So who is this from, and why are they talking about him?
I click it open and my stomach sinks even farther.
There’s no text in the message. No explanation for what I’m looking at. But it doesn’t take me long to piece it together.
The message contains a series of screenshots. They’re all of one profile, a profile I don’t recognize. MrPlayaZ. But they’re not just public screenshots. It includes private messages, messages to and from that MrPlayaZ account.
And the “playa’s” account itself? It’s all photos I recognize. The same photos that Zayne used in his AtYourService account.
Heart in my throat, I scroll through the other screenshots. There are texts, messages between MrPlayaZ and other women.
Hey baby, love ur pics. I’d like to get that top off you ;)
Worse ones, ones that go back and forth between other girls. My stomach rolls over, and I feel nauseous, looking at the evidence right in front of my eyes.
MrPlayaZ: Last night was amazing, wanna grab a drink again this weekend?
CandyCane: I have to wait that long to feel that sexy tongue of yours again?
Or another.
MrPlayaZ: I can make you come in ways you can’t even imagine, babe.
XtraSaucy: You’re welcome to try anytime you think you can handle this ;)
And more. And more. I scroll through them all, even the longer conversations, full on sexts with women, describing how hard they make him, asking them to finger themselves. Details of how they touch themselves thinking about him. Hell, even one where he talks about jerking off in the back room at work—the same mail room where he touched himself thinking about me this weekend.
That message hits home because it’s dated.
Yesterday.
I want to vomit. The whole room feels like it’s spinning around me.
Frantic, I check Zayne’s regular profile. But the evidence is scrawled across it too. Something I should have noticed, something I was so stupid to miss. The date that any new account is created is listed on the user’s homepage,, mostly so the site can spam you with ads about “giving new members” a chance, hoping you’ll be more likely to match with someone even if they have a lame pickup line.
Right there at the bottom of the AtYourService account is the date it was created.
Friday. The same day he fought off that creeper. The same night we matched and first began to text.
Then to sext, using the same horribly cheesy lines Zayne used to pick up girls on his other profile. His real profile, the one he never told me about.
He was talking about deleting the app the other night. About getting off this site, because he didn’t need it now that he’d found me. But I’d bet anything he was just going to delete this brand-new account, made only to lure me in. He’d keep right on sexting all these other women with his regular account.
I feel nauseous.
I can’t think straight, can’t even formulate a response to this anonymous sender.
I can guess who it is, of course. It has to be the ex that Zayne told me about. The crazy stalker psycho ex-girlfriend trying to ruin his life. But is she?
What if she was just a normal girl trying to save me from getting played? What if this is her trying to spare someone else the same heartache she felt?
Everything hurts.
I slam my laptop shut and storm across my apartment, tears stinging my eyes. My bedroom is the worst place to go because it still smells like us, like him, like sex. I tear the sheets off the bed and crumple them into a tight ball, stuff them into the bottom of my laundry bin. Tomorrow I’ll wash the scent away, wash those sheets until I can’t smell Zayne on them, until I won’t be reminded of him commenting on the bright red color, or grinning as I tied him up using the silky fabric.
Fuck. Maybe I’ll have to throw them away at this rate.
How could I be so stupid?
That’s the refrain echoing in my mind all the while. How could I fall for a playboy like him? How could I think that what we had might be special, might be the something I’ve been waiting for all this time?
Tears sting at my eyes and I head into the shower. Because if the bed still smells like sex, then oh, god, you’d better not catch a whiff of me. I smell like him all over—and part of me loved that, loved the way he left his mark on me, and anytime I caught the scent it reminded me of last night and this weekend all over again. It reminds me of the way he drove his cock deep into me, fucked me hard, senseless, until I came screaming…
Fuck him. Fuck men, all of them.
I turned on the shower, scalding hot, and stepped right into the stream. Buried my face in the water so that when I finally let go and began to cry, my hot tears would blend into the stream rushing over my face.