FREELY (Friends with Benefits)

2: The Beautiful People

MAIA:

"So, what's your name?" I asked him.

As soon as I laid eyes on him, I knew was different from the usual guest list. The way he dressed, the way talked, and the way he stared at things—it was like he was a tourist.

"Hunter," he replied in a small voice, almost a murmur. He seemed shy or nervous for no apparent reason.

"Hunter... what?" I pressed on.

"Hunter Allen Rhett, ma'am,"

"Did you just call me ma'am?"

"Well, you sounded so demanding. I got nervous,"

He was a nervous wreck, but I found it kind of... cute. He reminded me of Timothée Chalamet on his first talk show appearance. I couldn't help but stifle a laugh. He was a fresh change of scene, compared to all the other arrogant, snobbish, assholes I was used to be around with.

"Rhett, huh?" I thought for a moment, "you must be Uncle Harold's grandson. I heard you were coming,"

"You heard about me?"

"Yeah. Uncle Harold and his wife came over for dinner a few times. He mentioned his grandson's visiting for the summer, from... New York, right?"

"Upstate New York," he paused before continuing, "it's a habit, for some reason I always have to make that clear,"

"Hm, I've never been to that part of New York before. What's it like?"

"Just... a lot of nature. I live in a small town. We have a farm..." he said it so unconvincingly.

"Wow, you're really selling it, huh?" I said with a laugh.

He started laughing too, and he had a nice laugh. Some people had really annoying laughs, you'd want to stuff socks down their throats. But he had the kind of laugh that would make you want to laugh with him. And his eyes were like this honest window into his mind, you could tell exactly what he was thinking just by looking at it. It wasn't the kind of eyes that would lie to you. And then there were the dimples, oh the dimples.

What does a girl have to do to be able to stick her tongue on that delicious dimple?

Okay, he was absolutely cute, but he seemed a bit too tense. I was giving him the look all night, but he wasn't flirting back with me. I didn't sense any gay vibes coming from him, so what was his problem?

"You're not used to this, aren't you?" I shot a look at him and handed him my flask, "you could really use some of this,"

He took my flask and gulped down the drink, a bit too fast. He almost spat it out too, but he held it back.

"What, climbing up the roofs of chateaus at a party?" he said with a dry laugh.

"No, I meant this," I gestured between the two of us.

"Oh," he laughs as he took another sip, "yeah, beautiful girls scare me,"

If you think that he was being flirty, that was just him being honest. He really was scared of me. Aw.

These kinds of guys always intrigued me. I considered them a rare breed. They were guys that were good looking but didn't know that they were good looking, so they actually developed personalities and weren't so full of themselves.

"Come on, I'm not gonna bite," I said as I lent out my hand to him.

He looked up at me quizzically before taking my hand and he stood right up. He was tall. A bit scrawny, probably not that much into sports. But that was a good thing. All the jocks I had met were narcissistic egomaniacs.