“And what about you?” I ask. “Are you going to tell Marissa I’m the live-in maid next time she comes?”
He crams the last of his pizza into his mouth but continues to be gross by speaking. “You know, you haven’t checked your phone in a few hours.”
“Smooth topic change.”
“I’m just saying, I’m impressed. That’s a first.”
I pick a pepperoni off and eat it. It’s not afirst. The daily count of new followers is higher than ever thanks to the Buzzfeed feature a couple weeks ago. We’re already at seventy-five-thousand followers, and one-hundred’s just around the corner. The article’s nearly doubled what we had, which is astounding, but we’re starting to plateau.
“I spent a lot of time looking through hashtags last night,” I admit. “I was trying to find new ones for us to experiment with, maybe tap into a new audience, but . . . I kind of fell down a rabbit hole of sex.”
“So that’s why you woke me up in the best way possible at two in the morning.”
I blush, remembering how it felt to have him come to life in my mouth. “I was excited.”
“And now?”
I shake my head at my pizza. “I don’t know. Now, in the light of day, I’m . . . not.”
Finn puts down his beer. “I told you to stop looking through that shit. What’d you see?”
“It wasn’t the comments.” I don’t have to ask what he means. I ruined our Valentine’s Day dinner date earlier this week. While Finn was in the restroom, I checked our account. Someone had commented that busty girls look fat in lingerie, and I read it with a mouthful of chocolate lava cake. I nearly spit it all over my plate. By the time Finn returned to the table, I was convinced that person was right. I was too fat, too gross to be half-nude in such a public forum. Finn threatened to delete the account if I didn’t promise to stop reading comments and messages. It didn’t matter that all other feedback about our Butter Boudoir shoot was good. Better than good. That comment haunted me for days.
I agreed to Finn’s conditions and turned off push notifications. I’ve still been checking things regularly, just not several times a day like before. “I was looking at accounts similar to ours,” I explain. “They post less than we do but have hundreds of thousands of followers.”
“We’re brand-fucking-spanking new, Hals. What we’ve done in a few months is incredible.”
“I know. I just wonder. What if we posted twice a day for a while?”
“You going to quit your job and pose for me for a living?”
“Maybe.”
He gives me a look that warns me not to go down this path, but sometimes, when it comes to this stuff, Finn needs a push. He gets business, but he doesn’t always know how to mix it with his art.
I shift my hip against the counter. “We’re already getting a few sponsor requests a month. The more followers we have, the more money we can command.”
“And is that what this is about for you? Money?”
“You know it isn’t.”
“So why are you bringing that up?”
“It’s a bonus. Imagine if one day, you and I did this for real. As a living. We get a five-thousand-dollar sponsor every month, and that’s just to start.”
“It’s a nice idea,” he admits. “I just don’t want you getting your hopes up. Things are going well, so let’s just keep doing what we’re doing.”
“Posting twice a dayisdoing what we’re doing. It’s just doing it more.”
He sighs and looks out the window over the sink. Under the harsh kitchen lights, the lines around his eyes are obvious. “It’s supposed to be a little warmer this weekend. We should do something. Get out of town.”
“Finn.”
He turns back to me. “We don’t have enough material to post more. As it is, we’re shooting every weekend and some weeknights.”
“I know. And we’re running out of body parts.”And captions. I tense with the thought. Something has to give. The only thing I’ve been able to write about lately is Finn, but it’s personal, not anything I want to share. Not even with him. It’s about my boyfriend, not a faceless sex partner like the fantasy we create for people.
Finn narrows his eyes. “So what do you suggest?”
