Pay-Per-Heart by Grace McGinty

I moved out to LA to participate in a Graphic Design scholarship that turned out to be fake. That was just my luck. But there was no way I could return home. Not to the already disappointed faces of my parents, who have never believed that ‘fiddling around on your computer’ was an actual career.
Not back to my friends who thought I was insane for breaking up with my long-term boyfriend to move out here in the first place.
Not back to Georgia, full stop.
So when I saw an advert in the creative pages for a graphic design and video editing job with three social media influencers–room and board included–it seemed too good to be true. It had to be a skeezy porn director trawling for new ‘models’, right? But I was desperate and I was willing to try anything.
Turns out, I was half right.
They were social media influencers alright, but for ClickHeart, a subscription service where… well… they got naked. A lot. Sure, sometimes Everett cooked (naked) and Harrison did pottery (naked) but Darwin literally just stroked his ginormous– Well, you get the point. After their previous video editor uploaded their stuff to The Hub without their permission, the guys had decided it was necessary to have their own live-in designer. But they wanted a guy. Not a girl who was deceptively named Blake.
It might have been an accident that they invited me to their place for an interview, but they were the stepping stone I needed to stay in LA and finally achieve my dreams. I just had to get real cool with a lot of things real fast. Should be fine, right?