I hated that I hadn’t stopped thinking about him.
Which was exactly why I needed to go to this masquerade. Not to network. Not to flirt with tragic heirs or please my parents.
But to forget.
That was the plan, anyway.
I headed upstairs, peeled out of my pajamas, and stepped into the closest thing I had to casual armor—a white linen sundress with delicate eyelet cutouts. Not too stiff, not too relaxed. Perfect for Charleston lighting and camera angles. I added a pair of oversized sunglasses, a straw bag I hadn’t actually bought but had tagged in three separate posts, and a set of bangles that clinked like intention.
By eleven, my face was done, my hair was smoothed into soft waves, and I was sitting cross-legged on the edge of my childhood bed, holding my phone like it was a weapon. I scanned the grid. Liked a few tagged photos. Replied to a story or two with a heart. Checked my DMs. Cleared the ones I didn’t want to be tempted by.
Then I hit record.
“Back in Charleston,” I said, letting my voice sound lighter than I felt. “And yes, the humidity is trying to kill me.”
I smiled, turned the phone just enough to catch the breeze ruffling the drapes, then panned down to my bare legs and the croissant I hadn’t touched on the silver tray. I added a voiceover clip later about southern mornings.
By noon, I was walking through the wrought-iron doors of The Four Columns Club, a private space in Mount Pleasant that smelled like money and air conditioning. The staff knew me—not personally, not in any way that mattered—but they knew the last name, and they knew the camera I carried meant someone, somewhere, might be watching.
I found my usual spot near the terrace fountain, ordered a mocktail in a coupe glass, and got to work.
Outfit transitions first: from sunglasses on to off, hat in hand to hair down, a slow spin in front of the trellised roses I knew would pop against the white of my dress. I filmed a reel pretending to sip champagne and added music that madeeverything feel softer, dreamier, more intentional than it really was.
“Charleston is showing off again,” I captioned one post, overlaying it with a looped clip of me laughing at nothing.
The likes came quickly. Comments trickled in. A few heart-eye emojis, two men I’d blocked last spring trying to find their way back in, and a brand account asking what lipstick I was wearing.
I answered none of them.
I was working, but I wasn’t connected.
Everything I did felt rehearsed. Easy. Like muscle memory. And maybe that was the problem—when everything becomes performance, it’s hard to tell when something’s real.
The only thing that had felt remotely real lately was a smirk in the sun and a truck that smelled like motor oil and trouble.
Charlie.
I hadn’t posted about him. Hadn’t even typed his name again after last night’s search turned up nothing. But he was still there, humming beneath my skin, stubborn and uninvited.
I told myself I didn’t care. That it was just a weird moment. An out-of-body experience. A heat-induced lapse in judgment.
But every time I scrolled past another filtered brunch or fake-candid laugh, I saw his eyes instead. Unbothered. Deep. Like he knew exactly who he was and didn’t give a damn if anyone else did.
That kind of certainty was dangerous. It stuck to me in ways I didn’t like.
By the time I left the club, I’d posted three reels, scheduled a fourth, and locked in a brand collab that would pay for the boutique hotel I was pretending to stay in. On paper, it had been a productive afternoon.
Later, I pulled into the drive at Daddy’s with the windows down and the AC blasting, the smell of salted lemon lingering onmy wrist from a hand cream sample I wasn’t planning to post about but probably would anyway. The inbox on my phone was a wasteland of influencer noise—collab requests, pitch decks, vaguely desperate emails from startup brands asking me to “consider a gifting opportunity.”
I scrolled through them as Quentin opened the front door like the world’s most dignified ghost.
“Anything urgent, Miss?”
“Just another brand asking me to shill oat milk for store credit.”
I walked past him and straight up the staircase, thumbs still working. By the time I made it to my bedroom, I’d already declined two offers—one from a luxury candle company that wanted a three-post commitment in exchange for “exposure,” and another from a sustainable shoe line whose founder used Comic Sans in his signature.
I had standards. And I’d rather go barefoot than tank my feed’s aesthetic.
