"The familiarity." He puts the jacket down. Which means we're staying. "The way he used your name. Like he knows you. Like he has the right to—"
"He's been a subscriber for four months."
"I know what four months of the private tier looks like," he says, flat.
Then stops.
Right. Yes. He does.
"Then you know," I say, "that the private tier creates a feeling of proximity. That's part of what the product is. I know how it works. I built it to work that way."
"I know you did." Something moves in his jaw. "And I know what it does to the men who pay for it. I know what they start to believe about you. I've read the messages, Billie, I've seen what they write to you — not just this one, all of them — and I—" He stops. Picks the jacket up again. "I don't love that I'm only one of many who gets to—"
He stops.
Full stop. Mid-sentence.
The room goes quiet in a way that is different from the quiet it was in before.
He clears his throat.
"I don't like the way he talks to you," he says.
The argument moves forward. I let it move forward. Something just happened in that sentence, something betweenI don't loveand the hard stop, and I let it go past because we arein the middle of something else now and I can't hold both at once and the thing we're in the middle of is bigger.
"You don't like it," I say.
"No."
"Because it bothers you. That he talks to me like that."
"It doesn't bother me." His voice is harder now, defensive. "It makes me want to find him and explain in person why he's going to stop."
I put my laptop on the coffee table. I stand up.
"Declan, you watched my private tier content."
"That's—"
"Every week. Both tiers." I'm not making a joke. I'm not softening this. The version of me that deflects with humor is not the version standing here right now. "You tipped two hundred dollars a session and you watched me in my bedroom and you built whatever you built in your head about what I was to you. You did that."
"I know what I did."
"So you knowexactlywhat those men think when they message me like that." I take a step toward him. My voice is steady and I am shaking inside. "Because you were thinking it."
"It's not the same."
"Tell me how."
"Because I knew who you were—"
"You didnot." My voice comes out louder than I planned and I don't pull it back. "You were a name on a screen who'd decided I was interesting. You didn't know it was me until the dress. You spent months watching my private content and feeling whatever you felt before you had any right to call it different."
The muscle in his jaw moves. His hands are at his sides and they're fists. I've never seen his hands in fists before. Not once in twenty-one years.
"So what you're telling me," I say, and my voice is shaking now and I don't care, "is that when you watched that content, it was complicated and real and it led somewhere. But when they watch it—"
"Yes." Rough. Almost a snap. "Yes, that's what I'm telling you. Because itisdifferent. Because I'm standing in your apartment and they're not. Because I know the sound you make when you're half asleep.I didn't get that from the private tier, I got it from being here, from being—"
