Do you do all this for free?” He touches my shoulder and pulls my tank strap back into position. It immediately slips back off and his defeated sigh gusts across my skin. “Just stay there,” he says to my tank in irritation.
“I get paid in underwear and candy. In this economic climate, alternate currencies are required. Jamie would lecture me about charging what I’m worth. But who cares. If this is how I can help her, then I’m doing it.”
“You’re a good friend,” Tom says with such admiration in his voice that I look up, startled. “You’re so generous, Darce.”
“Oh, sure.” I look back at my screen. This is getting too hard. He pulls me close with fang-and-claw intensity, then expects me to sit here like a sister. I’m a kitchen-trashing psycho, but at least I know it, and I’m consistent.
The problem with Tom is that he doesn’t know what he is. Not really. The question, who do you think you are would be really interesting to ask him, because I know he’d get the answer wrong.
“I want you to know, when I was going to renovate the house under Aldo’s business, I was planning on doing it for free.” I see his big fingers twist together out of the corner of my eye. “I feel real bad about taking the five percent.”
“You’re worth every penny,” I tell him, just like my mom used to. “Don’t sweat it, Tiger.” I tack on Dad’s nickname for good measure. Still, the reminder of my parents doesn’t work. He doesn’t recoil away from me like I thought he might. “Do you need to get back to work?”
He confides, a little playful, “I don’t want to go back out there. Alex is right. Things are always more interesting where you are.”
“I’m sure,” I say, because my screen has a backside on it. But when I look up, he’s looking at me, and he has softness in his eyes.
“I’ve been really hard on you lately. I’m sorry.” He rejects an incoming call with a practiced motion. “I’m sorry for everything. Can we be okay now?” His phone rings again. He needs me. I know it.
“All you have to do is ask me.” I can see he doesn’t know what I mean. Instead, his eyes drop to my mouth. My pulse bumps and I rush to clarify. “Ask me to help you.”
“How could you help me?” Now he’s looking into my eyes, and there’s that warm buzz sensation. The room gets smaller. We’re shrink-wrapped together by walls and air, and I cannot stop myself. I put my hand on his forearm, just to feel his skin.
“I will help you however I can.” I squeeze, and I feel his muscles squeeze back. Above my eye line, I see him swallow. “I will break my goddamn back for you.”
He takes my hands in his. This is an important thing he wants to say. “Yeah, I know. But it’s really important to me that I do this on my own.”
Colin’s words echo back to me, and again I flare up inside. “You’re never going to be on your own. I’m here. I’m with you.”
He looks at my growly little face with a new realization in his eyes. “Yeah. You are.” He looks sideways at my bench and notices something among the mess. The one thing I was hoping he wouldn’t. “Passport application?” He releases my hands.
“I concede defeat. Jamie must have taken it. But it makes no sense. I know I had it after he left. I checked the expiration date for something. I wonder if Vince sold it on the black market.” I laugh, ha ha, so he knows that was a joke.
He doesn’t find that funny. “You’re going to get a lot of money when the house sells. You’ll never come back.”
Truly slides open the door. “Hi, are they done? An old man at the house just yelled at me.” She notices how close we’re standing and falters.
“Hi.” Tom smiles, and it’s lovely enough to make me want to shred that passport application and flush. “Colin’s right. You can’t walk through here anymore.”
Truly looks him up and down with frank appreciation and I cannot blame her.
He’s glorious, from the top of his head to the soles of his boots. He’s a big, glowing, muscled miracle, and as the silence stretches on, his brow creases in puzzlement. He hasn’t looked in a mirror in a while.
Truly reboots her brain. “Wowee, look at you! So muscly! Have you buried the hatchet with Darce?”
“I was just in the process of doing that,” Tom replies. His phone buzzes on and on. He looks at it with a weary expression. I know from personal experience that once the voicemails begin building up, checking them feels like shoveling in a snowstorm.
He jams it back in his pocket and focuses on Truly. “How are you?” They embrace tentatively, Truly’s face making an exaggerated eyebrow-raised oh of pleasure at me over the curve of his bicep.
“That’s made the trip worthwhile, I bet,” I say, sounding extremely bitter. “Not that I’m jealous, but hugs are few and far between around these parts.” I hunch over the laptop like a gargoyle and begin to edit. Since Tom’s full-body hug in the kitchen, I’ve been brittle and cold.
“Aw,” Truly croons, and comes to me, wrapping her arms around my shoulders from behind. Her hugs are heaven. I wish they’d both hug me at once. “Tom, you know what our Darce is like. She’s like a Tamagotchi.”
“I’m a digital pet. Sounds about right.” I lean back against her and close my eyes. We rest our temples together, and just in this moment, I’m crystal clear on the inside.
Tom resumes his bench leaning. “I know exactly what she’s like.”
“She needs cuddles more than she will ever admit,” Truly says, hugging me tighter, “and she dies without them.” She releases me with a kiss on my cheek. “Oh, and candy, obviously. She runs on all different colors of sugar.” She begins unpacking bags of candy next to me.
“I almost feel like you’re buttering me up for something.” I grab the nearest bag and tear it open with my teeth.
Tom grins at Truly. “She’s an animal, isn’t she?”
Truly holds up a pack at him. “You can have these, if you tell me that you’ve made her feel better, because I know she tries her poor little heart out for you.”
That’s a nice way of saying, Darcy complains to me constantly about every blister and fuckup.
My stool is turned, I’m pulled to my feet, and Tom slowly, deliberately squeezes me against his body. “I am throwing myself at her feet. Every minute of every day. She just doesn’t notice.”
His hand cups the back of my head and my entire world is his muscles and the smell of his T-shirt. The wax-sweet smell of birthday candles and wishes and ugh, it’s going to hurt when he lets me go. Take what you can get, DB. You’re lucky he even wants to speak to you again.
I’m squeezed until I’ve got no air, then deposited back on my stool. I need that again, even longer and slower. Maybe a month of it. I should say something but I can’t. Truly hands over his confectionary payment without comment, her eyes amused as she glances at my face.
He uses a pair of scissors from his new desk. No wild gnawing. So civilized. “How’s business? Is there good money in underwear?”
He tips a few into his palm; succulent, delicious, and pink, and I want them. I’m drooling for the flavor in his mouth. A guy from the crew calls his name outside, the bleat of a lamb with no shepherd.
“Yes, weirdly. I’m loaded.” Truly rummages in her purse. “I actually brought a present for Darce. Take a look.”
She hands Tom a pair of Underswears—the striped nautical ones from her last release. He must have big hands because when he pinches the waistband on each side, the underpants look tiny. I know full well that when I pull those up, I’ll have no belly button and a three-foot-high backside.
Truly grins. “I know that’s technically a compliment, and against my company charter, but . . .”
“Let’s see. Oh, that’s cute.” He’s found the little anchor charm. My underwear in his hands. He turns them, and we both see she’s screen-printed “Really Not” above HUMAN FLOTSAM.
I finally find my voice again. “I really am. Thank you. Another one-of-a-kind pair.” I tuck them in my top drawer, along with all my other wearable paychecks.
Tom chews and considers the array of bad words on the screen as I scroll through again. “I really would have thought you’d make a more . . . uplifting collection than this.”
Truly knows what he means. “Oh, you mean like skimpy lilac underpants with goddess spelled out in sequins? But then I’d completely miss my target market. Snarky girls, like Darce, who don’t want a wedgie.”
Her phone chimes and she glances at it for a long moment. I sense conflict and frustration in her as she pockets it. “Why does everyone say I should make nice underpants?”
“Probably because you’re a sweetheart,” Tom says, matter-of-factly, and Truly blushes hot pink down to her skeleton. My bones turn neon green. That’s one thing I’ll never be: a sweetheart. How is it so easy for these two?
“I don’t deserve candy,” he says, pouring the rest of the bag into his mouth. “I’ve been such an asshole lately. I deserve a bad word on my butt.”
Truly blinks. “Are you psychic? That’s what I’ve come to butter up Darcy about. The brand consultant wants a men’s sample included in the lookbook.”
“Dudes don’t wear funny underwear,” I scoff.
“I just said I’d wear some.” Tom folds his empty candy packet.
Truly nods, glad of his support. “I think there might be a market, too. I’ve been working on a pair for a while now, so I had a pattern. This is the first-ever men’s pair. You know what I’m going to need now, Darcy.”
She sidles up to me, opening another bag of candy. I open my mouth like a baby bird and she stuffs some chewy pineapples into my beak.
“Don’t make me.” I make crying noises through the sugar. “Don’t.”
“What’s the issue?” Tom walks up to the door. “Yeah, give me one minute,” he calls up to the house. There are a million things up at the house he needs to do, but he’s getting tangled up.
“Quit being nosy.” There’s no point in wasting time with me. “Go back to work.”
“Casting male models is her worst nightmare,” Truly tells him. “Whenever she’s put calls out for male models in the past, she’s gotten photos of dicks in response.”
“It’s true. Just dick after dick.” I look at my computer, my watch, and then her face. I ignore Tom’s crossed arms. “Do I get any more time?”
“No,” she says regretfully.
“Can I do a flatlay?” Even as I say it, I shake my head. “No, they’ll look crap beside the model shots. Okay, leave it with me. I’ll sort it out.”
“Are you sure you’re not tiring yourself out?” Again, Tom’s fingers are on my shoulder. Again my tank disobeys and slips off. “I think you’re on less sleep than me at the moment.”
“If only you had someone on-site here who could do it,” Truly says to me, slowly and speculatively. She turns and looks at Tom. “Someone really close by. Someone in good shape, who wears an XL.” She narrows her eyes at his waist.
Tom is never going to buy into this nonsense. I save him the embarrassment of saying no. “He’s too busy for this.”
“Tom . . . ,” Truly starts in a sweetheart voice.
He doesn’t know what to say. He’s coloring up. “My butt is very flattered to be considered for this, Truly. I’m not sure it’s up to your standards.”
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I say in disbelief. Seriously. Has the man never reached back and felt what he has there? “We’ll let you get back to work. I’ll just trigger the dick tsunami.”
Truly rushes to reassure him. “I hope you don’t mind me saying so, but you’re really the best man for this job. Please, just let Darcy take one photo of your butt and I’ll buy you a steak dinner.”
“Hmmm,” Tom says. “Steak.” I think he’s trying to not laugh. I probably look like I’m about to start screaming. “What do I have to do?”
“It’s easy,” Truly jumps in. “Just stand there. Don’t even suck your stomach in. My site is only real bodies. The models we use aren’t tiny sample sizes. And Darce only uses minimal Photoshop. Real bodies,” she repeats emphatically, looking at his groin.
“I don’t think this classifies as a real body.” My voice sounds very faint. Tom smiles like he is utterly charmed. I know my face is blood red, because he’s biting his lip to stop laughing. “Hey, are you messing with me?”
“A little. I like it.” He hears another bleat outside.
Truly decides to betray me. “Darcy was the butt for a few of the collections last year when we couldn’t get models at a reasonable rate.”
Tom’s little Valeska ears prick up. “Darcy’s an underwear model?” He’s positively sparkling with humor and fun now. I’m flushing red, my heart erupting in my chest and sending liquid lava through my veins.
“I forbid you to look.”
“She’s got a great backside for underwear. You two could be the Underswears power couple, if you’d just put them on, Tom. What do you say? Steak dinner?”
“I never got a steak dinner,” I complain.
“Okay,” Tom says, laughing like he can’t believe himself. Then he adds his usual disclaimer. “But only if no one tells Jamie.”
He looks at his phone, then back at the house. “And it’s a really big steak. I’ve really got to go. Nice to see you, Truly. Please sign a form later so I feel better about you walking through a building site.” He looks at his new desk. In a chocolate-cake voice he says, “I can get that printer working.”
“No, it needs to be done now. Here.” Truly hands him a pair of underwear and he unfolds them. On the butt, it says, IRRATIONAL ASSHOLE. He bursts out laughing.
“Well these are very appropriate.” He stares at her and realizes she’s serious. “I can’t do it now. That’s crazy.”
“It’s either you, or I go talent scouting,” Truly says, matter-of-factly. “That young guy up at the house would do it, I bet anything.” She knows she’s successfully pressed one of Tom’s buttons and suppresses a grin as he turns to me and scowls.
“It’s true, he would,” my mouth says, because oh Lord, I want to see some skin.
Truly steps out and holds the door handle. “I’ll stand out here and guard the door. Pull the drapes. This could take two minutes. Take your pants off, put these on, Darcy goes clicky-clicky, and we’re done.” To someone up at the house, Truly shouts, “He’ll be three minutes.”
The door slides shut.
“She makes it sound so easy.” His hand is on the button of his pants. “Why am I considering it?”
“Because Truly has some sort of weird force field around her. You can’t help but say yes. But if you do this, I will not let you treat me like shit afterward. You wanted to be distracted. You came in here. You’re one big boy, and I can’t keep you in here if you don’t want to be. Nod so I know you admit it.”
He nods. “If it isn’t me, it’s going to be someone else.”
“Let’s just get it over with. Pretend they’re your swim trunks.”
I tug the drapes shut and switch on the lights. I wheel over my stool. “You stand there.” I point at the white void. I change settings, then blow dust out of the lens. There’s a seemingly endless period of belt-jangling, stretching fabric, and movement behind me, and then Tom takes his position. I haven’t seen his legs since his days on the swim team. I missed them so bad.
The poor thing looks terrified. He’s gone from worksite boss to buff male model in the span of twenty seconds. He’s suffering from the whiplash. He’s not the only one. Those stretchy boxer-briefs look like they were made for him.
“Do you need a cigarette? Any final words? Seriously, you look like you’re about to be riddled with bullets.” Sometimes I love my smart mouth.
He looks so sweetly vulnerable, his T-shirt twisted low around his waist with his hands. He’s a good boy in a bad-boy body. It’s an underwear body.
Lord, it is too warm in this room.
Loretta was adamant he was a Viking in a past life—and she’s right. He’s just rowed across the Baltic Sea and now he’s standing here, chest rising and falling under my stare.
“Okay.” I try to not look at the skin and the legs and the hair. And is he kidding with that stomach? I see big slices every time he twists and readjusts his T-shirt. My mouth is so dry I’d drink from Patty’s bowl. I’ve shot models and I’ve never seen anything like this.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“You look fine,” I say in an encouraging soccer-mom voice. I tap the ground with my boot. I will spare him the shame of making him take off his T-shirt altogether. He needs some dignity. “Turn your back to me. Pull your top up high. Higher. Yep.”
I can’t say it. I will explode if I don’t say it. “You’ve got the best butt on the planet.” I put the camera on high speed and begin to paparazzi his ass.
“Is Tom there?” Colin’s voice is terrifyingly close. Jamie’s mole, for sure, and he’s about to bust us goofing off in the weirdest possible way. Tom and I freeze.
“He’s just having a . . . talk, with Darcy.”
“Tell him to come out front. They’re unloading the timber, but he hasn’t hired a forklift so we can’t move it.” Colin says that in a loud voice, so that Tom can hear.
“Shit,” Tom says. “One second. I will be one second. Hurry, Darcy.”
“It’s okay, he’s gone.” Truly opens the door a fraction and the drapes twitch. “Oh, they look good on you, Tom.”
I love her, but I get up and fix the curtain, banishing her. The rabid female timber wolf inside me doesn’t want anyone else seeing this body. The worksite noise recedes.
“No one but me gets to see,” I grumble to myself. “I can’t believe you were brave enough to do this. Especially after . . . what I did.” In the kitchen, when I tried to maul you.
“I couldn’t stay away from you anymore. I thought having you around was bad for my concentration. But not having you where I can see you is actually worse.”
“I assure you, I’m not fucking up anything in here.”
“I missed you.” His head shakes. “What do you call . . . what you did? In the kitchen?”
“From memory, I told you to get in me.” I try to keep my tone light and amused. “I think you got a scary look at what happens when DB nearly loses control.”
“That was you with some control left?” He’s incredulous.
I flash back to the breaking wood, the pointing at the bedroom door, the crude honesty. But the truth is, it could have been worse.
“Well, yeah.” I lower the camera. I’m breathing heavily enough to fog the display. At this rate, I’ll destroy the lens. “If I lost all control, I would have—” I click the camera, just to make noise. “I probably would have—” I cover my mouth like I’m trying to hold in a burp. I can’t say it. I cannot.
“Tell me,” he says over his shoulder in that bass voice from the first morning on the worksite, when he said Unpack the equipment and the guys tucked tail and ran. It’s a voice that you can’t say no to.
Fuck it. If he wants honesty, I’ll give it to him. “I would have undone your belt and got down on my knees, and made you pray to God.”
“Jesus,” he says with no air.
“Yep, you’d have been calling his name, all right.” I cross one leg over the other so I can stifle the telltale heaviness I’m feeling. A sick little rush is spiking my shame. I could say almost anything to him and he’d have to stand there with his back to me and hear it. “Lucky for you, I’ve got a little control left. Just a little.”
His massive shoulders roll and he sighs in misery.
“Come on, turn around and we’ll finish up. You can go back to your flock.” I swivel, side to side, and it doesn’t help my aroused situation. It would serve me right if I accidentally orgasm on a stool from Kmart.
“I don’t get it though,” he says after a moment. “Why?”
“What do you mean ‘why’?” I hear the disbelief in my voice. “You’re phenomenal. You know that.” When he glances over his shoulder at me, his eyes are raw and unsure. “You do know that, right? I can’t even tell you how hot you are. I’d have to show you.”
He shuffles foot to foot but doesn’t turn to face me.
“Just the front now, and we’re done. Thirty seconds. Come on, Tom, whip around.” He does nothing. “Tom. Earth to Tom.”
He says on a faint sigh, “I am having a personal issue.”
“Yeah, you and me both. I’ve got a pack of double-A batteries with my name on it.” My jeans feel like they’ve shrunk ten sizes, and the seam is nearly cutting me in half. “Let’s just get through this.”
“Just give me a second,” he says in anguish.
“Turn around,” I order him, desperate to end this. With reluctance heavy in his face, he obeys, twisting the T-shirt up. His stomach is quilted into six beautiful blocks. “Hoooooly shit.” My mouth drops open and I can barely lift my camera.
“You see what I mean,” he says through a clenched jaw. His underwear looks different from how it should in the front. All bent out of shape. Uncontainable. An angle that should be ending, but it just . . . doesn’t. My insides clench up; yes please.
“No wonder you weren’t impressed by my dirty box of merchandise,” I blurt out even as I steady my hands and zoom. “I don’t think I could get the lighting right on you.”
“That’s hilarious,” he says in fury, reaching down and grabbing at his pants. “You just have to keep talking, don’t you.”
“No, wait, I need one shot for Truly.” I lower my camera. “Just don’t worry about it. This has actually happened before. I once did a boudoir shoot for a couple’s anniversary, and—”
His hand is pressed over his eyes. “Just stop talking for one goddamn second.” Horror lights up inside me. Jamie never stops talking. Ever. Then he adds, “Your voice is so hot, I can’t bear it. Obviously.”
“Oh.” I swivel around on the stool and put my back to him. “I didn’t know that.” The room rings silent.
“Of course you know that,” he replies with temper. “I have never heard a woman talk the way you do.” There’s an audible swallowing sound. “You’ve got to be more careful with what you say to guys.”
“I have never in my life said anything like this to another guy, and I resent the insinuation.” I peek over my shoulder. Can this excruciating moment end now? One more tiny micro freeze frame and my brain’s got it forever. It’s now in the vault. It’s a really big vault.
“This is humiliating.” He tuts and huffs. “Are you this filthy with any half-decent-looking guy that catches your eye?”
“I’m this filthy with you. Only you. And you’re not just ‘half-decent.’ I’ve seen Michelangelo’s David in Florence. You make him look like a pin-dicked garden gnome.”
“Done, guys?” Truly calls out.
I wave my hand in panic. “Nearly! Let’s talk about something really neutral. Like, the house renovation. How’s that going? Tell me all about it.”
“Okay,” he says, sounding encouraged.
“Talk about the guttering or the vents. That big water stain on the kitchen ceiling, how’s that coming along? Or the . . .” I dig deep. “The trellis. The pipes. The architraves and the finials and the—”
He cuts in, despairing. “I think you saying vaguely architectural terms is making it worse.”
“You weirdo.” I hear myself a little differently now. Is it really a sexy voice? I’m pretty sure the most response I’ve ever elicited from Tom has been dilated pupils. Now I’m in a room that contains his hard dick.
Safer. Keep him safer.
Another minute ticks by. “Okay,” he says, strained. “Do it.”
I take about ten shots and before I even tell him we’re done, he’s bending over, jamming his legs into his pants, still wearing the Underswears. He explodes out of the room, almost knocking over Truly.
“You owe me more than a steak dinner,” Tom says to her as he departs at speed. “You owe me a steak dinner on a cruise ship.”
Truly comes back inside. “What did you do to him?”
“I’m really not sure,” I say, patting sweat off my brow. “But I don’t think we’re getting those underpants back.”
