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Good. He should not look back. I should turn around.
I stop outside a shop selling T-shirts, hats, shot glasses, and several risqué IP appropriations that Mickey Mouse’s lawyers would absolutely want to discuss.
I go inside.
A fan rattles overhead. A rack near the door offers tank tops with slogans ranging from mildly suggestive to pornographic. I pretend to consider one involving a cartoon rooster and a Spanish pun I understand well enough to blush.
Through the window, I see Clint pause across the street.
He speaks to a man at the doorway of a bar. I know it. One of the gay bars, loud and narrow and already filling with men who have dressed for being seen.
Clint disappears inside.
I stand there with one hand on a fluorescent tank top and feel my excuses rearrange themselves.
He’s stopped for a drink before work. Must work nearby. He doesn’t know it’s gay—so he must also be deaf and blind.
Maybe this is just none of my business. In fact, it definitely isn’t.
“Like?” the shopkeeper asks.
I look down. I am holding a shirt that says I LIKE BIG BUOYS in glitter letters above a winking, long-lashed seagull.
“No,” I say too quickly. “Thank you.”
I move deeper into the store, to a display of dick-shaped bottle openers and refrigerator magnets.
Minutes pass.
Enough minutes for me to feel the full stupidity of pretending to shop for souvenirs I do not want while waiting for a man I have promised to leave alone.
The music across the street changes, and a whistle goes up from inside the bar.
Clint steps onto a small platform near the open front.
At first, my brain refuses the information, insisting it’s a different six-foot-whatever white guy towering over the crowd in nothing but a tiny line of neon and Clint’s old sneakers.
My hand tightens on a keychain shaped like a palm tree, the plastic fronds digging into my palm.
Clint starts to move. Not like he did on cam. Not that leisurely, controlled screen seduction. Not fully in command.
A man reaches up with a folded bill. Clint steps closer.
This may be my last chance to look away.
I do not.
The man tucks the bill into the thin neon strap at Clint’s hip, fingers lingering. Clint catches the wrist, moves it back an inch, and smiles down at him.
My stomach twists.
Arousal, yes. Jealousy, also yes.
Shame, immediate and deserved.
The shopkeeper says something behind me. I don’t answer.
Across the street, Clint turns under the light.