“It can’t have been that easy.” She gaped at him. “I mean, there have to be thousands of people who’d like to give it a go.”
Narrowing his eyes, he looked her up and down. “You could probably do it if you want to. Is that why you’re asking?”
“Me?” Her brows shot up, but while she seemed flattered, she also shook her head so fast, she might’ve put herself at risk of getting whiplash. “No, thank you, but I’m okay. I’m just interested in how you did it.”
She glanced at Bart. “You’re next, by the way. I’ve never met a professional gamer before, and I’ve got questions. So many questions.”
Shawn chuckled, but then he told her his story. “When I started working after college, it was at the mailroom of a talent agency here in Manhattan. I had a fucking degree in business with a minor in public relations, but it was hard to get my foot in the door without any contacts.”
“Jeremiah couldn’t help you out?” she asked.
He shrugged. “He probably could’ve, but it was a different time for him, too. The company wasn’t his, so it wasn’t his decision to make and he wasn’t in a great place personally or in terms of his relationship with his dad. A lot of things had already changed for him because of his brother’s passing and I didn’t want to pile more on his shoulders by even asking. Besides, I wanted to make it on my own.”
“I get that,” she said. “Now that you’ve mentioned it, I think I remember something about his brother passing away. It must’ve been a really difficult time for him.”
“It was,” Bart said solemnly. “If you were anywhere in the country at the time, you would’ve heard about it when it happened. It was all any news outlet could report on for weeks.”
A shudder passed through me at the mere memory of it, and I steered the conversation gently back to Shawn. That was Jeremiah’s story to tell, not ours. What privacy he had now had been hard won, especially when it came to his brother, and I didn’t want to talk about it without him present.
“So anyway, people in general and those at the talent agency kept telling Shawn he should be a model,” I prompted, and my friend picked it up again from there.
“I’d never even really considered it, but it kept coming up,” he explained. “One day, a photographer buddy I’d made in the building got so adamant about it once we’d had a few beers that he made me do an impromptu shoot that night. We had fun, but I never thought anything was going to come of it.”
A faraway look came into his eyes as he thought back. Then he came back to earth and grinned at Larisa. “I went to work the next morning, hungover as fuck and without even giving a second thought to having had my picture taken the night before. It turned out that my friend had sent some of his shots out to some of his friends and the rest, as they say, is history.”
“What about your job in the mailroom?”
He laughed. “Like I said, nothing else ever really stuck. I’ve had a bunch of jobs, but this is the first one I’ve ever really liked.”
She nodded slowly. “I feel the same way about my work, though I didn’t have so many jobs before it. I studied design with a minor in business, which was where I met Steph, but I’ve always known I wanted to do interior design. All my jobs related to it somehow.”
“Yeah, I heard you know Steph,” Bart said, drawing her attention back to him. “It’s crazy that you two have been in each other’s orbit for so long and you’ve only met now.”
With her focus now back on him, she asked how he got into gaming, and the two of them spoke about it for a while until our waiter came back to take our food order. The night went by fast, but everyone had a good time.
Eventually, Bart and Shawn got up to leave. After they said their goodbyes, promising again to help Larisa if she needed anything else, I looked at her. “Do you want another drink?”
She shot me an apologetic smile. “I should get home as well. I’ve got a pretty solid plan for the house now and I want to try to at least get some work done tonight, which I won’t be able to do if I drink anymore. Plus, it’s getting late. Thanks, though. I had fun tonight.”
Shit. I really didn’t want to let her go just yet. While I knew I might’ve been playing with fire, I asked anyway. “Any chance you feel like coming back to my apartment with me instead of going home to yours?”
Her eyes widened, and I saw the hesitation in them. It was then that I realized what she probably thought about my invitation. “I’m not inviting you back there for sex. That’s really not all I’m after. There’s no pressure. We could just have a beer or two and I might have something that could help you with the house design.”
“You do?” she asked dubiously. “What is it?”
“A surprise.” I grinned, and I was pretty sure she could see how excited I was about this. “I’ll let you have it regardless of whether you choose to come back to my place or not, but I think you’re going to want to play around with it and you can’t really do it here. I’d also really like to see your reaction while you’re looking at it, which is why I want to be there. What do you say? Will you come with me?”