You work is amazing. We’ve featured you on our account today.
Who do we contact to license your photography?
We’re writing an article about boudoir photography. Can we mention you?
I move down to the next message, but the preview makes me stop.
Do us all a favor and
I shouldn’t open it. I’m about to have a potentially stressful dinner of make-believe stories about how great Rich and I are doing. I don’t need anything to upset me, especially without Finn here to comfort me.
It’s a troll trying to get a reaction, Finn would say, and he’d be right. It’s stupid. I lock my phone.
Laughter comes from the next room. My dad will come get me any minute.
Whether I read the message or not, I’ll think about it all during dinner. Wondering if it’s bad. Or legitimate. Or justified. I can’t expect everyone to like what I write. Even the greats have critics.
I type in my passcode and pull up Finn’s inbox again.
Do us all a favor and stop posting this CRAP, you slut.
My throat closes. Crap. Slut. I don’t recognize the sender. But why would I? I read it again. I shouldn’t have opened it. The backs of my eyes begin to ache. Obviously, she doesn’t get what we’re doing. She doesn’t understand my poetry, not like the thousands of other people who follow our account. Why would I care what she thinks?
I hit reply to tell her that in so many words, to suggest she find someone a little less complex to follow. She’s too simple for us. My fingers shake so much that I type gibberish. I backspace to start over, but I just stare at the screen.
I hear Finn’s voice. Leave it. She’s not worth it. You’re the expert.
Some people will think my work is crap. It’s inevitable. And why shouldn’t they? I have no real experience. No degree in literature or journalism. I’m not a model. I can’t really take offense to somebody pointing out the truth: in many ways, I’m a fraud.
But what happens if Finn figures that out? If he realizes my journals are nothing more than the desperate words of a teenage girl in a woman’s body?
“Halston?” Rich asks from the doorway.
I swallow down the urge to cry and turn. “What?”
“George sent me to get you.” He puts his hands in his trouser pockets. His chocolate-colored hair is a little longer than normal, curling around his ears. “Are you okay?” he asks.
I put my phone in my pocket. “I’m fine.”
“Look . . .” Rich walks farther into the room, out of hearing distance of our parents. “For what it’s worth, I didn’t really want to do this, either.”
“Really? It seems to me like you’d enjoy the fact that I’m obligated to play along for a whole weekend.”
“Not really. It actually feels pretty shitty pretending everything’s great when I know we might be over soon.”
I blink away. I don’t want to make him feel that way, but I also can’t have any ambiguity between us. Finn’s made it clear he wouldn’t appreciate that. “It is over, Rich. I won’t change my mind.”
“It’s hard to believe you’re so certain when we were fine just a month ago.”
“We weren’t fine. I mean, we were, but we’ve never been a good match. My dad just needed someone to pawn me off on. With your upstanding family and career track, you were the guy for the job.”
“I still am. Why is it bad that I’m a good boyfriend to you?”
Rich looks handsome in the yellow light. Dean Martin croons about a marshmallow world. Rich is attractive and won’t have trouble finding a girl who’s gaga for him. “I’m not looking for a handler. I want a partner.”
“I can be that. Give me another chance. If not for me, then for yourself.”
“What does that even mean?”
He toes nothing on the ground. Just when I think he won’t respond, he says, “Look at you. I can see right now, and sometimes at work, that you’re sad. You were late yesterday for the third time this month.”
Finn and I had post-breakfast sex in the shower. “So?”
“So I’m worried.”
“Why?”
“Obviously, because I still love you. I’m not the one who ended this.” He sighs. “He’s not good for you.”
My dad? Well, that’s a plot twist I didn’t see coming. Rich has always been my dad’s champion, taking his side over mine nine times out of ten. Maybe some distance has made him see if he wants me, he has to support me. At least more than a ninth of the time. “We have our issues, but I wouldn’t say he’s bad for me.”
“No? If you ask me, that guy’s trouble.”
That guy?
“It concerns me whether or not you’re my girlfriend. I think I have that right since we were together two years.”
Rich sounds almost jealous—of my dad? There are a lot of words to describe George Fox, but trouble isn’t one of them. If he’s not referring to my dad, then who?
“How long have you been seeing him?” Rich asks.
Finn. Our private little world cracks open. It’s too soon for Rich to know about Finn, for my dad to come in and make changes. I curl my hands into fists and take a few steps toward Rich, my pumps solid on the wood floor. “You’ve been spying on me?”
His eyebrows meet in the middle of his forehead. “No. If anything, it’s the other way around.”
“Excuse me?”
“He’s the one who hunted me down. He brought me into this.”
“Finn?” I ask. “How? When?”
“At the office Wednesday.” Rich’s expression eases. “He didn’t tell you?”
What the . . .? Finn was at my office on Wednesday. But so was I. We were together the entire twenty minutes he was there . . . except when Finn went to the bathroom. “What’d he say to you?”
“He nearly threatened me, Halston.”
“Over what?”
“To stay away. He said he was your boyfriend.”
I told Finn I’d handle Rich. That was my way of saying butt out. This is the kind of thing my dad would do, talking on my behalf, trying to protect me from things that could or might happen instead of letting me handle it on my own. Finn abused my trust, at my office of all places, when he’s the one who’s encouraged me to take back control over my life. I try to muster the anger I should feel, but I’m just as annoyed with Rich, and he’s here. “He is my boyfriend,” I say.
“How can that be?” Rich asks. “We just barely split up.”
This explains the roses and Finn’s surprise visit to my office. He has a possessive streak. I don’t know what to think about the fact that I’m not angry with him. I’ve proven the last few weeks—I’m not all that unhappy about being possessed by him. “When you know, you know.”
“How can you know anything? You’re not yourself right now.”
“Maybe I am.” I touch my chest. “I need to figure out who I am without my meds. You obviously can’t respect that, but you don’t have to.”
“It’s not about respect. I don’t want you to do something you’ll regret, to make a . . .”
“Mistake?” I finish.
Rich closes his mouth. He looks surprised by what he just said, but I’m not.
“You don’t have to bite your tongue around me anymore,” I say. “You can blame me. My dad does.”
His face falls. “Jesus, Halston. You act like you and I are on different sides. What you can’t seem to understand is that I care about you. That’s why I want you to be well.”
“You want me to be easy. Calm. That’s what you care about.”
“Is that so bad? Being stable? Not drinking too much wine or beating yourself up over what happened ten years ago or making bad decisions.”
Bad decisions. Rich would think this life I’m building with Finn is bad. Posing half-nude for a man I met earlier less than a month ago and putting the pictures online—it sounds bad, but it doesn’t feel that way. “You have no idea what I’m like without them. I don’t know what I’m like wit
hout them. I’ve never had the chance to find out.”
“Yes you did, and to be blunt, Halston, it was a shit-show. Do I have to remind you how we nearly lost a big account because of that dinner?”
I cross my arms. I’m ready to be done with this conversation. “No.”
“You can be reckless, which is why someone has to look out for you. Someone who knows your past.” He runs a hand over his face. “Why do you think your dad has done all this? It’s for your mom.”
“I don’t want to talk about this.”
“Maybe it bothers you that we didn’t meet some other way. Or that I’m not some bad boy who wants to help you over the edge. But I’m good for you, and I can give you a good life. That’s what your dad wants, if you not himself or you, then for her . . .”