"I'd love to but now it might be weird for me to go look you up."
"Then I'll show you some." The bed creaked as Luke got on it, which made Sabrina decide it was probably safe to turn around. And it was, if watching a gorgeous man in a thin t-shirt and sleeping shorts on the bed could be considered safe at all. Hegot his phone, scrolled through something, and waved it at her. "C'mon, I'll show you."
Sabrina, unable to resist, crawled onto the bed next to him and folded her legs, leaning in to watch a video he pulled up. "Ooh, your hair's longer."
"I thought I might go for the man-bun look, but it turned out I didn't have the patience to grow it. I don't know how people manage that."
"Barrettes. Headbands. Bobby pins. So much hairspray. Anything to keep it out of your face."
"I went for clippers to keep it out of my face." Luke grinned at her from up close, then nodded at the screen, where his younger and longer-haired self was…
"Cute but awkward," Sabrina pronounced. "How long ago was this?"
"Five years? No, six now. I got into it near the end of college. And that was one of my better ones from back then. These ones are…also terrible." He laughed and showed her another couple videos which were indeed not great, but still cute, then scrolled forward what had to be at least a year before playing another. "I was getting the hang of it by here, but I'm still really stiff and nervous with the talking and presenting information. I started modeling classes around now, and then the year after that I took acting classes, and that helped a ton. That's about when I really started to build a following."
"Oh, yeah. Oh wow." Sabrina made him flip back to a video, then watched another. "Yeah, you leveled up, didn't you? You get way more comfortable. That's cool! Well done! And I mean that, not in the weird condescending way it sounds!"
"You didn't sound condescending," he promised. "It's nice to get an 'atta boy' sometimes."
Sabrina smiled, relieved, then tilted her head. "So does that happen often? People grabbing at you?"
He grimaced. "Not a lot. Like, not enough to hire personal security or anything. But once in a while, yeah. I keep my DMs closed and don't respond to the weirder comments, but sometimes people think…I don't know what they think. That we've got some kind of relationship that doesn't really exist. And I never know what to do when they get handsy. You did, though," he said with admiration.
"It's easier to defend somebody else than yourself, though, and having a woman come up and grab you must make it even harder to know how to defend yourself. Not that it'd be easy if a guy did."
"Guys usually don't, though. I mean, women don'tusually, but when it happens it's usually a woman."
"Right. Well, I guess you'll have to hire me as security. I'll call myself Five Foot Defense. Get within five feet of Gym Bunny and he'll swing me around like a…what are those ball and chain things? Maces?"
"I think they're a ball and chain?"
"Well, you've got a phone in your hand. Look it up."
Luke did, then handed her the phone with a laugh. "It's a ball and chain mace or flail. I'm gonna brush my teeth. Please don't look in the locked photo folder labeled 'private.'"
Sabrina immediately went to the photo gallery and bopped the 'private' folder. It was, as he'd said, locked, and it wouldn't let her in. She said, "Hey!" loudly enough to be heard over the tap water.
Luke, garbled because of the toothbrush, said, "I tol' oou not oo ook!" Then, more clearly, added, "It's mostly the motorcycle pictures of you, anyway."
"I'm not sure if I should believe that!"
"Do I come across as the kind of man who would have a lot of dirty pictures on his phone?"
"…no…"
"That's good," he said, coming out of the bathroom. "Because I don't. Sexy, maybe. Dirty, no."
"Then why'd you tell me not to look?"
"Because I thought it would be funny!"
Sabrina snickered and handed the phone back as she went in to brush her teeth. "Hard to argue with that. Does it have all your 'felt cute, might delete later' pics in it?"
"…actually yes?" Luke sounded sheepish, and she poked her head back out to smile.
"Those I might like to see. I look forward to reaching the 'private photos folder' relationship level." That sounded much more serious than a fake relationship. Sabrina grimaced at herself in the mirror.
The longer Luke stayed silent, the worse her grimaces got, until he finally said, "I look forward to that too."
