He started scrolling through pictures, all culled from the last year. There were a few professional shots of me at the office, talking to a small team in our conference room or hunched over my desk, concentrating. He’d selected a couple pictures from our group camping trips, with the sun on my face and rolling green hills behind me. One snapshot featured me at our friend Cass’s concert, and in the last couple, I sat at a fancy bar near the office, entertaining high-profile clients.
I turned the laptop away. “My smile is awkward.”
“In which one?”
“All of them.”
Leo grunted. “It is not,” he objected. “Plus, if you don’t get pictures of yourself out there, how are you ever going to date again?”
“I told you. We can sign me up for an Instagram for work purposes, but I’m not going to start dating strangers from the internet. It’s weird.”
“Sure, sure,” Leo said dismissively. “What about this pic, though?”
He clicked, and a photo of me swimming at the lake popped up. In it, I was dripping wet, and the sun shone on my bare chest.
“Absolutely not.”
“Come on,” he laughed. “A little Kai beefcake for the fans? You look good, man.”
I swept my hand along my hair. I did look good in the picture, actually. I had a natural smile on my face for once, instead of the forced smile I sported in all the office pictures, and my swimsuit hung off my hips in a way that even I could admit was flattering.
“If you try to put a shirtless picture of me on the internet, I’m going to sneak into your condo when you’re not home and erase all of your saved video games.”
He wrinkled his brow. “So what I’m hearing is that we can go ahead with some of the business shots to start, and we’ll revisit the beefcake later?”
“Leo, I weigh one-eighty, and I barely go to the gym. I’m not beefcake.”
“Hunk of man meat?” he countered as he closed the laptop. “Just let me know what phrase makes the most sense for the Instagram captions.” He turned and squinted, scrunching up his face. “Maybe you’re a twunk? I think we could pull off that branding. Or if you wanted to grow a beard, we got to try for otter.”
I rolled my eyes. “Goodnight, Leo.”
He leaned across the couch and kissed me on the forehead playfully. “Goodnight, fuddy-duddy. River says don’t forget he’s cooking dinner for us all tomorrow.”
Once he left, I fell back on the couch and stared at the ceiling. It’s not like having my best friend interfere in my personal life was a new thing. Leo had been meddling in my affairs since we met in college, and now that he and River were together, getting me in a relationship was their new hobby.
It was sweet of them, in their own annoying way, and I understood where they were coming from. I was the only single person in our social group, and with summer passing fast and the big double wedding coming up, I’d soon be spending all of my free time with two married couples.
But who cared? Maybe I seemed a little boring, and maybe my life looked like it was stuck in a rut, but I was successful, and happy, and I had a good group of friends around me. That should have counted for something.
I pulled my computer back on my lap and opened up the chat account I used to talk with my cutie. He was logged off, but I lingered over our last messages.
Hope you have a good day tomorrow, OK! Don’t work too hard
Thanks! Good luck with the rest of your move, cutie
I traced my fingertips over his words. Even if I looked like I was totally alone, the truth was, he was part of the reason I didn’t feel that way. I’d been sharing my life with this guy for years. He knew things about me that I hadn’t told anyone else, even if he didn’t know some other very basic information.
Like my face, or my voice, or even my name.
Too bad it was all fantasy. He might have found me repulsive, if he actually knew what I looked like. And it wasn’t like I could walk down the street, holding hands with some guy in a kitty costume. It would definitely ruin my reputation and undercut any cool factor Leo was hoping to develop for Silver Linings.
But still, no matter how it looked from the outside, I wasn’t totally alone.
I was just too embarrassed to admit that one of the most important relationships in my life was with a guy I’d never meet.
Chapter Three
Izzy
