Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 103530 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103530 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
One wall of the den was covered in a floor-to-ceiling collection of DVDs. There was a similar collection in my parents’ den, from a time before streaming. I ran my finger along the edges of the boxes as I read the titles. Full Metal Jacket. Donnie Darko. The Rocky Horror Picture Show. All very out of context with our location. In fact, the whole room was out of context. Who needed video games in a place like this? Who wanted to stop and watch a movie when there was so much flesh and sin on demand outside?
Suspicious, I took one of the DVDs with me and headed to Matt’s bedroom. He sat on the padded bench at the foot of the bed, shirtless and seemingly out of breath.
I held up the DVD. “Quick question: who needs a copy of The Devil Wears Prada at an exclusive four-star sex resort?”
He blinked at me for a moment. “It was a gift.”
“From whom?”
“Stanley Tucci.” The answer was too quick.
“Stanley Tucci,” I repeated, wondering if he’d walk it back. “Stanley Tucci came to your sex island and brought you a DVD of one of his classic movies.”
“Uh…”
“World-renowned actor, foodie, and devastatingly hot bald man Stanley Tucci came to your sex island and brought you a DVD of one of his classic movies and the movie he chose to bring you was The Devil Wears Prada.” A part of me wondered if the scenario I described wasn’t as outlandish as I’d made it sound. Matt had tons of money. He probably did have famous friends.
But caught in his lie, it took him a moment to answer. “Well… The Lovely Bones or Spotlight would have been thematically inappropriate.”
“Ew!” I exclaimed. “Matt, are you living here?”
He looked away. “Not living. I would call it staying. I’m staying here.”
“I thought you went back to New York!”
“I did,” he said, holding up his hands again. “That wasn’t a lie. I went back to New York, but things weren’t the same. Or they were. And that might have been the problem.”
I sat beside him and put my hand on his knee. His cargo-shorts-wearing knee. Ugh. I’d be critical of his wardrobe later. Right now, there was something else going on. “What do you mean by that?”
He stretched his injured leg out, the one I had my hand on. “I got a lot of sympathy. And none of it was about the right things. I was attacked by a bear, but everyone was concerned with the walking.”
“If it helps, I was impressed that you survived the bear attack.” I hadn’t been thrilled, exactly, that he’d chosen to announce our sexual dalliance to the entire wedding… That was a conversation for another time. “So, you’ve been down here fucking your cares away?”
“No. Not really,” he admitted, hanging his head as if he were ashamed of his lack of promiscuity. “I’ve been down here eating room service and playing video games.”
“That’s… sad, dude.” There was no sense in coddling him, but his pain was like a pulsing force between us, and I didn’t want to increase it through my honesty either. “And you’re sure you still wanted me to come down here? Because if you’re going through something—”
“No, I wanted you here,” he was quick to reassure me. “This is going to sound so pathetic but… You’re the only person who hasn’t shown me weird sympathy through this.”
“Hey, I’ve been sympathetic,” I said softly.
“No, you’re bad at sympathy,” he said with a soft chuckle. “That’s why I said ‘weird sympathy.’ Other people seemed to agree with me and encourage my self-pity when I made this out to be a tragedy. You made fun of me when I acted like the world would end because I have a limp and sometimes need to use a cane.”
“It was funnier when you had to use that walker with the tennis balls on the ends.” I snorted at the memory of the photo he’d sent me when he’d still been high on painkillers all the time.
“That’s exactly what I’m talking about,” he said. “I knew you’d be able to hang with me and have fun and not encourage me to wallow in self-pity like my entire life was over.”
I looked down at the gnarly purple scars on his leg. Not just the jagged slashes from the bear, but the long, straight one where they’d cut him open to try to fix the damage caused by the blood clot. I reached down and traced it lightly with one fingertip. “I was scared when this happened. I was scared about the whole thing. Bear included.”
“That makes two of us,” he said grimly.
I slid from the bench and dropped to my knees in front of him, taking his foot in my lap. “I don’t give a shit about how you walk. And I don’t care about your self-pity. Life changes.” I leaned forward and planted a kiss on the whorls of warped flesh on his calf. “Suck it up.”