CHAPTER 1
KAEL
I don’t needthe guilt. I’d happily leave that behind with the condom wrapper and the empty water glass. What I need is my fucking jeans, wherever he tossed them in this dark studio apartment.
I find them by feel, careful not to let the belt buckle jingle, then drag them on and pull my shirt over my head. Leaving shouldn’t feel like sneaking out. I’m a grown-ass man. Ten hours and no promises should be a clean transaction, but somehow it never is.
I glance back at the real-life version of the profile I’d messaged last night to find golden hair tousled against the pillow and a toned body spilling out of the sheets.
To complete my self-loathing ritual, my brain serves up a brief, unwanted image of a life we’ll never have.
In a place this small, our lives couldn’t help but intertwine. Seeing pots hanging from a wire rack above the kitchen counter is enough for my brain to decide he can cook, and in the fantasy, he’s at the stove when I come back from the studio. Whatever he’s making fills the room with the smell of my gram’s kitchen. His hips sway to Today’s Top Hits blaring from a tinny speaker on the counter as I come up behind him and wrap my armsaround his waist. He startles, giving that adorable little jump, and we laugh and kiss and keep kissing until he almost burns whatever he was mak?—
The cold, damp air of San Francisco’s morning fog slaps the fantasy out of me as soon as I hit the street.
This is the first fog, the grim one that belongs to early risers and people whose bosses pay by the hour. It punishes your eyes, makes you squint before crossing the street, and whispers that you’d better set your alarm early or people will start demanding things you never meant to give.
The other fog is for the people who think they own this city. It rolls down from the hills like a velvet curtain, tucking them into glass boxes with heated bathroom floors. When they happen to see this one, they call it mystical and spend the day posting photos of it, oblivious to the way the rest of us sneer at them for finding poetry in our daily commute.
They don’t notice, and why would they? The city’s lined with their money. My rent is too. They don’t need to dodge the messy complications of casual encounters; they’ve signed up for much more serious ones like marriages, trusts, and retainers. No, thank you.
I know that guy’s tall, muscular body better than anything else about him, and that’s the whole point. Like a stock character from a bad porno, he delivered one vague line about a new job and then we got down to it. Now we go our separate ways without last names, expectations, or time lost.
Walking away means an early start, a clean break, and room to breathe before I go back to being owned in more respectable ways.
The Church and 18th MUNI station is a ghost town populated by a few hunched spirits waiting for the train to carry them away from yesterday’s bad decisions. By Civic Center, my earlier guilt has thinned to something almost laughable.
Now I get to do what I love all day because of the early exit, not in spite of it.
Mostly.
By the time my key scrapes the lock of my studio, the sky’s gone from charcoal to dishwater gray. I flick on the overheads. The track lights click to life, spotlighting the stark white canvas at the center of the room.
I don’t believe in “creative block.” It’s a convenient myth artists tell themselves when they’d rather be fragile than disciplined. That’s what I tell myself. It’s also what I told the man who fancies himself San Francisco’s patron of the arts, before his interest in my work turned into wire transfers and strings.
But the canvas has been empty for a week, and my beliefs haven’t done a damn thing about it.
A slap lands between my shoulders, jolting me forward.
“Paint,” Jamal says behind me. “I saw you when I first came in… like an hour ago. You haven’t moved. I’m getting coffee. Come on.”
I shouldn’t. I have a billionaire waiting for results and a canvas doing its best impression of my tombstone.
“Yass,” I say anyway. “Maybe the caffeine gods will have mercy.”
Staring at the problem isn’t banishing the ghost of creative block. Maybe coffee will at least give me something else to blame.
We walk past Jamal’s studio, one of twenty-eight in the building, each rented by someone chasing a dream. Mine feels stalled, but I’m still living a version of my childhood fantasy.
The coffee shop’s downstairs and across the street from the studio I still can’t quite believe is mine. From my window, I can watch its sidewalk chalkboard menu change with the weather. It’s independent, which is code for hanging by a thread, socoming here feels like generosity instead of irresponsibility. And generosity comes easier with a billionaire footing the bill.
Jamal nudges me as we walk in, jerking his chin toward the barista, a new face beaming at us from behind the counter. He looks vaguely…
The barista’s golden hair pokes out from under a black beanie. Instead of rumpled sheets, there’s an apron and a loose black shirt over what I know is a chiseled body.
“Kael!” He says it just like he did last night, with way too much feeling for something that wasn’t supposed to mean anything.
Unbelievable.
