“Jess,” he said in his gruff voice. “You might want to pick up your jaw from the floor.”
“If my jaw is anywhere near the carpet it’s from your handiwork as a baker,” I said quickly, pointing to the tray of the chocolate-covered biscuits on his desk. Sure, they looked delicious, but I’d been caught red-handed and I wanted an alibi as I denied that William had me all agog.
He rolled his eyes. “Right. You were salivating over my kitchen skills. Not that hot man in the well-worn jeans.”
“You are correct, sir,” I said with a straight face because there was some truth to his comment. I stood up, picked up the tray, and carried it to a table in the corner, placing the biscuits far away. There. Now I wouldn’t be tempted to gobble them and then throw them up, like I’d done every now and then for many years with other delectable treats. But no longer. I’d been on the wagon for two full years now, one hundred percent in control, and I had to stay that way.
No. Matter. What.
I returned to J.P. “Just thought they’d look better over there,” I said with a shrug.
“Right. Sure. You were just rearranging. I also didn’t notice you giving sexy, scrumptious Will the old once-over.”
Perfect adjectives.
“If my eyes were on him, it was only to size up the potential competition. So which is he? My competition or your next boyfriend?”
“He’s either a shooter or a suitor,” J.P. said, kicking his feet up on his desk and crossing his ankles. “Which way do you think he swings?”
“You never can tell in this town. Everyone’s acting.”
“He acts straight then,” J.P. said, shaking his head as if he were sad that William liked girls. I was happy. But I couldn’t be happy. I reminded myself I didn’t care about his preferences.
“Shame for you. He’s criminally handsome,” I said, admitting begrudgingly what J.P. and I both already knew. William was a certified babe.
J.P. gave me a knowing look. “Shame for you if he can shoot as well as he looks.”
“Doubtful. The pretty ones belong in front of the camera. But who has time for boys anyway?”
“You should make more time for boys, Jess. Maybe you wouldn’t be so tightly wound.”
I scoffed, because boys were on the back burner. “If I wasn’t this tightly wound, you wouldn’t have any good pictures from me. I’d be a blathering mess of hormones and lust rather than your top shooter. I don’t give in to boys because boys scramble brains and I do not function well with a scrambled brain,” I said. In fact, I worked hard to avoid the temptation to fling myself bodily at beautiful guys.
Fine. I was guy-crazy. I knew that about myself. I fucking loved them. I loved their chests, and their arms, and their hair, and their eyes, and their guy smell, and their jeans and their abs…and well, you get the point. I loved everything that made a guy a guy, and I was often caught staring at the pretty ones. That’s why I stayed away as best as I could. Beautiful guys were trouble, and so I regularly warred with all such impulses to align myself with one horizontally, and I’d been damn good at keeping them far away. They were a surefire recipe for frazzlement. I was pre-med and paying for college all by my lonesome so I had zero free time for brain frazzlement.
Especially considering what happened to my brain the last time I was involved with a guy. His name was Thadd, with two Ds, he was a business major, a movie fan, and one of the best times I’d ever had. In fact, hanging out with him was so much fun that my grades nearly suffered, and when I got my mid-term progress report sophomore year, it might as well have come with a warning—falling for a guy is known to cause plummeting grades. Fortunately, Thadd found himself distracted by an art major the same day that I planned to cool it with him, so that alleviated any and all guilt on my part for ending things with him for a little reason like nearly failing, when he was nearly putting his dick in another girl.
I unzipped my backpack, and handed J.P. the contents of the digital card from my camera.
“All yours. But the shot of Velvet Treadman isn’t for you,” I instructed, referring to Range’s seven-year-old daughter in her beret and capris. “So don’t take it.”
J.P. snapped his fingers. “Damn. I was thinking she’d be about ready for a fake I.D.”
“You’re not getting any of those shots from me. Maybe Criminally Handsome will get you some of those,” I said, since I didn’t specifically want to ask what William was angling for, whether for a glimpse of stars behaving just like us or for a mug shot for J.P.’s other business making the best un-bustable fake I.D.s in Hollywood for studio execs’ kids, celebrity offspring, or anyone rich enough or thirsty enough to come calling on the former caterer, now photographic impresario. J.P. ran both a legit business as a photo agency, and a not-so-legit one aging up the under-twenty-one crowd. Even though I wasn’t J.P.’s only star shooter, I needed to know if William was horning in on my turf or supplying ID shots.
“Or maybe he’ll get a shot of Riley and someone else in the cast of The Weekenders hooking up,” J.P. mused, giving me my answer—William was a paparazzo too, and I’d need to protect my territory. Then my pulse quickened as J.P.’s tip registered. I nearly forgot about William because very little excited me more than a star stakeout. I raised an eyebrow, curious who the starlet Riley Belle might be seen with from the cast of The Weekenders. After years of rewrites, Solomon Pictures had just finished casting the remake of the story of five high schoolers forced to spend a Saturday together in detention. In the new version, a sixth student was added to the story because the studio wanted everyone to couple off at the end. Riley Belle played the cheerleader.