Caroline had nearly forgotten that he was supposed to be on the clock all day Saturday, so she didn’t respond, passing him her keys instead. It hadn’t felt like paying him. It had felt like... well, she didn’t have a lot to compare it to. But it had felt the way she’d wanted it to. Less than lonely, for once.
Adrian left the apartment, and Caroline turned on the TV. Tom had a Hulu account, but it had expired. She tried to sign in to Netflix, but it seemed he didn’t have an account. She signed in to hers, beginning to feel itchy-footed and anxious as she scanned the options. It would go faster if she helped carry boxes.
Her father’s paving company had posted a part-time opening in the warehouse during her sophomore year. It paid two dollars more an hour than Sonic, so she’d applied. Her dad had laughed at her, even though she could easily lift the minimum in the posting.There’s nothingopen in the office. When you graduate, I’ll fire the accounts payable girl and hire you for that, he’d promised.
At least Caroline had avoided that fate. That was what she would have been doing right now if her grandmother hadn’t died: trying to save up for a car and an apartment deposit and still doing everything her father told her to do.
The air was hot and still in the apartment. She tried to open a window but found that they’d been painted shut. Giving up on fixing the temperature, she put on a nature documentary and kicked off her shoes. She curled up on the sofa as Adrian came in and out with his boxed paintings and assorted possessions from his ex’s house. It took him nearly an hour to finish by himself, and he was sweaty and red-faced by the end of it. Caroline assumed he’d go take a shower when he was done, but instead he filled another glass from the sink and collapsed on the other end of the sofa.
He glanced at her sideways out of the corner of his eye, then stripped off his shirt with his gaze averted. He wiped his shoulders and used the wadded fabric to buffer the couch from his body. Caroline struggled with the desire to ogle him. He didn’t like being stared at in public; she’d already figured that out. But was this part of the sugar-baby package, if she was in his apartment? She decided that it was allowed.
Adrian had muscles in different places than tennis players, ones that had been gained more or less accidentally, just as a result of living in his body. His chest was pale and lean and bare, save for one strip of amber fuzz down the center, which disappeared into his jeans. It was dark and mussed with sweat just above his navel.
Anyone who wasactuallydating him could have reached out and slicked that soft line straight with her fingers.Caroline probably could have too, she realized; people probably paid for a lot weirder stuff.
She’d told him she wouldn’t though, and it wouldn’t be appropriate to do something like that without asking him first, she thought. She sat on her hands until the urge passed, her heart pounding like she was the one who’d been carrying too many boxes.
Adrian stared blankly at the screen for a few minutes as his breathing normalized, only seeming to realize what show was playing when the footage changed to the dramatic night-vision death of a large rat under the fangs of an inland taipan.
“God, what are we watching?” Adrian asked.
“A documentary on the ten most deadly snakes in Australia.”
“Are you thinking of visiting Australia soon?” he followed up, still confused.
“It seems like a very dangerous place,” she replied. “But if I do, at least I’ll be prepared.”
Adrian grunted in agreement, finishing his glass of water as the narrator breathlessly informed them that the venom of one taipan could kill a hundred men.
“My grandmother used to love nature documentaries,” Caroline finally said to fill the silence. “The ones about scary animals, anyway. She said it made her feel better about being stuck in her house all day if I wasn’t there to drive her.”
It felt at once longer and shorter than six months since Gam had been gone. Ages since she’d done something as simple as watch TV with someone else, and yet it also felt like if she hit the speed dial on her phone, her grandmother might still pick up and ask her whether she could make it for dinner. She had to blink fast at the thought.
“Used to?” Adrian asked gently.
“She died during my senior year,” Caroline said.
Adrian tilted his head to show he was listening, but she didn’t want to say anything else. If she’d wanted to talk about herself, she would have hired a shrink instead of an escort, and she’d done too much talking that day already. She knew that she wasn’t a very interesting person; she needed to change that.
“Let’s not talk about me. What do you want to do now?” She tried to move the conversation forward.
Adrian put his elbows on his knees, then his chin in his knit hands. He turned his head to look at her, fingers still wrapped over his lips.
“Caroline,” he said, his tone still careful. “If you don’t want to talk, why are you even here?”
“It’s Saturday,” she replied. “We agreed on the whole day Saturday, right?”
He exhaled. “Yes, I know. But this doesn’t have anything to do with the arts, which you don’t seem that interested in to begin with. If you want to make more friends, go do something with the other B-school students. If you want a boyfriend, go out on a date with one of them. I don’t—I don’t know what to do for you.”
He said it like it was simple. Like she hadn’t tried that first.
“You keep trying to put yourself out of a job,” Caroline said, narrowing her eyes at the man tensing at the other end of the sofa.
“Yes! Because you were supposed to be sixty years old andmeanand trying to fill a table at the Homeland Heroes Foundation gala. You don’t need to hire me. You’re—”
“What?” Caroline said mulishly. “What am I?”
His mouth firmed up. He used one elegant hand togesture at himself and the messy apartment both. “Someone with better options than this.”
