, honestly. Andfake-engagedsounded evenworse.
“We’dpretendto beengaged?”
“That’s the idea. We’d let a couple of tabloids take our picture together. You know—smiling. With our clothes on. The slutty story becomes more banal. Then it’s not two people fucking. Two people fucking is hot. It’s two almostmarriedpeople fucking, and who wants toseethat?
“Okay. Good point. So we’d be fake-engaged until…? How does this resolve?” She crosses her arms under her delectable tits. It pushes them together a little, and my dick says,I could just slide right between those babiesand I say,Down boy!—I hope to god notoutloud.
The problem is that I don’t actually know how this will end. Last year I’d tried to get for-real-engaged to a woman who I didn’t like very much, and it turned out she didn’t like me very much either, and she said no. The odds of convincing a woman I liked a lot to evenpretendto be my wife were notthathigh.
The universe hates me.Obviously.
“Well, we’ll pretend just until the worst of it blows over,” I offer. “Until you get a job in your field, and some other poor fool’s bare butt is seen flexing on theinternet.”
Brynn moans. It’s not a sex moan, but my dick isn’t a very good listener. He sits up and begs for another.Moan again, babyhesays.
