“Guilty as charged.” He turns the music down a tad more so I can hear him better. “Unlike you with TV, music was the way I first connected with being gay. I realized I never connected with ‘boy music’ if that makes sense. I loved a diva. I loved a lavish costume. I loved Lady Gaga spewing blood from her corset while dangling from the ceiling, singing ‘Paparazzi’ on the MTV Video Music Awards.”
“A cultural reset.”
“Exactly,” he says, smiling over at me, making me go all gooey inside. He’s got a stellar, disarming smile that’s almost as beguiling as his smirk. “Female pop singers make me feel powerful. Just like video games make me feel invincible. I like disappearing into a song or a game and imagining I’m someone else. I can blast or dance away my real problems.”
For a moment, I wonder if he’s treating ourMadcap Marketplan as a self-insert video game situation. Rocked by the frustration of getting fired, is he pretending this Leo—the one driving a little far over the speed limit for comfort—is a pixelated character on a screen where someone else is bashing the controller?
“I can understand that. Real life can be exhausting.” After I say that, it dawns on me how alert and awake I am. A month of restless nights has suddenly been cured by jet lag and Leo’s nearness.
As he monologues about his favorite artists and the music videos he played a million times on YouTube just to learn the dance moves—“Me Against the Music” with Britney Spears and Madonna being his number one, much to his dad’s dismay—I listen intently, watching his animated face as it shifts from wistful to excited and back again. From the moment I laid eyes on him, his sexiness was never in question, but his adorability comes into sharp focus, causing my lust for him to tip into far mushier territory.
“I’m an ace at playing pretend, which is why fake dating will be a cinch.” The jolt of the car flipping into Park kills the ignition on my emotions as well. This isn’t the getting-to-know-you part of a real connection. It’s a business transaction. All about a dollar sign and a promise to my dead mom. That’s all.
Obviously, we can still fuck, but fuck without feelings. After the earlier reminder of who Buckley was when we met versus who I sat across from four weeks ago, I can’t overextend myself like that again.
The chain grocery store we’ve arrived at is mostly empty aside from the late-afternoon errand runners. Fluorescent strip lights buzz, casting the whole floor in an overexposed, yellow-tinted haze. Even still, Leo looks exceptionally good—white button-up balled up in the back of the car; the only thing left a white ribbed tank top he was wearing underneath. It clings like a second skin, showcasing elegant contours I’m certain he’s worked hard for.
I avert my eyes and grab a shopping cart with a wonky wheel that keeps veering left as I try to go right, nearly knocking over an entire display of cookies.
“Give it to me,” Leo says. With a bit of elbow grease and bulging biceps, he course corrects the cart, making veins snake across his tan skin. I wish he would stop getting hotter by the second, so my internal fans could cool down. “Where to first?” he asks.
“Let’s start with the snack aisles.” Because, at the very least, there’s nothing erotic about bland crackers.
We make our way past the registers where bored-looking employees eye us wearily as they pass the time until their shift ends. Air-conditioning is blasting down causing a shiver to race through me, forcing me to wonder how Leo can stand to be here in only that torso-hugging tank.
To keep my mind off Leo’s distracting physique and our abandoned plans for afternoon sex, I begin picking up various boxes of cookies and bags of candy as a test, pointing to brand mascots and covering up price tags to see if Leo can correctly answer the on-the-fly trivia questions—How much does this cost? What’s this guy’s name? It’s good to find his baseline knowledge of grocery goods, see where we need to improve and what kind of homework I should send him away to do when we’re apart, which turns out to be a lot.
He calls the Keebler elf, Buddy the Elf, the Planters mascot “that dapper Peanut Guy” and the Cheetos mascot “Charlie? No, wait. Carl.” In the candy aisle, when I ask Leo how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop, he responds, “With my dexterous tongue or with a normal person’s?” After a wink, he guesses five, which extinguishes any arousal that may have sprung up from his tantalizing, joking question.
Unfortunately, we fare no better in the cereal aisle.
“The tiger’s name is?” I ask, breath hitched with hopefulness, pointing to a grinning feline giving us a thumbs-up.
“Uh,” Leo says, thinking lines running across his forehead. “I want to say... Tyler?”
I make a buzzer sound. “Tony.”
“I was close.”
Exasperated, my eyes land on a box one shelf up. “What about these guys? You gotta know these guys.” I Vanna White my hands around the three cherubic elves pouring milk into a bowl of Rice Krispies.
“Snap, Crackle, and Pop...” I’m about to congratulate him on a job well done when he continues, “pers.”
“Huh?”
“Pop...pers.Poppers.” He cracks himself up as I roll away in a huff. “Oh, come on. It’s a joke. It’s funny!”
“You’re not taking this seriously anymore,” I whine over my shoulder, cart wheeling willfully in the wrong direction as if it has a mind of its own.
His laughter dies down. “No, I am. I promise. Their names were on their hats on the box. They could’ve been Huey, Dewey, and Louie for all I knew. If I had known there was going to be a test, I would’ve studied.”
I’ve only known him for two days, and I already know that’s not true, so I arch an eyebrow at him.
“Okay, I would’ve made an attempt at the very least. It’s not my fault I’m bad at this.” He sounds genuinely dejected, which tempers me.
“No. It’s fine.” I try to bolster my tone, so he isn’t discouraged. I had just hoped this would be easier. “You have a body like that.” I circle the air beside his mountainous biceps, gracing him with a compliment that will stroke his ego. “Naturally you don’t know about snack foods. Let’s try the produce section instead.”
I probably shouldn’t be manhandling avocados and grapefruits, but since we’re mostly alone over here, I don’t see the harm.
