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Bentley84: I’m glad the olives sold.

I laugh, low and tired.

HotnReddy: That’s your takeaway? No good show? Or hope tomorrow’s better?

Bentley84: Sometimes victory is just questionable pizza.

It makes no sense, but I smile at it anyway.

HotnReddy: Night, Bentley.

Three dots appear.

Bentley84: Night, Reddy.

I log off, and the screen goes dark enough to give me my reflection back.

Buzzed hair. Bare chest. Tired eyes.

HotnReddy gone.

Clint back at the wheel.

Maybe.

Chapter eleven

The Right Thing

Paul

The private chat closes first. Then the video disappears. One second, he’s there in the little rectangle of my laptop screen, tired and half-lit, smiling at whatever foolish thing I wrote about pizza. The next—gone, replaced by the main page of the site.

The laptop glow fills the theater room, faint and gray, making everything around me look unfinished. The couch. The blanket twisted over my lap. Baxter asleep in the corner with his back to me, not willing to bear witness.

I sit there with one hand still resting against my thigh and the other hovering above the trackpad.

My body is still hot.

I had promised myself I would only watch. Then I promised I would only stay to talk.

I promised I would never touch myself during his shows.

They all lasted until they didn’t.

Now I’m back to strangers on the screen, bodies I could click on if this were only a kink, but the men on screen do nothing for me.

Night, Bentley.

Then the smile. A little crooked. For me.

No—for Bentley84.

That distinction is important, even if it’s failing.

My gaze drops to the lower edge of the screen where the private-message icon still sits. Available, but not open. Waiting for my next mistake.

My stomach tightens.