Picture Us (Turn it Up Book 3) Read online

  Picture Us

  A Turn it Up Spin-Off Novel

  Natalie Parker

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Epilogue

  Bonus scene.

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Natalie Parker

  Playlist

  Picture Us

  (A Turn it Up Spin-Off Novel)

  By

  Natalie Parker

  Picture Us

  By Natalie Parker

  Book Three in the “Turn it Up” Series

  Copyright 2020 by Natalie Parker

  Cover Design by: Lori Jackson

  Photo by: Eric McKinney/6:12 Photography

  Formatting By: MadHat Books

  Editor: Katy Nielsen, Once Upon a Proofread on Facebook

  [email protected]

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places,

  incidents, and organizations, are a product of the author’s imagination

  or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales,

  or persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  All Rights Reserved. In accordance with U.S. Copyright

  Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing

  or distribution of any part of this book without the permission

  of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft

  of the author’s intellectual property and hard work.

  Thank you for your support of the author's rights.

  To L&M, my two little everythings.

  Prologue

  My ass is numb from sitting on the cold tile of my bathroom floor with my back against the tub, staring at the two offensive pink lines displayed in the window of the white wand in my hand. After squinting my eyes to bring them in and out of focus, I blow out an exasperated breath through my lips and chuck it towards the waste basket in the corner, where it bounces of the edge with a ping and lands on the tile beside it. I pick up another, shaking my head at the blue plus sign it displays. With a huff, I chuck that one too, missing again. Ping! I grab another, the fancy schmancy high-tech one that actually gives me a digital reading of the word “Pregnant” in the window. Fuck off. Chuck-ping!

  “Yes” the next one simply says. Chuck-ping! I continue this fun little game three more times until I’m all out of shots and my bathroom floor looks like the family-planning section of the pharmacy threw up in here. Okay, so I’m a lousy shot. But apparently, I’m an excellent catcher.

  One night. I’ve been so busy with my photography business and teaching dance, keeping the lights on and all that other adulting bullshit that I hadn’t been laid in months, and this is what I get for taking one night to get out and let loose. Pun completely intended. I’m so sorry, universe!

  After scooping up all the positive tests and dropping them in the waste can, I head out to my living room and scoop my cell phone up off the coffee table and sit back with my feet propped, running a hand through my hair while I scroll through the contacts, stopping on Mayzie. My thumb hovers shakily over the call symbol for a moment before reality catches up to me.

  The first person I tell should be him. It’s the noble thing to do. If it were the other way around, I wouldn’t want him blabbing it to his friends before me. Not that he’d be the pregnant one… whatever. You know what I mean. But I need to confide in someone. I need support. I need to hear that everything is going to be okay.

  Okay, I reason. The sooner I tell him, the sooner I can tell my best friend, have a seriously warranted freak out session, and move forward.

  There’s just one problem here. I don’t have his number, which is my own fault. He offered to exchange them, but I insisted that we didn’t need to.

  Because there was no need for two people that wanted the opposite in futures to get tangled up with each other.

  But I know where to find him.

  1

  One month earlier

  “Look, I heard this was a good gym and it has lower fees, so I switched. Why are you being such an asshole about it?” the indignant, disgruntled brunette before me chastises.

  “It’s just a little weird, Tara,” I try to reason with her as I set my water bottle down on the treadmill where I was just about to warm up. “We’ve been out three times, and all of a sudden you need to change gyms, even though you’d already told me you were only four months in to a one year contract with your other one? And the one you switch to just happens to be mine?” I highly doubt whatever cancellation fee she had to pay was worth the presumably lower rates my gym has; if she even cancelled it.

  Tara and I have gone out three times, and like I do with all women I go out with, I let her know the score. I don’t do commitments, exclusivity, or get too serious. We had a great time the first two encounters, both of which ended in some pretty damn great sex. The third time however, I could feel things winding down. I have fun, but I don’t play games. I let her know my thoughts, even though I think she already sensed it. I can’t help but think that maybe this is an attempt to regain some ground on her part. And while I try to keep things calm and polite, it annoys the fuck out of me.

  This gym is my sacred place; a place free of stress, drama, and awkward moments like this one. This is where I come to decompress, not get wound up and tense.

  “It wasn’t working out there.” She tries to maintain her stance.

  I lean against the treadmill trying to take on a casual, non-defensive stance.

  “Tara,” I try to address her quietly and kindly. “I said the other night it seemed like time we both get back to our own thing. This,” I sweep my hand around the gym, “does not exactly help us do that.”

  I see her face fall ever so slightly as she looks uncomfortably off to the side.

  “The time we spent together was seriously great, but it wasn’t going to be anything more than temporary. You showing up here makes me feel like you’re trying to push it into something it’s not going to be. Am I wrong?” I ask, raising my eyebrows, and moving my head around to her face, trying to get her to look me in the eye.

  She crosses her arms and sighs.

  “You just seemed like you were really into me, like you were really happy with what we had going. I thought that if we just…” she holds her hands out, trailing off.

  “I was totally happy in the moment, and I’m a live in the moment kind of guy. I’m sorry if you got the wrong message, but I tried my damndest to make sure you didn’t.” I truly believe this is one of those cases where a girl tries to see something that isn’t there. She stands in front of me quietly, completely deflated now. I take this opportunity to close out my arguments.

  “You can join this gym, but it’s not going keep anything going between us,” I say a
s gently as possible, while hoping to God she doesn’t call my bluff. I can’t have her working out here, and I do not want to change gyms. “I’m sorry, sweetie,” I tack onto the end.

  Tara refuses to meet my eyes. She stands there a moment, letting my words sink in before letting out a heavy, defeated sigh, which is almost more like a huff, and without a word, turns and retreats. She grabs her coat and bag off a hook by the door before pushing her way outside.

  I let out a huge sigh of relief and bend my head to each side, trying to relieve the tension that was mounting at the back of my neck. I grab my earbuds from where they were hanging loose on my shoulders and put them in my ears. I’m going to have to extend today’s workout a bit to blow off some extra steam after that stressful encounter.

  It’s all fucking George Clooney’s fault. He had to finally find the one, fall in love and have babies and shit. When I’m starting to get to know a woman, I establish an understanding early on that we’re just having fun and not to expect anything permanent. Most of the time, things go smoothly. But once in a while, one comes along that says she’s on board with the whole casual thing but is really going along with it in the hopes of changing my mind. And why? Because it happened to fucking Clooney. If it can happen to George Clooney, it can happen to Tyler Hayes. That’s what just happened here. A hopeful clinger that thought she could be my game changer. Fuck you, Clooney, for ruining it for the rest of us bachelors.

  After finding my hard rock playlist, I get on the treadmill and set the speed to a slow jog, getting my muscles warm before I do some weight training.

  As I go through my routine, I try not to ruminate on that close call. This is my safe space and it was almost taken away.

  I used to spend a lot more time here, partly because I had nothing better to do, and partly to escape the reality that I had nothing better to do. Nothing going on in my life at the time but bartending and chasing women.

  That was a long time ago, when I couldn’t afford a place of my own and would crash with my parents, my co-worker Jack, or whatever willing female would have me. Things have shifted a lot in my life since then, for the better. The motivation to get out of the warzone that was my parents’ house made me work extra hard at The Cedar, a bar in midtown, taking a lot of extra shifts and training new hires. It got me out of the house and helped me put more money aside to find my own place.

  Eventually, all the busting-my-ass paid off and the owner took notice. He asked if I’d be interested in being a shift leader. It was a slight pay increase so I was all for it, and little did I know I had the leadership chops. This small success motivated me to go for more. I took a few business classes and kept working my ass off until I made my way up to general manager. This not only left me less time to spend being a gym rat, but I also felt less of a need now that I had a purpose in life, and a sense of accomplishment. I don’t need a woman or the promise of a steady relationship to motivate me.

  But at the end of the day, I still love a good workout. I love coming here, blowing off steam, staying in shape, staying strong, and keeping myself at my best... which is why I make it a point to keep my social festivities away from it. I don’t pick up girls at the gym, nor do I bring them here with me, and the same goes for where I work. While a bar that you help run may seem like a prime place to pick up women, I don’t run my game there, nor do I take them there.

  Life is good, right where it is. I love my job, my car, my freedom, and the variety of occasional female company I keep compliments it all just right to keep me perfectly happy.

  When my workout is finished, I hit the showers, change, and head outside where my baby is waiting for me. By ‘baby’ I mean my beautifully restored black ’79 Trans Am. I toss my bag in the back seat, pull out my sunglasses and enjoy the beautiful sound of the 6.6 Liter V8 engine roar when I fire it up. I pull the TA out onto the road and head in the direction of The Cedar, the day’s rocky start already a distant memory.

  Click, click! Click, click!

  The sound of the shutter snapping on my beloved Canon is music to my ears as I depress its bulbous chrome button, and feel the delightful jerk of the camera in my hands.

  “There it is! We got it!” I say to the newly engaged couple as they relax from the loving pose I’d had them standing in.

  “You got the ring, right?” the brunette woman asks, her eyebrows raised as she holds up her left hand.

  For hell’s sake.

  “I sure did. It will be very prominent in most of the shots. I can even do a cool edit for you where I focus in on the ring and blur you guys in the background.”

  “Thanks,” she replies with a giddy grin, bouncing on her toes, making her slightly more relatable.

  “No problem,” I assure her. “Just give me a week and I’ll email you an album for you to select your favorites, okay?” I try to wrap up our session with an overly cheery smile. They seem satisfied as I direct them to the side gate of my backyard where I have set-ups for outdoor shoots, like a rose trellis and a wooden swing. I wave one last time as they secure the gate behind them.

  As I’m packing up my equipment, my phone buzzes in my back pocket, startling me and tickling my right ass cheek.

  “Ah!” I flinch, and hurriedly grab it from my pocket. “Hello?”

  “Hey, we just did the new contemporary piece, where were you?” My friend Emma skips the pleasantries. She’s a friend from the dance studio, Dance It Out, where my best friend Mayzie and I are members.

  “I was doing an engagement shoot. How’d it go?”

  “Okay. Actually, it was pretty slow and boring. I didn’t like the music. Anyway, we’re going out tonight. Come with us.”

  Ugghh. I have so much shit to do. I have two, actually three shoots now, that I have to do edits on and get to my clients. Not to mention my laundry seems to be breeding in my hamper.

  “I can’t, I’ve got a lot of jobs to finish up. One is due on Saturday.”

  “That gives you two days! No problem. Come on! You haven’t been in the studio since Mayzie left, and neither of you have been out with us in weeks. Take a freaking break and get your ass out with us!” There’s a slight whine to her voice now and she sounds like a pre-teen. She’s right though; I haven’t gone out in ages. Mayzie and I had fun the other night before she left to join her husband and his band on tour, but we kept that low key at her house. Plus, with her being a serious constant in my life, I feel a little bored and complacent when she’s gone. It’d be fun to go out, unwind and maybe flirt a little. The idea of blowing off some steam is sounding better and better as I consider it.

  “Annie…?” Emma prods after a few seconds of silence while I mull over how I could make going out work with really buckling down on my to-do list tomorrow.

  “Okay, what the hell. Where?”

  “We’re going to The Cedar.”

  “The Cedar? Really?” Speaking of my bestie, that’s where her husband used to not only work as a bartender, but also where his band used to play frequently before they got their big break. And since that was our main reason for going there, we haven’t been back since. It’s been three years.

  “Yeah. We found out that they just totally redid the place. Bree says it’s awesome. They’ve got a lot of great new signature cocktails, they do sampler flights of the local brews now, and they have a Moscow Mule menu with a bunch of different flavors I want to look at.”

  “Wow, sounds amazing. Okay, I’m intrigued. Let’s check it out.”

  “Yes!” she exclaims victoriously and I just know she’s doing a fist pump. “We’re meeting at eight thirty. Need a ride?”

  “Yeah, that’d be great.” I don’t, really. But if Emma picks me up, I can’t flake out and send a text once they’ve all congregated. And the meeting time is great; I can get a little bit of work done before I have to get ready.

  “See you then,” she sings the last word before hanging up.

  I quickly finish packing up and head inside, excited to pick out an outfit for ton
ight.

  2

  “Be sure to push the Pink Diva Margaritas with the ladies tonight,” I instruct Forrest, my lead bartender that has just come on shift and will be here the rest of the night to close down. “Our last order got mixed up and landed us with an excess of Chambord and it’s a pain in the ass to return, so we’re just going to use it to our advantage and sell the shit out of it.”

  “Consider it done,” he responds with a confident smile. “I’ve got some new lines I could try out,” his grin turns mischievous and he sticks his tongue between his teeth.

  I chuckle, shaking my head. “Just keep it appropriate, alright?” He gives me a knowing smile and a nod and I continue with my briefing while I start unbuttoning the cuffs on my sleeves and roll them half-way up my forearms. “And make sure each tap hose is changed out when you guys close tonight. We just got a shipment of new ones. If you could get them out and make sure they go through a steam clean sometime during your shift and chuck the current ones, that’d be great. And you’re down a dishwasher, so make sure the servers rack their own glasses and maybe tip Frank out real nice.”

  “Got it. Seriously, don’t worry. We’ll be fine.” His smile doesn’t waver as he backs away in the direction of the bar where the crowd is starting to thicken and the other bartenders are starting to scramble.