Milo
Iangle my phone three inches to the left, suck in my stomach, and immediately hate myself for doing it.
"Okay," I mutter to my screen. "Just...look normal. Look like a person who has sex. You've had sex. You can look like someone who has sex."
The timer flashes. I check the photo.
I look like I'm trying to hold in a sneeze.
Delete. Reset. Try again. I tug my sweater up over my head—not all the way off, just bunched around my shoulders so the hem catches mid-chest and shows a strip of skin above my boxers. I saw this on someone's profile once, and it looked effortlessly hot. On me, it looks like I'm being swallowed by my own laundry. But the angle isn't terrible, and if I tilt my chin down a little—
The timer clicks.
I pull up the photo, my thumb hovering over the delete button. It's not...bad. I mean, it's not good. My curls are doing that thing where they look like I lost a fight with a dryer sheet, and there's a visible pile of rejected outfits behind me on the bed, which reallyscreamsthis was my fortieth attempt. But the sweater thing actually kind of works. The strip of skin between the bunched-up fabric and my waistband is—okay, it's a lot. It's my stomach, which is soft and round and definitely not what anyone scrolling through KnotMe at midnight is looking for.
Except.
The light hits it in a way that looks kind of...okay? And my hip bone is doing something. I don't know what my hip bone is doing exactly, but it's doing more than it usually does, and with the shadow from the fabric falling across my—
I'm spiraling about my own hip bone. This is what my life has become.
I sit on the edge of the mattress and stare at the photo for another thirty seconds, trying to see it the way a stranger would. Some faceless alpha scrolling through profiles at two in the morning, bored, horny, looking for—what? Something soft? Something easy? I look easy in this photo. Not in a hot way. In athis omega will text you back immediately and bring you baked goodsway.
Which is accurate. But not the vibe I'm going for.
It's the same problem it's always been. In high school, Luke Bennet told me I was "really sweet, like, the sweetest person" two days before he asked out an omega who never once brought him a homemade lunch. I was the one you kept around for comfort—reliable, warm, always there—but not the one you actually chose. Not the one who made someone's brain short-circuit with want.
I should delete it. I should delete the whole app. I should go back to my regularly scheduled programming of lying in bed thinking about someone I can't have while doing absolutely nothing about it, because that's been working out great for me so far.
I don't even know how long it's been. Long enough that watching Callum Hayes walk through Ava's apartment and pretending my pulse doesn't spike every single time. Two years of sitting across from him at dinner and losing track of conversations because he rolled his sleeves up and I forgot how to form words. And then, two days ago, Ava FaceTime'd me to confirm dinner plans for Friday and Callum walked through the background. He didn't even stop—just walked through, fresh off a shift, his hair grown out and messy on top in a way that made my mouth go dry, his T-shirt tight across his chest, drinking water straight from a bottle. I had to mute myself. I literally pressed mute on my best friend so she wouldn't hear me breathing like a pervert because her brother drank water in a T-shirt.
I downloaded KnotMe that night. Not because Jude's been preaching about it for months. Not because of the Swipe Squad's ongoing campaign to get everyone on the app. Because I am twenty-one years old and I'm tired of going to bed aching for a man who probably thinks of me as his little sister's sweet, harmless friend. I need to either find someone else's hands to think about or lose my mind.
So. The photo stays. Stomach and all.
I save it to my camera roll and pull up KnotMe's profile builder. I'm halfway through deciding whether "looking for casual fun" sounds too desperate or not desperate enough when my bedroom door flies open and hits the wall with a bang.
"—don't CARE if you slept with it for two months, it was MY weighted blanket and you can't just annex—" Jude stops mid-sentence, one hand on the doorframe, the other pointing accusingly behind him into the hallway. His eyes land on me—shirtless, phone in hand, caught in what is very clearly a selfie situation—and his face lights up with unholy glee.
"Oh my god." He's already grinning. "Oh my god, Milo Reyes, are you taking nudes?"
"No!" I grab my sweater off the bed and hold it against my chest like a shield, which does absolutely nothing. "I'm not—it's not nudes, I was just—"
"Move." Benji appears behind Jude, shoving past him into my room. He takes one look at me clutching knitwear to my bare chest and his eyebrows climb toward his hairline. "Please tell me that's not your sexy face."
"I didn't have a sexy face, I was taking a—"
"He's making a KnotMe profile!" Jude announces like he's reporting breaking news, already crossing the room and reaching for my phone. "Let me see, let me see, let me—"
"Jude, don't—"
He snatches it out of my hand with practiced speed. I make a grab for it and miss, because Jude has the reflexes of someone who regularly steals Rhys's phone to post thirst traps without permission. He holds my phone above his head—which, at five-foot-seven, I cannot reach—and scrolls through my camera roll with his other hand.
"Oh, Milo." His voice goes soft and genuine for exactly one second. "This one's really good."
"Which one?" Benji is already at his shoulder, peering at the screen.
"The sweater one. Look at this."
