I show him the screen. “Look. They keep coming. Like, a lot of them.”
“Why? What happened?”
I wrack my brain. The only explanation is that we’ve been featured by someone big, but when that happens, it’s generally their account that blows up, not ours. “Did you just post something?” I ask.
“No. I was with you.”
The last photo Finn shared has more likes than usual, which doesn’t make sense. It’s my freshly-manicured, dark-nailed hands cupped together, filled with bobby pins. It was just a filler we threw together since we’ve been hard at work on the lingerie shoot.
But as I look through our notifications, I realize it’s not that one they’re interested in. Users are going back to where it all began. Our coffee series, the first three photos, is getting like after like after like. I open each of them.
Finn sees it at the same time as I do, reading upside down. “Does that one have twenty-one-hundred?”
I stumble back into the studio and sit on the sofa. Comments are coming in faster than I can track. “Check your e-mail,” I tell him as I look through everything we’ve been tagged in recently. There are more than usual today, a few feature accounts included, each with thousands of followers. Still, I’m not sure why they all chose the same photo. “I can’t figure it out,” I say. “It’s not Butter Boudoir; they don’t even have many more followers than we do. I have no idea where this is coming from.”
Finn’s leather chair creaks when he sits back. “I do.”
“You do? Where?”
He massages his jaw, looking at the computer screen. “It’s dumb.”
“What is it?” I get up and read over his shoulder. “A Buzzfeed article?”
“Yeah. ‘Twelve sexy photographers to follow now.’”
“Holy shit. Why is that dumb? Our stuff is sexy.”
“No. They don’t mean it like that. Here’s the subtitle: ‘These photographers are even sexier than the photos they take.’” He scrolls down to number one on the list, and it’s Finn’s face. His sun-kissed skin. His butterscotch hair and mossy-green eyes. The photo from the bio section of his website.
Underneath it is the photo of me licking coffee off my forearm and a caption that reads, We’d be drooling too.
“Sexy photographers,” he explains. “As in, every photographer in the article is—well, according to them . . .”
“Sexy,” I finish.
He moves down the list. A couple other men are included, but most of the accounts featured are women shooting female boudoir—pretty pouts, big eyes, delicate bralettes, smooth-skinned, toned asses. All the images are embedded on the site, so people can follow with one click. They don’t even have to leave the page.
“Someone e-mailed me about this a couple days ago,” Finn says, rubbing his temples. “She asked if she could feature us. I didn’t think it was a big deal.”
“I don’t know if it is.” I lean over and scroll to the bottom of the article to see if anyone has commented.
“Almost two hundred people,” Finn says, reading the screen. “Is that normal for Buzzfeed?”
I stand up again. “It’s a lot. Sometimes things like this go viral, so if people are sharing it all over social media, then . . . that must be what happened. Plus, you’re number one on the list.”
“We’re number one.”
“That’s not my face at the top.”
“Hals.” His eyebrows draw together, his gorgeous lips turn down into a frown. “Honestly, I didn’t know what I was agreeing to. I assumed it was about our work.”
My caption is included, but that’s obviously not what this article’s about. Professionally, this is huge for him, yet he looks unhappy. Because he’s worried how I’ll react to this? He shouldn’t be. I want his success probably more than he does. He deserves to have his moment.
“It is about us.” I bend down to kiss him. “They wouldn’t have picked you if our work sucked. And you know what?”
He watches my mouth. “Hmm?”
“I don’t need a Buzzfeed article to tell me how sexy you are, but it’s still pretty amazing they picked you. And you picked me, so I’m feeling good right now.”
He pulls my arm so I fall into his lap. “You’re amazing.”
“You know, there’s a lot of pressure on us now. Our next post has to be seriously good. None of that bobby pin bullshit.”
He grins. “It’s the onesie one.”
“The onesie one?”
He gestures over my body. “The leotard thing. That’s our next photo.”
I instinctively glance at the computer and Sadie pops into my mind. I said I was okay with what I saw, so I need to be. There isn’t enough room for both of us to be paranoid about past partners. He has more reason to be distrustful, even though I’d never pick Rich over him. Finn, on the other hand, hasn’t ever made me feel insecure about our relationship. “Right. The bodysuit. It’s good, but is it good enough as a first post for all those new followers? Let me see which caption you chose.”
He pinches my chin. “It’ll be perfect. Don’t worry.”
“But—”
“I’ll handle it, babe. I want you to enjoy this moment.”
“I am. Remember that day I said I wanted to hit ten thousand followers by mid-January? Before this article, we’d almost doubled it. Now we’re closing in on forty, and it’s barely February.”
“Is this you enjoying the moment?” he asks.
It is. Watching the numbers grow excites me. Knowing all those people are not just reading my words, but relating to them. Feeling them. I hate to admit that the thrill doesn’t end there. The article said it, and forty-thousand people agree, so it must be true: the photos are sexy. And they’re of me. I can’t wait to see what happens when we post the next series of Butter Boudoir images. Just as I’d suspected, they’re the most provocative yet. “I think with Valentine’s Day around the corner, we can double that number by March.”
He looks skeptical. “Eighty-thousand?”
“No. A hundred. Pick a day in March. We need a goal to keep us on track.”
“Jesus. That’s the population of a town.”
“We can do it, Finn. This is the kind of thing I was talking about. We can do more with more.”
He scratches his chin but nods. “Okay, but . . .” He runs his hand down my thigh. “Can you give me a teensy bit more motivation?”
“If we hit a hundred thousand by the date you pick in March . . . I’ll give you blowjobs until my jaw falls off.”
His eyes widen. “March first.”
I laugh. “Are you sure? Day one? You’re going to take that risk?”
With an eye roll and a chuckle, he sits back. “Fine. How about March eleventh? It’s my birthday.”
A smile warms my face. I had no idea. I’ll have to think of something good to surprise him with. “I love March eleventh.”
That’s just over a month away. With what we’ve accomplished today, and with what’s to come, I just know we can do it. Our own little town.
But then, as is becoming standard since I stopped my antidepressants, it doesn’t take long for my high to even out and let doubt in. We can no longer pretend this is a hobby. Now, we have a real following, opportunities to get sponsors, and the ability to charge for advertising. If we play our cards right, this could mean a new life for us—and our art. It also means we have something to lose. And as Finn grows more recognizable, I’ll have to share him with the world, watching from the sidelines, hiding behind a mask of my own creation.
27
Finn squats, examining a box on the floor of my apartment labeled Books. “It’s all in the knees,” he explains. “You have to protect your back.” After counting to three, he hoists the box into his arms and stumbles backward a few steps. “What the . . . there’s nothing in here.”
I can’t help laughing. “You can thank Rich. He didn’t return any of my paperbacks.”
“Maybe next time get a smaller box,” h
e teases. “I think this is the last of what I can fit in the car. We’ll have to come back for the rest next weekend.”
“That’s fine. We’ve got time.”
While he takes the last of today’s stuff downstairs, I get out a six-pack I bought for this occasion. I pop the cap from a bottle, and it clatters on the counter, the noise echoing off empty walls. It should be strange to see my place this barren, its eggshell-colored walls looking sad and splotchy, but it hasn’t been my home for months. The important things are already at Finn’s. We moved some last weekend, some today, and we’ll do the rest next Saturday since it’s the last weekend before March. That’s the way to move.
Finn walks through the front door with a pizza. “I ran into the delivery guy downstairs.”
“Perfect timing.”