Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 63174 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 316(@200wpm)___ 253(@250wpm)___ 211(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63174 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 316(@200wpm)___ 253(@250wpm)___ 211(@300wpm)
As that sunk in, I said, “I know what I have to do.”
“What’s that?”
“I need to spend the next couple of months saving Devon from himself.”
5
Devon
Most of my time the week after Thanksgiving was spent doing three things—exploring the city, spending time with Kit, and trying to help him with his fledgling design business.
All he’d had was a pretty lackluster Instagram page with a few photos of his designs. Most of them only showed the clothes on mannequins, which wasn’t very dynamic. To remedy that, I accompanied Kit to the club where he worked and talked to the drag queens who’d bought things from him. He’d been too shy to ask, but all of them were more than happy to send me photos and videos of themselves wearing Kit’s designs.
By uploading that content and tagging the performers, I’d been able to quadruple his number of followers overnight. I also set up pages for him on three additional platforms, and cross-posting was helping him gain momentum.
He was happy about all of that, but he didn’t love my next idea. I wanted to post pictures of him working on his designs, while showing their progress from a drawing to a finished product. “The clothes are what’s interesting, not me,” he said, in response to my latest request. It was the first Friday in December and we were in his studio, so he could try to get some ideas down before he had to go to work. “Can’t you leave me out of the shots?”
“You’re the brand, Kit. It’s not enough to show the clothes. People want to see you,” I explained. “And it doesn’t hurt that you’re incredibly cute. Why not use that to your advantage?”
He muttered, “I’ll think about it,” and turned his attention back to the sketch he was working on.
While he added color to his design, I sat cross-legged on my bed with the contents of my backpack dumped out in front of me. My plan had been to clean out the receipts and random junk that had accumulated, but my gaze kept wandering to Kit.
A lock of his wavy hair had fallen into his eyes, but he didn’t seem to notice. I wanted to go to him, brush it back, and run my fingers through it. His hair was incredibly soft. I remembered that from our one night together—that, and everything else.
I’d replayed the memory of our first kiss countless times. He’d held back at first, but only for a few moments. Then he’d melted into me. It had felt so right, like we fit together somehow.
Kit jarred me back to the here and now, looking up at me as he said, “You’re staring.”
Busted. I went with the first excuse that came to mind, which also happened to be true. “I was just thinking you look great right now, so this would be the perfect time to take some photos for Instagram. I know you said you wanted to think about it, but—”
“Thanks for the compliment, but I really don’t want to do that right now.” He indicated the pile in front of me and changed the subject. “Is that big book with all the stuff sticking out of it the journal you mentioned?”
“It is.”
“Can I see?”
I shrugged. “If you want.”
Kit crossed the room and sat beside me on the bed, and I unwrapped the cord that held it shut and placed the journal in his hands. He treated it like it was fragile, carefully folding back the indigo leather cover, but I said, “I’ve dragged that thing all around the world. You don’t have to worry about messing it up.”
When he saw the writing on the first page, he said, “It jumps right into your bucket list.”
“It’s why I bought this notebook originally, the day after I met that psychic. I figured I’d write out my list, then journal and reflect on each item as I crossed it off. Turns out, I’m not big on trying to extract meaning from this stuff, so it ended up evolving into more of a scrapbook of my travels.”
“I just realized this list might get kind of personal. Are you sure you’re comfortable with me reading it?”
“Yeah, of course. It might need a bit of an explanation though, or it’s going to seem odd.”
“Okay.”
I pointed at the page and said, “At first, my entire bucket list only consisted of these four items. They were what I wanted more than anything. But then, after I crossed them off, I started thinking about what else I’d like to do. I’m mentioning that because it starts out with these big, life-changing goals, and a lot of the stuff further down the list is going to seem trivial or silly by comparison. But they’re all things I wanted to experience or accomplish.”
Kit read those first four items out loud. “Quit my job. Travel to Asia. Learn to play the guitar. Leave something positive behind.” He looked up at me and said, “Tell me about that last one.”