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“He’s right down the hall,” I hiss.

“And why is that a problem? Are you being held? Has he dicknotized you?”

I stare at the canvas in front of me. Clint’s back is irritatingly perfect. The line of his shoulders, the tension just below his neck, the dip of his spine where sunlight caught him near the beach last week. I have him. That part is alive.

The rest of the scene is escaping me. Sand. Umbrellas. The world around him dissolves before I can make it stay.

“Dicknotized at my age? Please.”

I dip my brush into black, reconsider, then set it down.

“Trust me, it happens at every age,” Don says. “Drop Jacob Elordi into the Riverview courtyard and you’ll have a dozen dicknotized septuagenarians instantly.”

A laugh escapes me.

“We’re just…”

Figuring things out together would be true. It’s also too small.

It doesn’t hold two weeks of sleeping beside Clint in this house. Or his hand on my hip while he reaches around me for coffee. It doesn’t hold the way he leaves his impression deep inside me in a way that makes my body hum for hours. Or when he sometimes goes quiet after camming and lets me sit nearby without asking questions.

I try again. “It’s not…”

Plates shuffle against the kitchen counter.

Don says nothing. That may be the most manipulative thing he has ever done.

Finally, he sighs. “I can’t believe I have to ask this, but am I still picking you up from the airport on Sunday?”

“I can Uber if you’re busy.”

“C’mon, Paul. I’ve received three texts from you in two weeks. I feel like I’m being ghosted. Are you coming home Sunday or not?”

I look at the half-finished painting, then out the studio window, and then toward the sound of Clint moving down the hall.

“I’ll call you on Saturday.”

“Paul.”

“I’ll call you Saturday.”

“You better not leave me sitting all night at Muhammad Ali International.”

“Talk to you Saturday.”

I hang up before Don can get the last word.

I stand in the quiet of the studio, staring at Clint’s finished back and the unfinished world around him. Then I leave before I can ruin the painting by trying to fix the rest of it.

Clint is in the kitchen, slicing tomatoes.

Naked, of course. Two weeks in, and the sight of his bare dong has become less shocking than the fact that I now understand the difference between his serious chopping face and his irritated chopping face.

This is serious chopping.

I stop before he sees me. Just for a second.

Watching him used to mean darkness. Now it means kitchen light on his chest while he makes lunch.