Chapter 20

I received a text informing me that the music wasn't ready yet. I should probably be disappointed, but I'm just happy I have more time to spend with Zai. He helped me create a social media page on a site called SceneIt, For my profile picture he took my photo. It was so striking that even I was shocked, I should be used to seeing my own face by now. Zai took the picture so well, I wonder if this is how I look to him all the time. I was wearing Zai's shirt and my left shoulder was exposed because of the baggy collar. It should be fine since the picture only shows my top half.

"Now follow me," Zai said while entering his username into the search for me. I've used social media before but my old accounts were gone and the sites I knew of were shut down. Zai's profile picture must have been taken by someone else as well. He was looking off to the side and wearing sunglasses, the lenses were light enough that I could still make out his eyes. He had over 100 thousand followers even though I could only see 5 pictures uploaded and the last one was and he was only following 10 people himself. The pictures were great though, the quality was almost unreal and Zai was alone in all of them. A notification popped up letting me know that Zai was now following me and I saw the number on his page change from 10 to 11, for some reason that made me blush. Zai pecked my cheek, making it worse, and then I noticed he was taking a picture of us. "It was time for an update." Zai reasoned, then changed his profile picture to the one of us.

"Wait! Is that really okay?!" Wouldn't most of the people following him be upset about a picture like that?

"Now for the next step," Zai stated while getting up and going to his closet. Did he just completely ignore me? Zai pulled a large camera and tripod from his closet.

"... Were you a p*rn star, before?" I asked. That would explain a lot but Zai got flustered and yelled,

"What the hell, Snowe?!" I guess not...Well, he did say he's only been with 3 people, that'd be a short porn career. Also, his roommates thought he was asexual so that was a dumb assumption, still, it's nice to be the one making him blush for a change. "To answer your question, no. I got this for you." He started setting up the camera, facing me then left the room and returned with a dark red acoustic guitar. "This is also for you." He thrust the guitar towards me, I hugged it and said,

"What?! When did you have time to get all this?!"

"I used the internet." I feel silly for asking. The strings were already tuned perfectly. There was even an engraving of a snowflake on the side. Zai was definitely thinking of me when he got this.

"Thank you."

"Stop thanking me all the time," Zai complained, his face flushed as he stood behind the camera and added. "I didn't just do it for you, I like buying you things, so I did it for me too. Just tell me when you're ready and I'll start recording." I chuckled, I had no idea thanking him was all I needed to do to make him feel shy.

"I'm ready," I announced, he counted down for me and then started the camera and I played the guitar and sang, feeling more amorous than I ever have, singing the song that I wrote with Zai in mind, "Every day with you is too short. I cry because I don't deserve you but I'll never let you go, so don't let me go. I need you more than I need the rain because when you're by my side, there is no pain. You are my light, my dark light, you bring me joy, there's no end in sight. I can talk about anything, and do anything as long as it's with you. Even small talk means the world when It's with you. My painful past is swept away, I'm glad I was able to endure, and I'm glad to find you here now in my future. I cry because I don't deserve you but I'll never let you go, so don't let me go. I can talk about anything, and do anything as long as it's with you. Even small talk means the world when It's with you. Let us go home together, our rest is long overdue." After I stopped singing I looked up and Zai ended the recording. It was hard to read his expression. Part of me doesn't want him to realize what the song was about. I saw him making his way in my direction so I put my guitar aside and when he hugged me I threw my arms and legs around him. Zai pulled himself from my embrace, laying me out on the bed. Then, he held my left hand, while laying kisses along my inner thigh. His eyes met mine and I looked away bashfully,

"Look at me," Zai commanded and I reluctantly did as told. It was hard to keep my eyes open as he pleasured me with his tongue, I writhed around in ecstasy, struggling to not be too loud so our roommates wouldn't be disturbed. I failed. When I felt I couldn't take anymore Zai muffled my moans with a kiss. And his hands took over what his mouth was just doing, "Now tell me... what was that song about?" I can barely think, does he expect me to talk clearly in this situation?!

"Z-zai..." That was all I managed to muster out and Zai tilted his head and smiled.

"Good answer." Things escalated from there, with his hands on my hips and my legs around his waist. We didn't stop until the next evening, that's when I noticed that he had already uploaded the video to my page. I now had 20K followers and over 3 thousand reactions to my song?! I refreshed the page and the view count went up another thousand! There were over 400 comments as well. Zai came back to the room before I could get started reading them all. He brought me a smoothie and kissed my forehead then he held the straw up to my mouth because I was still too weak to sit up. Scrolling on my phone and sucking on this straw is the most I could handle at this moment. "What're you looking so excited for?... Ready to go again?" I choked on my smoothie and he pulled the cup away and patted my back, to stop me from dying.

"I just saw the reaction to my video. I wasn't expecting so much attention this soon." I answered. I'm not against going another round with him but I'm too tuckered out to participate much so, I rather just wait.

"Maybe it helped that I shared it," Zai commented, thoughtfully. I fought past my soreness and sat up to peck his lips.

"I'm sure it did, thank you." I then laid back down and Zai laid next to me. I began reading the comments. Most were short comments like

"Beautiful."

"I got chills" or tagging their friends. But a few were upsetting

"This is the girl from Zaikel's profile!" With a tag of their friends, many of them compared me with people I'd never heard of or seen, degrading me.

"She looks so fake. Zaikel likes her?! She obviously had a lot of work done."

"Am I the only one who hates this?"

"Princess sounds way better."

"She's obviously copying Dite's style."

"I'm not impressed." I flipped my phone over after that, I need a break. I probably should have expected some negativity, but maybe it's best if I don't read the comments.

"What business did you and RJ end up creating?" I asked in order to get my mind on something else. Zai smiled and said,

"We created a system that allows a stable connection without using towers. Calls will sound clear even from the other side of the world... or on a different planet. We sold the technology to multiple companies, including... the one that made your phone." I was shocked by his revelation, I assumed he was involved with the underground when he refused to give me info before. "We also made a few investments into some... promising companies with the money." I then flipped my phone back over and decided to look up Zaikel Walker in the search engine. There was a brief biography, stating how he grew up as an orphan and designed a revolutionary communications system with his brother Raijian Walker. Net worth listed as 50 Billion. There were more pictures of him online than on his page, the results were also littered with news articles about his investments or his being sighted beside other people who must be well-known celebrities. I had no way of knowing who they were. He was even in a cellphone commercial. There's over a decade of information at my fingertips. Then I noticed a Black and White photo of him, his shirt was unbuttoned and he was completely drenched and looking directly into the camera in a way that struck my heart directly. In the corner of the photo was some ad for cologne the photo was 5 years old.

"You modeled?!" I asked in shock. Zai sighed and frowned saying,

"I rather not go into that... It's kind of embarrassing." No wonder he has so many followers on SceneIt! I don't know why I didn't look him up sooner. Maybe I assumed he'd been laying low since he's an Afarion but he hasn't been hiding at all! Is he not scared of this area's Guardian at all? "It looks like you got your strength back," Zai commented I blushed since I completely understood why he made that observation,

"Yeah... I guess you're right." In that same second his lips were on my neck and his hand was in between my thighs.