Without looking up, he says, “You don't have to come here every day.”
“I know that. But I want to.”
He’s shaking his head. “Still, I don’t think you should. I mean, this is time you could be resting. Your new job must be hard. Being on your feet all day. Dealing with asshole customers. Then you can’t even rest when you’re finished and all we can do is fantasize about a life we’ll probably never have. What kind of life is that?”
“It’s my life,” I answer. I’ve slid my chair over and grabbed his hand. “That’s what kind of life it is. And I want to spend as much of it as possible with you.”
Before he can say anything more self-deprecating about himself—like how he may never be the same after this or how I deserve better—I lean over and kiss him. When I pull back, he smacks his lips.
“Cranberry. Is that a new lip gloss?”
“Yeah.”
“I like it. Give me another taste.” With a hand on the back of my head, he pulls me down on him, our lips crushing against one another. I’m almost tempted to crawl on the bed with him, but two things stop me. The first is his condition. The second is mine.
What Brice doesn’t know—what he can’t know—is that I forgot all about the lip gloss I was wearing. Because it’s not mine. Stellar insisted on painting it on my lips when we met in the dressing room earlier. She said the bright flash of color would pull attention away from the bags under my eyes, which no amount of cosmetics would cover completely.
Even she doesn’t know the details of my deal with Greg. He insisted on keeping our project hush-hush. It was going to have a big reveal: ‘Tessa Bloom’s Choose Your Own Sex-venture’. That was the tentative name. But before we could do anything else—the website, the promotions, the money—we needed the scenes. Which meant I was in the studio all day, ever day.
Greg and I aim for each scene to be ten minutes. The Level 1 and even some of the Level 2 scenes are easy. Little more than stripteases. The hardest part about filming those is moving slowly enough to draw out the time. And since these are the earliest levels, there are fewer videos to film. In fact, we finish all of these in just two days of frenzied filming. With those done, there are no more easy scenes.
Whish means no days where I’m not exhausted by the time I finally meet up with Brice each night.
“I think I’m going to turn in early tonight,” I announce, pushing off of him. Before he can think he’s done something wrong, I lean down for another kiss. “I promise we’ll make up for all this lost time once all of your bones are straight again. So wait until then, okay?”
He shrugs, clearly not happy our sexy times have ended so early. “It’s not like I’m going anywhere.”
I promise to stop by in the morning, and then I’m gone to catch a few hours of sleep.
A week later, it’s an hour to midnight. We were supposed to be finished two hours ago, but due to a problem with the main camera, Greg has been on the phone with support for the past hour. I’m sitting inside a fake bathtub in the studio, and though the scene calls for me to wear nothing but a towel wrapped around my body, I’ve got a blanket while I wait for the studio guys to give me the okay.
This is the seventh scene we’re filming today. If we weren’t on such a deadline, I would have headed over to the hospital after the fifth scene, but Greg has set a firm (if ambitious date) of revealing our new Choose-Your-Own-Sex-venture corner of his website by the end of next month.
Now we’re getting into the nitty-gritty scenes of self-delivered orgasms. All but the first have been fake up to now, but that doesn’t mean that all of the rubbing hasn’t left me crazy sore. All I want to do is curl up beside Brice and watch a movie together, like we used to do on the weekends. Back before Greg changed our lives up with his crazy request. But I’m here, in a fake tub, waiting for the go-ahead so I can pretend to pleasure myself.
“It’s not going to happen tonight,” Greg announces once he appears in the studio once more. “But we’ll be getting a loner camera from tomorrow, so I’ll see you all then.”
The cameramen and sound guys are already halfway packed up and within minutes they’ve cleared out, grumbling about how they don’t paid enough for this kind of bullshit.
“You holding up?” Greg asks as I climb out of the tub.
I’m holding the blanket over myself reflexively, but it’s silly because this man has seen me nude more times than he’s seen me with clothes on. “I didn’t know it was going to be so tough to film seven scenes a day.”
“You only did six. Normally when we’re filming at such a breakneck speed, we’d schedule you a day or two here and there to recover.”
“I’ll be fine. I’m keeping my end of the bargain, so you be sure to keep yours.”
“We both want the same thing.” He rubs his thumb and forefinger together, indicating the thing that makes the world turn round.
Half an hour later, I’m back at the hospital. I’m so exhausted that I forgot to spend the taxi ride over here making up stories about what happened at my fake job today. So when Brice asks me how everything was at the restaurant, I simply tell him that I don’t want to talk about work. Instead, I want to hear all about his day. The deflection works perfectly.
“Therapy still sucks,” he says while stretching out his arms. “They’re weaning me from all the pain meds I’m on, so I’m really starting to feel how messed up my body is. It’s not so bad when I’m laid up like this, but get a girl with crazy strong arms working all your joints so they don’t get stiff, and you can’t hide from reality anymore.”
“Oh. I didn’t realize your physical therapist was a girl,” I say as calmly as possible while remembering that time back in Greg’s studios when Brice was on the brink of filming a scene with Stellar. Even though we’re on friendly terms, I’m not about to let her take my place on camera.
Brice needles his finger into my side right below my ribs. I pull away instinctively from the ticklish gesture. “Is the great and mighty Tessa feeling jealous?”
“I don’t know about that ‘great and mighty’ part, but I’m not thrilled with the idea.”