I tip before she finishes the sentence.
Then she looks at the camera.
Not at the chat. Not at the notification corner. At the camera. At the specific point behind the lens where she knows I am. Because she has known where I am for weeks and has been performing for that exact point this entire time.
Every Tuesday. Every stream. Every tip. Every message I typed and deleted. She knew. She was watching me watch her. I was the only one who didn't know what I was doing.
I know you think so. I've known for a while, actually.
The stream ends.
Ninety seconds. I count them. Something I do when I need the thinking to stop and the deciding to start.
I get my keys.
I don't have a reason to be driving to her apartment. I know this. I build one anyway, the way I build cover stories when I want something badly enough. I'll say it's about the platform. Security. Something professional. The words assemble themselves on the drive over and none of them hold up.
Her building. Converted Victorian, quiet street. Three floors, her apartment on the second. I've been here a few time. Being in the security business, I noted the layout without deciding to. Which buzzer. Which stairwell. The window on the second floor, left side.
Her light is on.
I press the buzzer.
She doesn't ask who it is. The door opens. Immediate, no hesitation. She's been waiting. She detonated the situation and then she waited because she knew I'd come.
She was right.
She's still in the dress.
I come up the stairs and she's in the doorway and the blue is right there. Deeper in the hall light than it was in the garden. I have seen it on a screen and from thirty feet away and I am looking at it from four feet away and the dress is not the problem.
She is the problem.
Small but not delicate. She takes up more space than her size suggests. Always has. Her hair down. Her chin up. The frecklesacross her nose that her stream filter smooths away and that I've been noticing at Sunday dinners for years.
Billie. I have wanted her since before I had the name for it and I have the name now, the name and the wanting both, and she is right there.
I stop on the landing.
She's leaning in the doorframe. Arms loosely crossed. The expression of a woman who has been ahead of this long enough that she can afford to wait. Twenty-one years old. Looking at me like she's considerably older than that.
"Declan," she says.
"Billie." Even. "I wanted to talk about—"
"Don't," she says.
I stop.
She tilts her head.
"You watched the stream," she says.
She doesn't press. She has all the leverage and she knows it and she's choosing to be quiet about it.
Her throat above the dress. The line of her collarbone I have been careful not to look at for years. I'm looking at it now because I have run out of reasons not to. Her mouth. Slightly parted.
I want my hands on her. Not abstractly. Not the way I've wanted the woman on the screen for seven months, constructed out of voice and silhouette and imagination. I want my hands on Billie. Specifically. I want to get both hands in her hair and tilt her head back and find out what her mouth tastes like. I want to feel the sound she makes against my lips. I want to put my mouth on her throat where I can see her pulse and I want to feel it jump.
