“Yeah, Tor,” Hayes replies, his gaze lingering on me, “but…what if I’m looking atyounow.”
I laugh softly, trying to keep the mood light, but my voice wavers slightly. “Well, you heard Jonathan this morning, maybe you shouldn’t be looking at me. I’m a handful, remember?”
He grins, his eyes twinkling with mischief. “Good thing I got two hands then.”
A blush creeps up my neck, warming my skin. “I am a bit much, though.”
“No, Tori,” he says, his tone shifting to something softer, more earnest. “You’re not. Don’t listen to Jonathan. From where I’m standing, it looks like you’re the perfect amount of everything.”
His words wrap around me like a hug, and I can’t help but smile. Ugh, I really hate myself for the question I’m about to ask, because I’m thoroughly enjoying the flirty Hayes, but I definitely have to. “Hayes…” I say, planting my hands on my hips, “where’s your girlfriend, what’s-her-face, this weekend?”
“What’s-her-face?” He laughs.
“I’m sorry, is that rude?” I crinkle my nose and laugh along with him. “I genuinely can’t remember her name.”
He shrugs, still grinning. “Me neither,” he jokes. “We broke it off a few months ago.”
“Oh, shit. I’m sorry. I’m so out of the loop, I had no idea. Weren’t you guys serious?”
“Yeah, seriously incompatible at the end.”
“Oh,” I say, feeling a mix of relief and curiosity. “So you’re single?”
Hayes raises an eyebrow, a playful glint in his eyes. “Extremely.”
“So this is the first time we’re actually…” I trail off, unable to say the words “single at the same time.” But I feel like the universe has just handed me a golden ticket—dozens of sex positions dance through my head in a naughty movie montage. I swear, there’s even a soundtrack. The music is sick.
He leans closer, his voice dropping to a whisper. “You know, you don’t have to hold your breath around me, Tori. Feel free to show up with all your feelings.”
I’m not entirely sure what he means, but his reassurance is soothing. It’s comforting to be told I can just be myself, even though, deep down, I wish I could shed the skin of the person I’ve become and slip into someone else’s for a while. Maybe someone who knows how to fold a fitted sheet or remembers to water their plants—or at least someone who doesn’t feel like a ghost in their own life.
“You know,” he says softly, his voice almost a whisper, “I had a crush on you when we were kids. You were so beautiful, so creative, and my God, so very talented.” His eyes soften as they meet mine. “You were going to be a famous artist, create something unhinged and beautiful one day.”
I look away, feeling a flush of embarrassment.My excitement deflates—my internal movie montage is now a compilation of me stumbling over my own feet, devouring entire pizzas alone, and binge-watching cat TikToks in my pajamas. The soundtrack sucks this time—it’s melancholy and off-key. Almost circus-like.
The dreams I had in college seem like a distant memory now. I had lofty ambitions but lacked the backbone to see them through. My friends all did though, they all made their dreams come true while I struggled to keep up. Still struggle. The thought alone makes my chest tighten, the air thinning around my neck like a noose.
We were made differently. They came from loving families, families with means. Families that paid their tuition, filled their closets with candy-colored handbags, and even gifted them brand-new cars with big red bows for their twenty-first birthdays.
Marissa’s was a BMW.
Me? I had none of that. No one to guide me, no one to teach me how to navigate this messed-up world.Raised in a cramped studio apartment by a runaway sixteen-year-old mom who got knocked up during her sophomore year of high school. My dad was just some guy she met at a New Year’s Eve party—a college party she and her best friend snuck into. Never even got his name. So, yeah, he has no idea I exist.
And it wasn’t like my mom was a drug addict or physically abusive—she was worse. Indifferent. She ignored me, dodged every ounce of responsibility like it was a social disease. Her life was a blur of clubs, all-night parties, and a rotating cast of strange men in and out of our tiny apartment. That’s how she made her money too. By the end of my first year in college, she’d downgraded from that studio apartment to a prison cell. I only hear from her when she needs money, and since I have none, that’s not very often.
My friends tried to understand what I was going through, but how could they? They went home during school breaks, while I waitressed and slept on whatever couch I could find. Their lives were so different from mine, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t bridge the gap between their world and mine.
Then there was the affair. Charles Knight—the head of the art department, a man with prominence in the industry. I was so naive, caught up in the thrill of his attention and the promise of a future that seemed within my grasp. My first real boyfriend, my first sexual partner. I was so in love with him it blinded me. I didn’t know about his wife or his children—secrets he kept buried until everything came crashing down. Right on top of me.
The affair shattered my world in ways I would have never anticipated. What I thought would be the start of a promising career turned into a nightmare. One moment, I had a serious relationship and my own showing at the biggest art gallery in the city; the next, it was all gone. Everything, gone in an instant.
Cancel culture is real.
I remember the day it all came to light as if it were yesterday. His wife, an influential art dealer with massive global connections, found out. The details of how remain a blur, but oh, the aftermath is seared into my fucking memory. On the opening night of my gallery show she publicly shamed me, exposing every detail of our affair. And I mean EVERY detail. Large prints of intimate pictures of us—taken in moments I’d thought were private—were blown up to monstrous sizes, towering over my work. Our text messages—steamy and sometimes embarrassingly vulnerable—were plastered alongside them, each message blown up and highlighted, and oh God, the videos. The videos I never knew were being taken of me became a grotesque display of my personal humiliation.
I was completely caught off guard, not knowing who she was to him until it was too late. It was so humiliating the way shelaughed at me, telling me I would never be anything more than a pretty trophy to him, a plaything for him, a fuck toy. Trash. Her words cut deeper than any knife, stripping away whatever dignity I had left. And Charles stood there and said nothing.
The story made the newspapers, my God, they wrote about it for weeks. My name became a punchline, my reputation a joke. And Charles? Not a scratch on him. He destroyed my life and walked away, unscathed, like what happened to me had nothing to do with the horrible choiceshemade. He never even apologized.
