Work in Progress Wednesday:Worth a Thousand Words

An Unedited Excerpt from: Worth A Thousand Words 

*coming December 20th*

Adrien propped his cell phone precariously on his shoulder. Eyeing the enormous black cat sprawled in the center of his supposed infallible date-night spread he considered pulling his carefully messy hair right out by the roots. “Crap. Michael Clarke Duncan, you get off my table this minute. Right. This. Minute.”

Muted chuckles from the vicinity of his bare shoulder snapped Adrien’s attention away from the big black cat and back to his conversation with his friend, Benji. Michael Clarke Duncan sneered at Adrien through his well groomed whiskers. His heavy tail shed at least a pound of tiny black hairs on the white table cloth with every thud amidst the cobalt and white dishes. “Stop laughing, Benji. This is serious. I wasn’t even awake yet. Well, duh, of course I’d been dreaming about Devon. My sheets still smell like Drakkar. Yep, I was moaning, sighing, yelling at the cat, and making suggestive arm motions. Nope, he didn’t miss a thing. Sam got every bit of the whole thing on video… again. Oh. Oh. Viral, huh? Well, at least we know if Sam flunks out of nursing school he has a future in indie film.”

Hoots and snorts blasted from the tiny speaker at the top of his phone. Adrien listened for a moment, one hand on his hip, and the other making general shooing motions at the ginormous tom-cat lording it over his crappy dining room table. “Listen, Benji, I have to finish getting dressed and figure out how to—oh, ha fucking ha. No, I won’t wonder-twin with you for Halloween. Dick. That is so last viral video of me. I’ll call you—no—better yet, you call me later when you get this hilarity out of your system. I did not say that—Sam did. I just held my fist up to him. Right, and then he said he couldn’t believe I just tried to Wonder-Twin him, and that it wasn’t even cool when we were kids.”

The laughter turned to gasping and louder snorts. Adrien stamped his foot. “Oh, forget you. When you get a grip, I have a legitimate level two Glitter Alert going on over here—I can so call one for reasons of extreme embarrassment and possible de-boyfriending by the best thing that ever happened to me. Grrrrr. Call me back.”

Adrien hung up the phone. There really wasn’t a way to hang up hard enough to get that satisfying “I hung up on you, so there!” feeling with a smartphone. Clutching the phone tightly in his hand, he took two steps to the side and very carefully placed the rotten phone on the bookshelf at the edge of the living room. Then Adrien took two steps large steps back toward the center of the open space, threw his hands in the air and danced around in a screaming little naked circle. Sam, the spawn of Satan, of course walked in while Adrien was mid-scream. The bratty bastard even had his shiny red  iPad at the ready.

“Hah. Gold, bro, solid gold. That’ll keep me in cherry cokes for the rest of the semester without having to hit mom and pops up for a loan. You really do love me, don’t you?” Sam’s iPad gleamed mockingly at Adrien, the shiny red back and staring video camera lens seeming to snicker at him.

“Oh god, Sam, for Christ’s sake, I’m naked here.” Adrien’s voice rose up from his normal light tenor by an entire octave. Michael Clarke Duncan yowled, lifted himself ponderously to his feet and with a flick of his tail, picked his way regally to the edge of the table closest to Sam.

  “Bro, your fortuitous nakedness is exactly why this particular video clip is so valuable.” Sam turned his bright hazel eyes from intense scrutiny of his iPad’s screen to wink roguishly at Adrien. Stomping his foot, Adrien whirled around, storming into his bedroom with as much dignity as he could muster with his generous rear end jiggling every step of the way. His brother’s husky, taunting laughter chased him.