A little.

“No.”

“I think you might be.” He sounded somewhat pissed.

“It’s not that I blame you for taking advantage of it, but I guess I just don’t like the idea of a man using a woman for sex and then never calling her again.”

“What makes you think I was the aggressor? If a woman chases after me…begs me for sex…I give in…how is it using her? Not all women are looking for more than one night. Some of the women I encounter out here are worse than guys in their quest for meaningless fun. If I’m upfront about what I want or don’t want from the very beginning, then how am I hurting the person?”

He was making me feel like an idiot. Landon was right. His behavior was probably normal for a single man living in L.A. He just didn’t realize he was talking to someone with a plethora of sexual hang-ups.

“I suppose you’re not hurting them. I’m sorry for jumping to conclusions.”

“You don’t think I want a deeper connection with someone? I just haven’t found it. In the meantime, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with finding sexual partners with mutual expectations so long as you’re safe and not hurting anyone.”

“Okay, you’ve schooled me. Thank you. Let’s move on from this discussion.”

“It sounds like the topic is making you a little uncomfortable. Does it remind you of a bad experience?” He sounded genuinely concerned.

Every sexual experience I’ve ever had.

Perspiring, I said, “I’d really like to change topics. Can we?”

“Yes. I’m dying to know what you look like now. Let’s talk about that. Will you send me a picture?”

Okay, he’d chosen an even worse topic.

“No.”

No way.

Never.

“Please?”

“I’m not ready.”

“Then describe for me what you look like.”

“What do you think I look like?”

“I’ve been picturing you like how you used to look but wearing a belly dancer outfit. It’s confusing. I honestly don’t know what to imagine.”

“So, you see me with short, black hair and a unibrow?”

“You said it, not me. But sort of, yeah.”

Closing my eyes, I said, “I picture you with dark, blond hair, long, kind of like a surfer dude.”

“I do live near the water in Venice Beach, but I’m not a surfer, nor do I look anything like one.”

“Didn’t you used to have sandy brown hair?”

“It’s darker now, like a lot of things about me.”

What does that mean?

I wanted to explore that further but instead just asked, “What’s Venice Beach like?”

“Well, you know I used to love to skateboard.”

“Yeah.”

“That hasn’t changed. I’ve gotten a bit better at it. We have a really cool skate park here, which I love. It’s pretty much where I can be found on my days off. Overall, Venice is nice. It’s sort of a mishmash of artists and working-class people mixed in with rich techies and homeless folks. Let’s see…what else. There’s a boardwalk, and people come for the beach and to see the performers. There’s a famous freak show at the theater here, too, and before you ask, no, I’m not a part of that.”

“I wouldn’t have thought that, although I could probably fit in there pretty well myself.”

We stayed up talking for a while until I could no longer keep my eyes open.After that evening, I hadn’t heard back from him for a few days.

Then, one night, a text came in from the same phone number I recognized as Landon’s. It was the first time he’d texted me.

I looked down to find he’d sent a photo.

I gasped.

It was a heavily tatted man set against the backdrop of the ocean at sunset. Oh, my. It was him—a selfie.

Fuck. Me. He was beautiful.

I wouldn’t have even known it was Landon were it not for the blue eyes I recognized instantly. The shaggy, caramel hair I remembered from the past was now a darker shade of brown and shorter, cropped closer to his head. His arms and his chest were inked, his body so perfect that if I squinted, it almost resembled carved stone.

I couldn’t stop looking at him. My eyes wanted nothing more than to explore the ridges and valleys of his stunning body.

Was this a cruel joke?

This was not Landon!

But, it was.

With my thumb and middle finger, I kept zooming in and out, examining the details of the ink across his chest and on his arms. There was really nothing sexier than a guy with perfect arms and a full sleeve tattoo.

Even though his lips seemed fuller than I recalled, they still curved into a familiar grin that oozed confidence. The eyes and that smile were the only traces of the boy I remembered. I wished I could’ve leapt through the screen to smell him, touch him.

“Hi, Landon,” I whispered, for a brief moment talking to the boy inside, not the man in front of me.

This Landon was the polar opposite of the Ivy League yuppie image previously in my head. The only thing the man pictured might have majored in was badassery. He looked like a rockstar, a rule breaker, displaying a sense of arousing danger—someone who must have had women from all walks of life drooling over him for the sheer fact that either they couldn’t have him or shouldn’t have him. It suddenly became clear why, as he’d alluded to, a woman might have been begging him for sex. That made me wonder if he had any secret tattoos in spots I wasn’t allowed to see.