I am not going inside.
He doesn't look at me. He's stacking chairs with the focused efficiency of a man performing a task and choosing to stay inside it. I stand there in his peripheral vision and let him not-look. He has very good peripheral vision. He knows exactly where I'm standing. And I know that he knows, and he knows that I know, and neither of us has said a single word about any of it, and the garden is very quiet and very cold and there are about four feet between us and I am losing my mind slightly but in a composed way.
"Good afternoon," he says. Still not looking.
"Dad does good afternoons."
"He does."
He stacks the last chair, straightens and looks at me.
The full-attention thing. Most people look at you and part of them is somewhere else. Planning the next sentence. Thinking about dinner. Declan looks at you and the somewhere-else part just isn't there. He looked at me like this in my dad's kitchen last month and I stood there with a ceramic serving dish and told myself it was just him being thorough.
I know better now.
I stand and I let him look and I do not fidget and I do not look away and my heart is doing something it doesn't usually do during plans I've made. This is the problem with planning for something. At some point the plan runs out and the actual thing is just standing there in front of you.
"Drive safe," he says. Low. Even.
"I always do."
He goes inside.
***
At eight forty-five I go live.
I don't change.
I set up the ring light. Sit in the chair. The blue in this light goes deeper than it does in daylight, richer, more deliberate. I look at myself in the preview window and I look like BrattyBaby about to do something intentional. Because that's exactly what this is.
The chat loads. GremlinKing, immediate. The usual noise.
DarkWatcher45 is already there. Has been, by his timestamp, for two hours. He tipped before the stream started. Two hundred dollars. No message. Timestamped six forty-three PM.
One hour and thirteen minutes afterdrive safeandI always do.
He went home from the BBQ and sat down and opened the platform and tipped before I was even live. I let that move through me for a moment. Warm. Low. The feeling of being wanted by the exact person you want back.
Then BrattyBaby comes online.
I look at the camera.
"So." Lower register. Unhurried. My chat settling in. "Someone's got good taste."
I say nothing. I look at the camera. At the lens. At the specific point behind it where he is, right now, in whatever room, watching me wear his dress on a screen.
"I know you think so." Even. Unhurried. "I've known for a while, actually."
6
Declan
Iwatch the whole stream.
I know her pacing. She's letting the chat settle. Letting the attention build. Giving everyone time to notice what she's wearing before she acknowledges it. I've watched her do this for seven months and I watch her reach for the fabric of the skirt and hold it up for the camera and the blue in the ring light is the exact shade I stood in a store for twenty minutes to find.
I know why I found it. I knew before I admitted I knew.
