"Sorry about that Ken." She said, finally able to raise her eyes up to his face. But when she locked gazes with him, her expression suddenly lost focus.
Things were silent for a while before she finally managed to pull herself together. "Damn it boss, why are you looking so damn hot today?" She asked, biting her bottom lip.
"Excuse me?" Ken quickly fished for his pants and put them on, not enjoying being ogled by these two women. Just as his mood had improved a little, his privacy was being encroached on.
Ken placed his button up shirt on and was about to do up the buttons before he was interrupted.
"Wait! I've got a good idea." Tara said, prising open the door and grabbing him by the arm. This time, Ken resisted. While he had been okay going into the girls dorm room before, that was only when he was fully dressed.
Tara felt the resistance and realized she wouldn't be able to move the stubborn mule.
"Alright, sorry I got carried away. The way you look right now is perfect for a photo shoot I was thinking of." She exclaimed, looking him up and down.
Hearing the word's photo shoot, Ken instantly felt like declining. However, this woman was his social media manager, and a damn good one at that. She was also professional… Or at least she usually was.
Seeing the way in which she ogled him made Ken rather uncomfortable.
"How long will it take? I've got things to do today."
"Just a few minutes, I promise."
Ken reluctantly agreed, allowing her to drag him into her room. He squeezed past Kate who had not made any attempt to move out of his way.
He was led to the makeshift studio where he was directed to do some poses sitting on a black stool. With his long pants and unbuttoned shirt, his abs were on full display.
The frigidness of the room was rather uncomfortable, giving him goosebumps and causing his nipples to be on full display. Thankfully, things were over in a few minutes.
"Alright, I'm going now." Ken said, once more squeezing past Kate who couldn't keep her eyes off him.
Once he left, Kate let out a sigh and fell back onto the bed, fanning her face. "Damn it Tara, he's so damn hot. I don't know how you put up with it."
However, upon not hearing her friend respond, she looked up only to see Tara drooling as she looked at the photo's she'd snapped on the camera.
"H—Hey, don't hog them to yourself!"
It was only now that Tara realized she had lost her professionalism. She cleared her throat and plugged in her camera to the laptop to upload the new snapshots. "I'm posting them to social media, you can look on there." She stated matter-of-factly.
Spending around 10 minutes touching up the photo, she logged into Ken's social's and posted the image. Tara pulled out a notebook and flipped the pages which had noted Ken's follower count and post engagement.
"How many followers do we have today~" She muttered in a sing-song voice, ignoring her ravenous roommate who had already pulled up Ken's instagram page to like the photo.
"Holy Cannoli!" She exclaimed in shock.
"What is it?" Kate almost dropped her phone on her face in fright.
"100k followers? What the hell happened?" She muttered, refreshing the page to make sure that she wasn't seeing things.
"Is that a lot?" Kate asked. She hadn't been keeping up with Ken's numbers like Tara.
"We only had 50k when I checked yesterday… How the hell did it increase so much overnight?" Even Tara who had a wealth of experience with social media and digital marketing had no idea how such a thing could have happened.
A brief look through all the new followers was enough to determine that these weren't bot accounts, which meant that something must have happened to grant Ken some additional fame.
However, when she searched for Ken's name, there wasn't anything new that had come up.
"Weird…"
Meanwhile in Ken's room, he had already finished getting changed and was sitting on his bed. Steve was across the room seated at the desk, looking at him with concern.
"You gonna tell me about what happened earlier?" He asked seriously.
Ken let out a sigh. He was truly stumped as to what he could tell Steve, especially since nothing could justify his odd actions earlier.
"Don't tell me you're nervous about the frat party?" Steve probed, his expression showing a little remorse. Since he'd essentially accepted on Ken's behalf and not given him a choice.
Ken froze, his mind working quickly. Out of all the explanations that he could give, the one Steve came up with on his own would be the most believable. So while he didn't want to lie to his friend, he was left with no choice.
He rubbed the back of his neck in embarrassment, "S—Sorry man, I had a bit of an anxiety attack." Ken said eventually.
"Ahh, I see. Look man, we don't have to go if you're feeling that worried about it." Steve replied with a hint of concern.
Ken's expression softened. He could feel his friend's sincerity, however his facial expression did not match his words. The guy was practically begging him with puppy dog eyes to still go to the party.
Ken held his laugh and smiled, "I'll be fine man, I'm sure we'll have fun."
"Oh thank god…" Steve let out a sigh of relief before an impish grin crept onto his features. He seemed quite happy that Ken had not canceled their invite.
Even Steve was not dense enough to recognize he was just the plus one invite to the frat party. Chances are if he arrived without Ken, he'd be refused entry.
"Well, we've still got plenty of training and studying left to do this week. If you slack off even a little, I won't go to the party." Ken added with a grin.
"Yessir!"