SEXT

Notice how they call me gross and yet too promiscuous in the same sentence. Notice how I’m hot if I might bang them, but gross if I won’t, and if I do bang them, I’m easy and loose and a terrible slut anyway. Can’t win either way. You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

I skip to my text thread, and my heart swells a little at the messages from Andy and Celeste. It’s all supportive, asking if I need to talk and if they can bring me over some wine. I squint at the time and sigh. It’s already 9pm—I slept most of the day away. I’ll probably be up all night sleepless now. And anyway, Andy and Celeste will be home by now or off having an adventure somewhere without me.

Don’t worry about me, guys, I’m fine. Just need some alone time to chill with reruns.

Tell Samantha we say hi, Celeste replies immediately. They know me too well. Sex and the City is always my go-to moping show.

But this time, I don’t even feel like I have the energy to turn that on. Instead, I put on some loud music and lie in bed staring at the ceiling, replaying the last few days in my head.

All I can think about is how stupid I’ve been. How blind.

When the knock first sounds at my door, I ignore it, figuring it must be a delivery guy who got lost on the wrong floor. When it persists, I force myself to roll over and lever my body out of bed. Whoever it is has progressed to ringing the doorbell now, over and over.

I shuffle toward the door, rubbing sleep from my eyes. That’s when I hear his voice.

“Clove? Are you okay?”

My stomach churns, and it takes every ounce of self-control I have not to double over and heave from the sudden rush of anger, hurt, worry.

But of course, he doesn’t know that someone showed me his other profile. He doesn’t know that I know exactly who he is now. What kind of a lying, sneaking scumbag he is underneath his kind words and the front he puts on for the world.

“No,” I tell the door, arms crossed over my chest. Against my better judgment, I lean down to steal a peek through the spyhole. Of course, he looks as frustratingly, impossibly handsome as ever, dashing in his pressed uniform, hat off and cradled in one hand, his hair messy from being underneath it all day.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, and the frown on his face is so sincere, his concern so convincing, that it makes me sick to my stomach all over again.

“Just go away, please.” I force myself to speak loud enough to get through the door. It takes effort. My voice is scratchy from sleep, my throat thick with emotion.

“Clove, talk to me. What’s going on? Did something else happen with the photo?”

“Go. Away. Zayne.”

“Please, just tell me what’s wrong, Clove. Whatever it is, we can talk about it, work through it.”

Almost without thinking about it, I realize that I’ve turned on my phone. Pulled up the app and scrolled to the message. I stare at the images of the texts he’s been sending, the dates stamped across them. I glance back and forth from that damning evidence to the handsome, desperate-looking man outside my door. Is he faking this? Is he this good an actor?

My gaze lands on one message in particular. An exchange with a girl whose username is MissMisMatched. Half of me wants to laughingly appreciate the pun, especially given who she’s talking to.

Zayne’s message to her is the one that sticks in my head. The one that stings. The one that makes me realize this isn’t a joke or a fake.

Trouble sleeping? he asks her. That opens the conversation, which quickly turns to flirty talk of what they’re both doing up so late. (Him: I work the graveyard shift some nights, so I’m always up late looking for intriguing distractions). The words resonate, a little too familiar.

I open up my conversation with Zayne. Scroll up to the top, past all of our sexts and flirty back-and-forths, and even the photo image I sent him that started this whole mess.

I scroll all the way up to the top, and I stare at those two words, written in damning black-and-white on the screen.

Trouble sleeping?

It’s how he first started talking to me. The opener he used after we matched, when I was still trying to figure out how to respond to him. And here he is, just a couple of days later, using that same opener on another girl, after he told me he wanted to delete this app altogether.

“Goodbye, Zayne,” I tell the door loudly.

He protests, calls after me to wait. But as I turn and trudge back to my bedroom, I pause just long enough to turn the volume of my speakers up all the way. Music blasts through my rooms, drowning out his knocks and shouts. Eventually, even the distant faint ring of the doorbell fades away, as I presume he finally gives up on me as a lost cause and heads up to bed.