Even if it all had to end once I found Lorelei.
“Good,” Maisy said excitedly. “Me too. Time to find Jeffrey. He only likes to play after I’ve been with someone else first. It’s kind of his whole thing.”
“Nice,” I said. “I’m glad you two have a symbiotic thing going on.”
“Totally.”
Maisy and I went off in different directions. I wondered if she actually liked playing with Jeffrey, or if it was purely sex work. I’d make sure to ask her next time.
Phone in hand, swallowed by the darkness of a New York City summer night, I wasn’t the same woman now as I’d been when I first entered The Circle.
And I found that exhilarating.
Re-entering my normal life was more jarring than I’d expected. What was casual and lowkey to The Circle was mind-altering, maybe even mind-breaking, for me.
Wes had checked in the next morning with a text, as promised. I’d responded with a lukewarm,all good.Four days had passed since then.
I’d also reached out to Maisy to ask when the party was, as Jayne had never given me an exact date. She said it was in two weeks, and they were still sending out invites, so Ishouldn’t worry.
I wasn’t worried. I wasn’t sure what the hell I was anymore, but worried didn’t describe it.
Though I’d stopped receiving ads from @O, my algorithm had somehow shifted to serve more spicy book content, reels about divine masculine and divine feminine polarity, organ meat supplements, and a slew of kink and spirituality creators.
More bizarre than that was the way my dreams had shifted. Maybe it was because Jayne had told me they would while I was hypnotized and vulnerable. I found myself trapped in mazes, running from people I couldn’t see. And I was having far more sex dreams than I’d ever dreamed before. They were all weird and intense, hard to describe in a waking state, occupying the same liminal dreamscape as The Circle.
I was also writing again, lit by a fire I hardly understood but felt surging through my veins. The words flowed quickly and steadily, and I should’ve been grateful.
Instead, I was horrified. What I was writing was no longer a cozy, small-town, sweet romance—which meant it was worthless to me. Everyone knew it was indie author suicide to write in a completely different genre, a genre diametrically opposed to your pre-established audience’s expectation. My current readers didn’t want this book. In fact, they wouldhatethis book.
If I didn’t scrap what I was writing, and if I dared to publish it, I would be killing any momentum I’d built with my last six books.
I would be completely starting over. More than that, I would be exposing parts of myself I never wanted the world to see.
And yet, akin to my involvement with The Circle, I just couldn’t stop.
From beyond my bedroom door, speakers began to loudly play the songNovacaneby Frank Ocean, I presumed in order to summon me from my cave.
Inara squealed, aggrieved, when I gently removed her from my lap and stood from my desk.
“Yes?” I asked when I greeted Hudson and Delilah in the living room.
“They’re doing an Adam Driver lookalike contest in Washington Square Park at six. You in?”
Delilah grinned, twirling in a flowy white dress that looked like what Rey from the newStar Warsmovies might wear. “I will be scouting for two gentlemen to come home with me and create one beautiful night together we will never forget.”
I rolled my eyes. “Considering we share a wall, I’m guessing that roleplay won’t be something I’d soon forget either.”
“Picture this,” Hudson said with a dramatic flourish of his hands. He lowered the volume of the Frank Ocean song. “Weallbring home at least one Adam Driver.”
“And make them fight to the death,” I finished.
“Nova, this is serious,” Hudson groaned.
“Is it?”
Delilah crossed her arms. “I told you, Hudson, she’s changing. Too cool for us lowly peasants.”
“Soon, she’ll be moving into the dungeon compound and leaving this world behind,” Hudson said with a nod.
