Molly:Why “Oh”?Is everything okay?
I debate how much I should tell her, going back and forth in my mind and my conscience, conscious of the fact I literally told Duke last night I wasn’t going to tell anyone we had sex. However…if I don’t tell my best friend the truth, she’s going to wonder why I’m being so weird, and she’ll think something is wrong, which it is.
I feel gross and sad and…and…if I don’t talk about it I might very well explode.
If he’d woken me up and given me a heads-up that he was leaving—instead of sneaking off before I woke up, I would be fine.
I’d be okay. Mostly.
Me:I was just surprised he left; he never said anything. I woke up and his stuff was gone.
Molly:That’s weird, but I mean, sometimes that’s how these things work. News breaks, and they have to get ahead of it.
Me:What do you mean “news breaks and they have to get ahead of it”?
Molly:Shit—I thought you knew
Me:KNEW WHAT
Molly:There is a picture floating around the internet that he’s tagged in—you’re in it, but of course, no one knows it’s you.
Me:WHAT DO YOU MEAN I’M IN IT? HOW can that BE?!
Molly:It’s from yesterday—at his brothers’ house.
Me:His brothers’ house?
That makes no sense, none at all. We didn’t take any photos of each other yesterday. His brothers never took photos, not even selfies. They were too busy working. They were too—
A photo appears in our messages.
It’s a photo not a single one of us took. It wasn’t physically possible given that it was from across the street, zoomed in, mostly grainy but still obviously Duke Colter with his arm around me.
He’d come down into the front yard to grab a side table after I’d finished hosing it off and drying it, and had put his arm around my shoulders to ask how I was holding up. If I was tired, if I was hungry. Given my shoulders a squeeze.
It was friendly but had still caused me to look up at him.
Oh Jesus, the look on my face in that damn photograph…
Adoring.
On top of that—HE GAVE ME MORE MONEY.
What the actual fuck.
Molly:No one knows it’s you.
Me:Yeah but the LOOK ON MY FACE, Molly…
I want to hide.
Die from embarrassment.
Me:Has he seen this?
Molly:Um, yeah…the whole world has seen this. Which is why he’s in Dallas a few days early.
Me:Why would he have to fly to Dallas early because of a leaked photograph??