I open our message thread to double-check that the photo went through.
It’s not the VIN photo.
It’s the video from this morning—me on my back on the bedroom floor, that dark silicone toy fully inside me. Hips working. Cock hard and my own hand wrapped around it. The thumbnail is the size of a thumbnail, but it’s not nearly small enough.
It’s on read. It has a fucking read receipt.
Holy shit on a flaming bag of dicks.
Every organ in my body tries to leave at the same time through a different exit.
I delete the message, then I delete it again because I don’t trust the first delete to have worked. It’s gone from my end. That doesn’t mean it’s gone from his.
I’m out the door before my brain catches up with my legs. I tear across the lot in my socks, hot asphalt underfoot, at a pace that’s not running except by the strictest legal definition. Thirty seconds to find out whether my life is over.
George is still at his truck. Carter’s already pulled out with a casual wave I return with a hand doing its best to pretend it belongs to someone fine.
“The photo,” I blurt, aiming for normal human volume and missing by several octaves. “Did it come through?”
George pulls out his phone and frowns. “Yeah. Think I got it here.”
He scrolls down and frowns harder.
I die. I die in real time. In those three endless seconds I move to rural New Zealand, change my name to something untraceable like Kevin, and become a professional sheep herder in a remote valley where no one has cell service.
“Weird,” George says. “Thought I saw something come in but it’s not there now. Send it again?”
Relief hits me so hard I nearly see God.
“Of course.” My voice comes out at the flat calm I use in a trauma bay when I’m telling a family everything’s under control when it’s not. “I thought I actually did. It must be some sort of a phone hiccup. Technology, right?”
Wow. I sound so dumb. I want the asphalt to open up and swallow me whole.
George slides the phone into his back pocket. He doesn’t look suspicious. He looks like he already forgot the last thirty seconds happened.
I open the camera roll with violently shaking hands, triple-check that I am selecting the actual VIN plate this time, andsend it like my life depends on it. I make absolutely sure the file is a shot of the metal plate on my driver’s side doorframe and not, under any circumstances, a video of my own ass.
I hit send.
George’s phone buzzes. He pulls it out, nods. “Got it.”
He climbs into the truck, lifts two fingers off the wheel in that wave he does, and pulls out of the lot. I stand in the parking lot in my socks, waiting for something. Sirens. Lightning. The ground opening up.
Nothing happens.
He didn’t see it. He opened the thread, found nothing, and let it go, because George is George and he doesn’t interrogate things that make no sense to him. I’ve spent years finding this quality faintly irritating. I now consider it the single finest attribute of any human being currently drawing breath on this planet.
I go back inside. I pour a glass of water and drink it standing at the kitchen counter with both hands on the glass until my fingers stop shaking.
It’s not even the video itself. The video is just…me. Very committed and surprisingly flexible, honest with a camera about what I already know about myself.
The problem is George seeing it, knowing what I look like when nobody’s supposed to be watching. My hands are shaking because the thing I’ve spent the last two months being careful about was one accidental click away from becoming the first thing my best friend would have thought about every time he saw me or heard my name.
The secure folder system exists for a reason. Every video goes there immediately after filming. No exceptions. The system isn’t about hiding what I do. It’s about not losing control of who sees it. It’s worked for two months because I’ve followed it for two months.
This morning, I fell fucking asleep instead.
Never again. I’ll move the file before I breathe, blink, or do anything that could be mistaken for a thought. And if I ever fall asleep before moving it again, I deserve whatever comes next, which, today, was nearly the complete detonation of our friendship.
