Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 78152 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 391(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78152 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 391(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
And that brings me to the next picture in the album. I was getting into bed on Monday night when I noticed something on the floor, next to the end of my bed. I squatted down, snagged it, and held it up next to the lamp on my nightstand. Adan’s driver’s license.
My first instinct was to call him to tell him he’d lost it at my place, but I dismissed that right away as the wrong choice. Adan hadn’t been in my bed that weekend, and anyway, he had no reason to be digging in his wallet and misplacing his driver’s license. Once I thought about it, I became convinced he had left the license there on purpose so he’d have an excuse to see me again.
A part of me wished he hadn’t felt like he had to manufacture a reason to see me. But another part of me was too happy about the fact that he wanted to spend time with me to worry about how he was expressing that want. It was that second part that grabbed the camera and took a picture of Adan’s driver’s license.
Because it’s a symbol of what I saw as Adan reaching out to me, my snapshot of his driver’s license is the next picture going into the album.
Adan Navarro
CHASE RHODES was fruity and flamey and flamboyant. He didn’t try to look more like a man and less like someone who would turn heads and cause people to whisper and laugh. Instead Chase seemed to intentionally ham it up. I was certain he had been wearing makeup the first time we’d met. He chose clothes that were too tight, too loud, and too feminine to be appropriate for men. Hell, even the roll of his hips when he walked and the cadence of his speech screamed out what he was. All of which should have driven me right off.
But though it made no sense, I found myself genuinely liking him. He was confident, sarcastic in a biting, funny way, deceptively intuitive, and strikingly beautiful. From the first moment I saw him, I wanted to fuck him. After spending time with him, I wanted to see him smile and hear him laugh, even if it was at me. I wanted to learn about what he did in his free time and watch him putter around in his kitchen, hopefully while he was making me more tasty meals. And I still wanted to fuck him.
Artist types were supposed to be messy and disorganized, or so I’d always thought. But Chase’s tiny apartment was neat and orderly, so I was sure he’d call me to let me know he’d found my missing driver’s license. Not that I knew I had lost it at his apartment. It could have been anywhere: the subway, the street, any number of diners where I’d grabbed food. All I knew was that when I opened my wallet on Monday morning, my license was missing. And the last time I’d seen it was when I was in Chase’s apartment on Sunday. As I set the license down next to his bed.
Anyway, when he hadn’t called by Tuesday, I was second-guessing the whole neat thing. Maybe he had cleaned up to impress me but he was normally a total pig and as soon as I’d left his place, the license had gotten covered by clothes and pizza boxes and beer bottles. Not that he drank beer. And a body as fine as his couldn’t indulge in all that much pizza. And with as meticulous as he was about his frou-frou clothes, I doubted he’d leave them crumpled on the floor.
It took until Thursday before I admitted to myself that maybe he wasn’t calling because I’d put him off. It was possible I had been a little overly aggressive. But that was only because he kept turning me down, so he was half responsible and he had no business holding it against me. The more I thought about it, the more pissed off I got, because I was thinking about it, which meant I was thinking about him. I wasn’t some teenage girl who was going to pine, especially not after some fem aspiring dancer. I was on my way to becoming a successful attorney with a big house and a BMW convertible and Chase twirled around for a living. Come on.
By Saturday morning, I decided I had no choice but to call him. Not because of the recurring sex dreams I had about him. Not because I walked by a bodega that sold those hydrangea flowers he liked so much and stopped to think about whether there was room on his windowsill for another plant. Not because I saw some guys playing street dice and laughed at the memory of some of the funny things he’d said when we played at his apartment. But solely because I needed my license so I could go out that night and pick up another guy. That was it.