Page 134 of Honeyfires

"Shut up." She kissed me softly. "You don't get to decide what I deserve. I do. And I've decided I deserve you."

We sat there in the parking lot for a long time, holding each other, trying to find solid ground in the middle of everything that was falling apart.

The online harassment started that night.

We were on the couch, attempting to watch a movie, attempting to pretend this was a normal evening for a normal couple doing normal things. But Vera's phone kept buzzing with notifications. Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, all of them lighting up with comments and messages and tags.

At first, she tried to ignore it. But the buzzing was relentless, constant, impossible to tune out. Finally, she picked it up, and I watched her face change as she scrolled, watched the color drain from her cheeks, watched her eyes fill with tears she was trying desperately to hold back.

"Let me see," I said, reaching for the phone.

"No. Diana told you not to, Petra." She pulled it away, but I was faster, taking it from her hands despite her protest.

The comments were worse than I'd imagined. So much worse.

Traitor cunt defending a criminal

She's just with her for the adrenaline junkie lesbian sex

Wonder if the rogue firefighter is as rough in bed as she is on the job

Someone should burn HER house down, see how she likes it

The comments went on and on, getting increasingly explicit, increasingly violent, increasingly focused on our relationship in ways that made me want to throw the phone across the room. People had found old photos from Vera's college days, were posting them with crude captions. Had found her LinkedIn profile, were making comments about her qualifications, her education, whether she'd gotten her job through merit or "diversity quotas."

They were dissecting her, these strangers who'd never met her, who knew nothing about her except that she was dating me. They were reducing her to a character in their narrative, stripping away her humanity and replacing it with whatever story they wanted to tell.

I looked up from the phone to find Vera crying silently, tears streaming down her face while she stared at the frozen movie on the TV.

"Vera, baby.”

"It's fine." Her voice was thick. "They're just trolls. It doesn’t matter."

“It matters when they make you cry." I set the phone down, pulled her into my arms. "Jesus, Vera. Some of those comments were... they were threatening you."

"I know."

"We should report them. Or call the police. Or—"

"And say what? That people on the internet are mean?" She laughed bitterly. "Police can't do anything unless there's a credible threat. And most of this is just vague enough to not qualify."

"So we're supposed to just sit here and take it? Let them say whatever they want?"

"What else can we do?" She pulled back, wiping at her eyes. "Block them? They'll just make new accounts. Report them? The platform will remove maybe one in ten comments, and the rest will stay up. Fight back? That just gives them more ammunition."

She was right, and I hated it. Hated that there was no way to protect her from this, no way to shield her from the cruelty of strangers who thought they were entitled to judge our lives, our choices, our love.

"This is because of me," I said quietly. "They're coming after you because of me."

"They're coming after me because they're bullies and cowards who hide behind anonymous accounts." She leaned back into my arms. "This isn't your fault, Petra. You didn't make these people cruel. You didn't tell them to harass me. You didn't create this situation."

"But I did. My decision—"

"Saved lives. And yes, it had consequences. But the consequences are not your fault. The way people are choosing to respond, the way they're using this as an excuse to be terrible is on them. Not you."

I wanted to believe her. But the guilt was crushing, suffocating, made worse by the sight of her tears and the knowledge that she was suffering because of her association with me.

We spent the rest of the night deleting comments, blocking accounts, reporting the worst of the harassment. It was futile because for every account we blocked, two more appeared, but we did it anyway. The alternative was doing nothing, and doing nothing felt like giving up.