You, With a View(13)

He’s still shirtless.

I’m still affected.

“You can close your mouth now, Shep,” he says with a lazy grin.

I roll my eyes, running a hand over my stomach, which is growling with all kinds of hunger. “It’s because your shoulders are already red, Spencer. I’m appalled by your lack of sunscreen usage. Do you even know what UV rays do to your skin? You’re going to look seventy by the time you’re thirty.”

He twists to eye his shoulder, humming in dismay. “I put some on a few hours ago.”

“You’re supposed to reapply every eighty minutes.” I smile sweetly when he gives me a dry look.

Keeping eye contact with me, he swipes a bottle of sunscreen off the table and starts applying.

This feels like a test. I keep my gaze firmly planted on his face, but the sound of Theo’s palm gently slapping his skin as he applies the sunscreen pings my most animalistic senses.

“What are you even doing here?” I ask.

“Planting vegetables.” He doesn’t say you genius, but his tone doesn’t not say it.

“I mean,” I say, infusing the same energy into my voice, “it’s the middle of the day on a Tuesday. Why aren’t you at work?”

In my periphery, his hand stalls. “Why aren’t you at work?”

“I’m working from home today.” The lie slips off my tongue like silk.

Theo’s expression turns sharp with awareness, his grin sharp with it, too. “What do you know? Me too.”

I believe that about as much as he believes me, but I don’t have time to push. Paul walks out with a tray of food.

“Lunch is served!”

“You should put on a shirt,” I say as I push past Theo to get to my seat.

He runs a hand over his stomach, grinning. “Nah, I’m good.”

Well, that makes one of us.





Five





Theo keeps his shirt off the entire meal. It’s obscene. My eyeballs hurt from the strain of not looking.

Paul picked up sandwiches from one of the best spots in Marin County. The homemade bread is crusty perfection, and at least half of it ends up in my lap, little sourdough snowflakes drifting from my mouth every time I take a bite. It takes everything in me not to pick up each fleck with my finger after I’ve demolished my sandwich.

Our conversation flows smoothly thanks to Paul, who asks about my job (I continue the lie and say it’s great), what I do in my free time (I wing it, since hike and doomscroll aren’t legitimate answers), and how I got into photography.

Here I can be honest and tell him how when I was twelve, I picked up an old camera of Gram’s, which was collecting dust on her bookshelf.

Thomas tried to fight me for it, but I came out of our wrestling match victorious, albeit bruised like a peach. I started using it constantly so Thomas wouldn’t have access, but it turned into a genuine love. An obsessive one.

Paul smiles at this. “I’m familiar with the feeling. Now that you’re done with your meal, should I go grab what I wanted to show you today?”

“Yes,” I say enthusiastically. Theo lets out a soft huff. Not a laugh. Something rustier.

Paul disappears into the house, and the silence stretches between us.

“So why aren’t you doing your photography thing full time?” Theo asks finally.

I eye him, and the flake of bread caught in his chest hair. Disgusting. I want to pick that one up with my finger the most.

“Because you can’t just do things,” I say. “It’s not that easy.”

One eyebrow raises slowly, like a bridge lifting for a ship. “If anyone can just do things, it’s you, Shepard. You’ve been just doing things as long as I’ve known you.”

“You sound like an unhinged Nike ad.” I lean back in my seat, tilting my face to soak up the sun’s warmth. “It’s easy to invest time in something you love when you have the money for it.”

“You’d be surprised.” I look over at him, indeed surprised by the bitter edge in his voice. He runs a hand over his chest, dislodging the crumb in the process (RIP), and shifts in his seat. “You specifically can do anything you put your mind to, is what I mean. You were always like that in high school. Singularly focused, especially with photography. Good at everything you tried. Not as good as me, but—”

I snort, my chest tight. I want to be that version of Noelle, but I’m so far away from her, she feels like a different person.

“I can tell you love it still, is all,” he finishes.

I try to deaden my curiosity, but that’s like asking me not to breathe. “How’s that?”

“The deranged look in your eyes when you talk about it.”

“It’s just . . . not for me. I learned that lesson a while ago.”

Theo’s gaze turns sharp. I avert my eyes from his attention, that face and those shoulders, the skin, which upon closer inspection, is quietly freckled. I take in the backyard instead, needing space from his wordless probing. It’s small, immaculate. There are several raised beds along the perimeter of the pine fence, several bags of soil open and sagging against them.

“Your granddad’s house is beautiful.” I focus on a hummingbird flitting around a tall plant with tubular red flowers. Wish I knew their name. “How long has he been here?”