Page 11 of Sexting My Ex’s Dad

“I won’t.”

Rachel points a stern finger at me.

“You will.”

“Fine.”

They linger another minute before finally heading out, and the apartment falls quiet again once the door clicks shut behind them. I collapse onto the couch without bothering to change clothes.

The ceiling spins slightly above me.

Somewhere in the distance a siren wails through the city streets, and the sound blends into the dull ache building behind my eyes.

I think briefly about the photo I sent. Then I decide that’s a problem for tomorrow’s Athena. Tonight’s Athena is going to sleep. The last thing I remember is the faint trill of my phone vibrating somewhere near my hand. Then everything fades.

Morning arrives like an act of violence. Light punches through the apartment windows and lands directly on my face, and my head feels like someone replaced my brain with a bag of angry bees.

“Fantastic,” I croak, and make a face at the sour undertone on my tongue.

I squint toward the coffee table where my phone is lying beside the empty pizza box I apparently ordered sometime after my friends left.

That seems on brand.

I reach for the phone slowly, because sudden movements feel dangerous.

The screen lights up immediately, and a message notification sits at the top. My stomach twists.

Right.

The photo.

The text.

The extremely mature decision to drunk-message my cheating ex at midnight.

“This is going to be humiliating,” I mutter.

I open the message thread. The reply is short.

Wrong number, Athena. Are you okay? —Nathan.

My stomach drops straight through the floor. The photo is still there, and so is the caption.

Look what you’re missing out on.

And the name at the top of the conversation does not say Nathan Clarke Jr.

It says Nathan Clarke.

My heart slams against my ribs.

That number isn’t my ex’s at all. It’s his father’s—Dr. Nathan Clarke, chief of trauma surgery, my boss, and the dangerously handsome silver-fox fantasy I’ve spent a very long time refusing to examine too closely, mostly because every possible version of that thought ends somewhere between inappropriate and career-ending.

2

NATHAN SR

THE PREVIOUS MORNING