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expressive face. “It was really, really—” He made himself stop talking.
    He couldn’t stop himself from trying to remember the last time he and Kai had had sex that made him feel like he’d lost brain cells in the process. Not recently, that was for sure.
    “So let me give you this.” Gavin walked over to a battered old desk pushed up against the wall and came back with an envelope.
    Ben held up his hands. “No, no. I couldn’t.” He’d arrived at the nude-male-model stage of desperate career options, not the man-whore stage. It was a subtle but important distinction.
    “It’s for the pictures, the standard fee I pay all my models,” Gavin said firmly. “Not for the—will you just take it?”
    If Ben hadn’t needed the money quite so badly, he would have drawn a line, taken a stand. Sadly, he was penniless. “Thanks.” He looked down at his feet, feeling incredibly awkward. “So, um, see you around?”
    Not that he probably would. Or should , if he was at all serious about getting Kai back. It was just one of those things people said, right?
    Gavin’s mouth twisted ironically. “Sure. See you around.”
    Ben headed for the door, but he couldn’t help a glance back. Gavin watched him intently. Ben swallowed the lump in his throat that had no business being there. He got on the elevator and went down to the dingy lobby, climbed back on the bus and rode home.
    For something that had been just a little harmless fun, he felt strangely at a loss.
     
    *  *  *
    In the days that followed, Ben was forced to accept that he seemed to be pining for Gavin, as ridiculous as that was considering the man was practically a stranger. Ben would take a mental vacation in the middle of whatever he was doing—making toast, vacuuming the crappy carpet in his crappy apartment, confabulating a resume for his new career as a nude male model—and a home movie would start playing in his head, a highlight reel of their sexual escapades from that day in the studio. It was distracting, but at least it took his mind off the fact that his cock would soon be on display in a million strangers’ inboxes.
    “They’ll blur your face,” Gavin had promised him. “They want all the focus on your cock, trust me.”
    Ben hadn’t found that especially reassuring.
    To fend off the mounting panic that he was going to boot up his computer one day and find the pornographic spam in his own inbox, he tried to concentrate on Operation Get Kai Back. Although to be honest, he didn’t feel quite the same urgency about it that he once had. Still, it was a plan, and in his current rudderless condition, he needed something to cling to. He gathered up the cash he’d made from Gavin and headed off to the bus stop. The vintage shop with the ugly French whatever-whatever was on the other side of town.
    Santa was back on his corner. He flicked a disdainful look at Ben as he passed. “Grown-ups,” he huffed. “You wouldn’t recognize a present if you fell over it. Or, hey, spent a whole afternoon rolling around on the floor with it.”
    Ben stopped. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    Santa rolled his eyes. “Seriously. I’m sticking to kids from now on. I get them a new toy, they know what the hell to do with it.”
    Ben boarded the bus, thinking maybe Santa had skipped his medication today.
    It took an hour and a half to go what was probably five miles to reach the shop. The snooty owner gave Ben a disapproving look up and down, making a pained face at his cut-off shorts and ratty sneakers. Oh, yeah? Well, us nude male models don’t care what we wear , Ben considered saying, just for the shock value.
     “Can I help you?” the snooty owner asked stiffly.
    “I’m here to buy that commode.” He pointed.
    “ Compote ,” the man corrected with a grimace.
    Ben smiled brightly. “That’s what I said.”
    Sadly, his triumph didn’t last long. There was no way to feel pleased with himself when he was handing over actual money for