I tapped on the notification, stomach clenching at the thought of putting myself out there in front of all those potential strangers.
But I was on vacation. This was anonymous. I could go back to New York whenever I wanted and none of them ever had to see me again.
Yeah. Yeah, this would be fine. I could do this.
Okay. Profile.
Hmm.
I wasn’t the kind of person who had a whole roll of selfies—not that there was anything wrong with that, I just wasn’t sold on the need to record my own face for posterity. I scrolled back, and back, andbackthrough picture after picture of beautifully-plated dishes and other’s people’s dogs and photos I’d taken of any hippopotamus figure, picture, card or t-shirt I’d seen in the last three years, all to send to Marissa. She loved hippos.
I’d have to see if I could pick something up for her while I was here. Maybe I’d sift through some of those antique dealers I’d been talking about with Mark and Andre earlier.
The picture I finally came to made my stomach sink.
Me and Aaron. Taken by Marissa, I thought, outside Pleasure. On opening day.
I tapped on it, hesitated, and then cropped everything but my own face out, trying to look at Aaron’s as little as possible.
Okay, the photo was old. Did that matter?
I decided it didn’t, and uploaded the cropped version. There was room for more, but I’d struggled enough to find that one.
What else?
The bio box taunted me. I’d only had to write a few of them in my life—always professional—and I’d hated it. I never knew what to say.
I didn’t know what kind of thing I was supposed to put, either.
Chef
Great start.
Pastry chef
Oh, that wasmuchbetter. People would care a lot about what I did for a living, that was the main thing they looked for in a practically anonymous hookup. A stable career.
I don’t know what to put here but I promise I’m slightly more fun in person.
That might’ve been an outright lie, but it was as good as I was going to get.
I uploaded the whole thing before I could change my mind, wincing as my own profile came up. Yeah. That… wasn’t exactly going to attract anyone.
My eyes were blurry and my cock had gotten bored and settled down, at least. Maybe I could sleep.
* * *
The soundof my phone buzzing woke me after what felt like five minutes, but the sun was streaming through my window and there was a bird singing outside, so it’d probably been… a little longer.
I grabbed the phone—almost ten a.m., I’d slept in—and immediately saw what had made it buzz.
A message.
On the hookup app.
My heart leapt into my throat. Really.Really?
At ten o’clock in the morning?
