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No texts from Becca.

She’s on nights this week. Kroger closes late, and even after that there’s restocking or whatever else they make her do. If I go straight there now, I’ll have the apartment to myself for a few hours.

A few hours is plenty.

My key sticks in the apartment door. I jiggle it once, then harder, and it turns. The apartment is dark except for the light over the stove. It smells like Becca’s vanilla candle and the fried garlic I dragged in with me. It’s a gnarly combination.

The box sits on the coffee table, square and plain, with my name printed on the label like I had any business ordering what’s inside.

For a second, I just stand there with flour on my arms and my whole body tired from work I understand.

Then I take off my cap and toss it toward the kitchen counter. Miss.

I leave it on the floor and look at the box.

Not yet.

I toe off my work shoes by the door. I nudge them under the little entry table with the rest of the shoes, most of them Becca’s. Black work sneakers. Fuzzy slippers. Sandals with rhinestones on the straps that she bought for a wedding and has worn exactly never. My boots sit at the end of the line, too big, half in the way no matter how I angle them.

That’s kind of how I fit here.

I open the fridge because that’s what you do when you’re avoiding shit. I grab one of Becca’s bottled waters and close the door with my hip.

I look toward the coffee table.

Plain brown cardboard. Shipping label with my name. No big rainbow stamp that says Congratulations, You’ve Entered a New Area of Personal Confusion. Nothing to make it look different from socks or a phone charger.

Just a box.

It’s just a body. A job. Just money.

That last one is the closest to true, which makes it the most useful lie.

I set the water bottle down and wipe my damp hands on my jeans.

The thing is, camming did start simple. Zane told me about it after the gym one night.

“You’d clean up, bro,” he said, sitting on the locker-room bench with a towel over his lap and his phone in his hand. “Guys love your type.”

I told him I wasn’t doing gay porn.

He said, “It’s not gay porn if nobody touches you.”

Which is one of those sentences that sounds reasonable only because a dumbass says it with confidence.

Still, I looked it up.

At first, it was easy to categorize. Not gay. Not straight. Just a camera, a screen, a room full of strangers typing whatever they wanted because nobody had to look me in the eye afterward. Mostly men.

And I did clean up. Not crazy money, but cover some bills money. Enough to think maybe I could build a little pile of cash that belonged only to me.

The first couple of shows, all I had to do was sit there shirtless and smile like I knew something they didn’t.

Then I had to get hard.

Then I had to jerk off.

Stand up. Turn around. Flex. Spread. Talk dirtier.