"When's the last time you did anything without thinking about how it would look online? When's the last time you ate ameal without photographing it first? You don't have friends, you have engagement metrics. You don't have a life, you have a feed."
Each sentence lands like a fist. The worst part is the calm. He's not raging. He's reciting. Like he's rehearsed this. Like he's been building this list for months, adding to it every time I asked him to hold the camera or retake a photo or wait for better light.
"Three years," I whisper. "Three years and you couldn't just talk to me?"
"I tried. You were too busy posting about how perfect we were to notice." He pulls a T-shirt over his head. "I'm done pretending, Piper. We're done."
Melissa hasn't moved from the bed. She's clutching the sheet to her chest, eyes darting between Chad and me like she's calculating which side to land on. My best friend since sophomore year. The one who held my hair back at parties and proofread my captions and told me Chad was "the one" over bottomless mimosas three months ago. She knew. She sat across from me at brunch, watched me plan our anniversary trip, and she already knew.
"We're done, Piper." Chad's voice drops to that measured tone he uses for sponsored content—warm, reasonable, designed to make the audience agree with him. "I've been trying to find the right time, but there's never a right time with you because you're always on. You're too much. You've always been too much."
Too much.
The words brand themselves somewhere behind my ribs.
"I need to—" My voice doesn't work. I clear my throat. Try again. "I need to go."
"Piper, wait," Melissa says, and the audacity of her reaching one hand toward me while clutching the sheet with the other almost makes me laugh.
Almost.
I back out of the room. Down the hallway. Past the ice machine where Chad and I took a stupid selfie two hours ago, both of us smiling. Only one of us knew it was a lie.
The phone screen catches the fluorescent hall light, and my eyes drop to it.
The red dot. The recording indicator. The viewer count climbing past fifty thousand.
No. No, no, no.
The livestream never stopped. Every word—Chad's, Melissa's, mine—all of it broadcast to a number that's still rising. My face stares back at me in the preview window, mascara smudged, mouth open, looking exactly like a woman whose life just detonated on camera.
My hands shake so hard it takes three tries to hit the button. The stream ends.
Fifty-one thousand viewers.
The sunset is gone. The pool deck glows with underwater lights now, turquoise and artificial, and a couple walks past holding matching cocktails. The woman laughs at something the man says, and the sound scrapes against my skin like sandpaper.
Three years. Three years of planning content together, of building a shared audience, of waking up next to someone and believing—actually believing—that we were solid. That the curated version of us was just the glossy frame around something real.
But what if it wasn't? What if Chad's right and the frame was all there ever was?
The thought makes me want to throw up.
Exhausting. Too much. Can't react like a normal person. His words loop through my head on repeat, each pass cutting a little deeper. The worst part isn't that he said them. The worst part is the tiny, vicious voice in the back of my brain whispering: Whatif everyone thinks that? What if the 487,000 people who follow you only stick around because your trainwreck is entertaining?
My phone buzzes in my hand. Devon. My manager. I decline the call and turn the screen face-down on my thigh.
I sit there and wait to feel something besides hollow. The breeze off the ocean smells like salt and sunscreen. Somewhere inside the resort, music plays. A normal evening for everyone who isn't me.
Maybe Chad's right about one thing. Maybe I don't know who I am when the camera's off.
Maybe it's time to find out.
I open a browser and type: most remote cabin rentals in the US. The results load slowly on resort WiFi, and I scroll past Maine, past Montana, past every charming little town that probably has a Starbucks and decent cell coverage.
Then I see it. Ashwood Falls, Alaska. Population: small enough that nobody's heard of it. WiFi: barely functional. Nearest major city: far enough away that no one will find me.
The listing shows a one-bedroom cabin with a woodburning stove and a view of the mountains. No ring light. No content studio. No Chad.
