When school ended, and I had time to think things through, I stopped thinking about what Harper had done and finally looked at the facts behind it. Of course, my mind went straight to the one person who could have told her about the Hockington—Gloria Walton. They’d gotten close, thanks to me, and I fucking paid for it. For letting a Darling into my life, letting her get in with my friends. That’s what I get for letting anyone close tome.
Still, it’s a dick move on my part not to at least give Lo a chance to defend herself. If she wasn’t the one who told Harper, I cut her off for nothing. Harper could have bribed someone who worked there, seen me leaving with someone and tracked her down, rooted through my stuff or Dad’s when she was at our house and somehow put it together.
It’s better this way, though. Better not to have anyone around me who knows shit about my life.
When Lo found out about room 504, it felt safer to keep her close, to give her a reason not to tell anyone. Even if we never talked about it, never talked about our families the way I did with Harper or any real shit, our friendship was real.
But letting people into my life is a mistake. People blackmail and betray. And if it was her, if she told Harper… Well, Preston can fucking have her.
When my phone rings a minute later, I sigh and pick it up. We can talk once. Just to clear some things up. I’m not going to give her a ride anywhere, like I used to when she didn’t have gas money. My car smells like a swamp from all the times I’ve dropped my muddy boots and rubber coveralls in here this summer. Gloria would ask questions, and I’m not about to answer.
“Hey,” she says. “I figured you’d ghost me again.”
“What’s up, Lo?” I ask, my voice sounding weary.
“Do you use theOnlyPicsapp?”
“No,” I say flatly, bristling at the insinuation. “Why would I?”
“That’s not—I didn’t mean you’d put stuff up.”
“Why?” I ask. “You don’t think people would pay to see my dick?”
“No!” she says quickly. “I mean, they would, if you wanted to put it up. That’s not why I was asking, though.”
“So,youdon’t want to see my dick? That’s not how I remember it.”
I’m being an asshole, but she’s basically calling me a whore. She knows better than to ask if I use an app that’s basically a sex worker platform. I don’t get paid for sex, and I don’t need to sell pictures of my body for money.
TheOnlyPicsapp was supposed to be a companion toOnlyWords, which is a texting app with, as its name implies, only words in the messages. Everyone likesOnlyWords, but it has no photo sharing capabilities. So the same company madeOnlyPicsbut it was basically a knock-off Instagram where you can’t use captions and the hashtags are hidden, only used by the algorithms to know who to show them to.
It probably would have died a quick death if it weren’t for the sex worker industry, who cashed in on three key features—the ability to add a link to profiles, where they added their payment link; the fifteen-second video limit, which let them put up teases to get people hooked; and the private chat feature, which let them send someone the rest of the video for whatever fee they wanted to negotiate or even video chat for a live show.
I don’t use the app because I’m not an amateur porn star, and if I want to watch porn, I can do it for free like everyone else. If I need a live feed, I have a phone full of numbers of chicks who would be happy to put on a show for me, and I can do more than watch and jerk off. I’m not interested in that any more than I am this app.
“Okay, let’s try this again,” Gloria says. “You remember how Harper dropped out of school and disappeared off the face of the earth when you dumped her?”
I stiffen in my seat, yanking the wheel to pull off at the nearest exit at the last second. The car behind me lays on the horn, but I ignore it. The noise is almost drowned by the pounding of blood in my ears. “Yeah, what about it?” I ask Gloria.
“Well, I think I found her.”
“On a porn site?” I ask, hoping like hell someone just uploaded the video of her sucking teacher dick from last year. It fucks with my head to think that one year ago today, I didn’t even know the name Harper Apple. It was another month before I would see her giving head in the parking lot behind the tampon factory.
“Hey, don’t judge me,” Gloria says. “Your brothers have been out of town all summer, and you’ve been ignoring me. I’m having a dry spell.”
I could tell her the twins are back, but if she ran her mouth to Harper, I don’t want her around my house, running her mouth to my brothers. So I point out the obvious. “There are more than three dicks in this town.”
“Once you go Dolce, you never go back,” she says lightly. “And anyway, I only saw it because she sent it to Dawson.”
I’m glad I pulled over at the exit, because I’d probably run someone off the road right now if I were still driving. I grip the steering wheel with one hand and close my eyes.
My voice comes out so normal you’d think I was just a guy who dumped a girl and didn’t give a fuck about what happened to her since. “I’m afraid to ask, but… Does your brother always share porn with you?”
“No, you weirdo,” she says. “Someone DM’d him, and I’ve been obsessing about her all summer, so he showed it to me. He thinks it’s funny as shit.”
“Why are you obsessing about Harper?” I demand. What the fuck. Maybe I should have kept in touch with Lo. She could find out shit, maybe even the truth.
“I don’t know,” she says. “Don’t you think it’s weird that she just… Vanished? I mean, I’m not saying you’re not worth going off the deep end over, or that you couldn’t eviscerate her heart so completely she could never love again. She liked to play it cool, but shereallyloved you, Royal. Like, the kind of love that eats you alive, and you’re never the same again.”