I swallow, then look back down at my sketchbook, grounding myself in the contrast of the charcoal against the page.
“I want to do both,” I confess after a moment. “Design and cam. I don’t want to choose.”
“Then don’t.”
There’s no hesitation in his voice, no flicker of doubt—like the idea of doing both is so obvious it’s never even occurred to him that it might be impossible.
“I mean it,” he adds, calm and certain. “You don’t owe anyone a single version of yourself. You’re allowed to be more than one thing.”
I trace a seam with my fingertip. “People won’t take me seriously.”
Matt exhales slowly, like he’s been expecting that fear.
“People,” he says carefully, “rarely take women seriously when they don’t fit neatly into a box that makes them comfortable.”
I glance at him. He’s not looking at the screen anymore. He’s looking atme.
“That’s not a ‘you’ problem,” he continues. “That’s a ‘them’ problem.”
I huff out a quiet laugh. “You make it sound simple.”
“It isn’t,” he acknowledges, a faint frown tugging at the corners of his mouth. “But itistrue.”
He shifts on the bed, setting the laptop aside, and for a moment the room feels smaller, more focused. Like everything important has narrowed down to this exact space between us.
“You’re not doing this because you don’t have other options,” he says. “You’re doing it because it gives you control, freedom, and because you’re good at it.”
My fingers tighten around my pencil. “What if one day I want to walk into a studio and all they see is—”
“A woman who built something from nothing?” he finishes, one eyebrow lifting. “Who understood branding, audience, demand? Who paid her own way and didn’t wait to be chosen?”
I blink, speechless, as something warm blooms in my chest, curling around my ribs in a way that feels an awful lot like hope.
He shrugs, almost casual. “If I were hiring, that’s what I’d see. And anyway, with the mask and the paywall, the chances of that are incredibly slim.”
“There’s a part of me,” I admit, staring at my hands, at the charcoal ground into the lines of my palms, “that feels braver behind a mask. Like, I get to choose what they see. What they don’t.”
Matt nods once. “That makes sense.”
No judgment, no awkwardness. Just acceptance, steady and sure.
“And the designs?” he adds, nodding toward my sketchbook. “They’re not a fantasy, they’re your future. One doesn’t have to cancel out the other.”
I let myself believe him for a moment. Just long enough for it to feel real.
“You don’t think it’s… wrong?” I ask.
He frowns. “Wrong how?”
“I don’t know,” I groan, frustrated. “Too much. Too complicated. Like I’m asking for trouble.”
“Lil’,” he says quietly, “any world that only lets you be one thing isn’t a world worth shrinking yourself for.”
My throat tightens at the conviction in his words, at how effortlessly they erase everything Jen has ever thrown at me.
It shouldn’t sting this much—seeing the stark difference shouldn’t make me flinch—but it does. Because Matt is looking at me like I’m perfect exactly as I am, while only hours ago, Jen was slicing through me with her words, insisting I shrink to fit her narrow definition of beauty. His gaze feels like sunlight breaking through a storm, and I can’t help but ache at the contrast. How one person can make me feel seen, cherished, untouchable, while the other reminds me how small the world thinks I should be.
“And if anyone gives you shit for it,” he adds, a flicker of something fierce in his eyes, “they answer to me.”
