Page 16 of Use Me Up

Ellis sees it. He snorts. “Tell her that you don’t care what a jackass I am because you think I’m really hot.”

I give him a look. “Don’t read my messages.” But, uh, he’s right. That’s the exact proper response. I type, His best features are not his disposition, it’s true.

She sends back a laugh emoji. Oh, he *is* very fucking nice to look at. How did you meet him?

He’s an old family friend, I type. We recently reconnected.

She hearts this.

Then, nothing.

I debate whether I should say anything else but then decide that I don’t need to, because her emoji has effectively ended the exchange.

I find it unsettling that there are never any goodbyes with texting. I never know when a conversation is over, and it gives me low-level anxiety, not going to lie.

I turn to Ellis. “I got out my phone because I was thinking maybe we want to order dinner.”

“I should actually be getting home,” he says.

Oh, of course he should. “Okay,” I say. “Um, do we make plans to see each other, or, how does this fake relationship of ours work?”

“Actually, I don’t want us to spend a night apart from now on,” he says.

My stomach tightens. “What?”

“But I need to go home,” he says. “I don’t have clothes or anything. So, you pack up some clothes and things and you can stay with me.”

“I, um, where do you live?”

“I have a house,” he says.

“A house?”

“I bought it,” he says.

He bought a house? How does a Polloi orphan who barely graduated high school buy a house when he’s only twenty-seven?

“The modeling was lucrative.”

“If it was that lucrative, why didn’t I see you plastered on billboards or something?”

He snickers. “Maybe modeling is the wrong word.”

“What? Did you have an OnlyFans or something?”

He blushes, and he doesn’t meet my gaze.

“Oh, my God,” I say. “You sold your body online, didn’t you?”

“It was brief,” he said. “I didn’t show my face. It wasn’t OnlyFans, either, it was this alpha site, invite-only, very exclusive, very discreet.”

“Oh, my God,” I say.

“It’s not like it was porn,” he says. “And, I mean, no one touched me.”

“Was it pictures of your…” I look at his crotch.

He looks up at the ceiling. His voice dulls. “I was in a dark place.”