There’s a knock. “Are you okay in there?”
“Yes, I’ll be right out.”
Julien banks a couple more breaths before pretending to flush the toilet, wash his hands, and step out. Greg is standing in the kitchen over the sink looking flustered and concerned. The box of SnoBalls is open, and a cloud of pink coconut flurries down Greg’s chin. “Hi.” He says this with his mouth full. It’s ridiculously charming.
“Hi. Sorry about that.”
“No.” Greg wipes his mouth with a paper towel from a nearby roll. “I’m sorry. I should’ve been clearer when I messaged you. I have some shirts upstairs you can borrow. I’ll only be shooting us from the waist up, so it’s okay if anything is a little big. I have safety pins around here somewhere.”
“Okay.” Julien’s still righting himself.
Greg smiles weakly. “Want my other SnoBall?”
Julien nods, so Greg tosses it to him. The sound of the crinkly wrapper landing in his palms is satisfying.
“Shall we?”
Upstairs, Greg leads Julien into his room. Julien is surprised to see, diagonally across from a twin bed, a rolling cart turned into a makeshift bar sitting in front of a green screen. From Greg’s TikToks, he assumed the second, equally glamorous kitchen was real. How easy it is to deceive your audience on social media.
“This is where the magic happens.” Greg twirls.
This setup—this house—seems like the opposite of magic. Not that it’s a bad place to live. Far from it. Still, it’s a pretty steep step down from the place Greg flaunted in his New York City era.
Julien must stare too long at the ring light tripod where Greg’s phone sits because Greg says, “Let me guess, you thought I was actually in a kitchen.”
Julien shrugs. “Sort of. Yeah.” He pictured Greg shacking up in those new, fancy, state-of-the-art high-rises downtown near the PPL Center and the ArtsWalk.
“My cousin is a genius with stuff like that.” Greg waves his hand at the setup. “This is his house, actually. Well, it’s his grandma’s house. Not the grandma we share. But, yeah, he pays rent and hooked me up with this room.”
“Oh, cool.” Julien ventures farther into the room, finding a trash can near the tiny desk and throwing his SnoBall wrapper in it.
“Disappointed?” Greg asks.
Julien stops, wondering if he’s ever heard Greg sound self-conscious like this before. He shakes his head. “Impressed, actually.” He says it because he knows it’s what Greg needs to hear, but also because it’s true.
On that first day, Julien wanted to write Greg with his Gucci belt off as a pretty boy here to steal space and begrudgingly cash in on a content stunt. But the strange thing is, Greg doesn’t seem unhappy or out of place at Martin’s. Greg actually seems more comfortable than he ever did in those old TikToks Julien can now freely admit to having watched. He’s impressed that he’s turning this situation—whether negative or positive for Greg, it’s not Julien’s place to decide—into something productive.
“I don’t know what there is to be impressed about.”
Julien’s struggling to find the words. “If I had to uproot my life for a job at a semi-struggling bar and restaurant, I think I’d be a lot more shaken. You seem...calm?” Julien’s never been able to roll with the punches. He’s in awe that Greg has become a part of the staff and the area so quickly.
“Learned that in the academy,” Greg says quickly. “Calm under pressure. Positive in the face of negativity. Call it survival. Call it a coping mechanism.”
Julien’s ears ring at the words.Coping mechanism.Was Greg in therapy, too?
Greg steps over to the closet and opens the door. “Let’s see what we’ve got in here. This might work.” He passes Julien a teal button-down that complements the dark blue one he’s wearing. As Julien accepts the hanger, he can tell he’s going to be swimming in the garment, but that doesn’t stop him from turning away, shucking his T-shirt, and sliding into it.
“It’s like I’m wearing a parachute. I could probably go skydiving in this thing and still land safely,” Julien jokes, flapping his arms so the shirt billows. He’s hit with a waft of Greg’s spicy-clean scent that lingers in the fabric even though it’s clearly been washed. It’s heavenly.
Greg laughs, rummaging through a drawer and producing a few safety pins. He holds one up. “May I?”
Julien nods, and then tenses as soon as he feels Greg’s large, strong hands gather the fabric in the back. The cotton stretches until it’s hugging him the way Greg hugged him outside Studio Artiste. He’d be lying if he said he wouldn’t love to feel those arms sealed around him again.
“How’s that?” Greg asks, breaking Julien from whatever reverie he was about to drift away on.
“That’s great.”
Julien focuses on his breathing as Greg expertly pins the back of the shirt. Every movement of Greg’s fingers fills Julien with a surging sense of anticipation that is completely wrong for this moment.
