Only You by Jerry Cole (the top 100 crime novels of all time TXT) 📕

“Oh....” Bradley thought for a moment, looking a tad uncomfortable. “... To be honest, I doubt it – unless you like crappy soap dramas and things like that? I do a lot of guest staring in shows like Home and Away... and Neighbors... and that kind of thing – oh, and a lot of plays too.”

“Fuck. Awesome.” Sherman didn’t even try and hide how impressed he was. He shouldn’t have been surprised though. Who wouldn’t pay good money to see this guy in the flesh?

“What about you?” Bradley then quickly asked.

“Right... me.” This was where it got annoying. Sherman was here under the guise of being an ‘every-man.’ He had a made-up backstory to tell people when they asked, but he didn’t like it. “I work in travel,” he spoke softly.

“Oh. Nice! Doing what?”

Sherman shrugged. “Just regular bookings and things. Nothing too exciting – here, we’re up,” he indicated to the line, now moving, and hurried to purchase the tickets.

Even if their physical differences were taken out of the equation, Bradley was just so much better than Sherman, at least this version anyhow. Over the course of the day, Sherman was able to get more out of Bradley on his acting and it turned out that the kid was actually pretty darn successful, like much more than he let on. He’d been in shows, movies, ads and plays. The kid was a star!

So why was he hanging out with Sherman?

The two men wandered together through the Van Gough museum for three hours. Sherman had been sure this wouldn’t be Bradley’s scene. Not only was he a lot younger than Sherman, a solid seven years at the least, but he just didn’t seem to be the kind of guy who would be into this sort of thing. And at first, that was case.

He was so damn keen on getting photos of himself in front of different artworks that he hardly even paid the art any attention. Rather, he’d notice the colors of the piece, noting how good they would look in the background of a photo with him, and then he’d ask Sherman to get a pic with him standing in it. And then, once the photo was taken, he’d spend the next five minutes on his phone editing it, uploading it and then checking to see who had looked at the upload. It was a little draining, to be honest.

But then the day wore on and he began to change. Sherman couldn’t pin down exactly when it happened, but it was sometime in the second hour that he started listening to the audio recording for each piece of art, that he began to look interested in the art on its own merit and not a companion to his own photos, that he began to ask Sherman questions and even draw his attention to certain pieces that he liked.

“Fuck,” Bradley had gasped to himself when they came across a piece labelled The Potato Eaters. It was a huge piece depicting a small group of paupers eating potatoes around the kitchen table. It was dark and depressing and had Bradley staring wide eyed.

“What?” Sherman followed up, coming in closer, dropping his voice to match the mood of the piece. “You like it?”

“I think so?” Bradley narrowed his eyes and stared at it, really at the painting, into its soul. “It’s so.... depressing – but in a good way.”

“How do you mean?” Sherman pressed.

“It’s so real... and deep... and I dunno but it makes me sad.”

“Why?” Sherman pressed further. He could see Bradley working to figure out why this piece had touched him so. It was fascinating really and spoke to a side of Bradley that even he hadn’t known he possessed.

“Because... they look like real people. Like, these people might have actually been real and lived like this. They probably had dreams and shit that they never got to follow.” He curled his nose in disgust, but then his face dropped and he looked down at his feet. “It’s sad, is all.”

In that moment, Sherman was overtaken with an urge to reach out and take Bradley’s hand. There was clearly more going on here than just a love of one piece of art, something deeply personal within Bradley. But he didn’t, only because he thought it would be a little inappropriate.

By the time the tour of the museum had ended, Sherman was still at a loss to figure out how he’d gotten so lucky. And not just in the fact that he had managed to pass three whole hours with Bradley, without embarrassing himself or boring the pants off (or on) him. But that Bradley seemed to enjoy it!

The two were just so different. Bradley was eager, loud, easily entertained and to be honest, a little dim. But he was also sweet and kind and obviously had a caring heart, even if he tried to hide it. Sherman was sarcastic, a little too smart for his own good, and where he thought of himself as a nice guy, he also knew he was judgmental, arrogant and a little conceited. He and Bradley shouldn’t have gotten along the way they were. Yet that seemed to be the case.

When the tour ended, and the two men wandered outside and into the open air, Bradley said pretty much exactly what Sherman had been expecting and although his heart dropped, he had spent the minutes leading up to it in mental preparation so it wouldn’t hurt so bad.

“Well, I guess I better get going,” Bradley said with a sigh. “I can only do this whole art thing for so long, you know?”

“Yeah, totally,” Sherman agreed like he was perfectly fine with it. “It gets a little stuffy.”

“Ha, I know right,” Bradley laughed. “But I also have some stuff I need to do is all – plus you said