Chapter 5: Proof

Before lunch, the tone of his messages changed.

Not colder. Heavier. The kind of heavy that arrives dressed as a question so you will do the work of saying yes yourself.

Tyler: I need you to prove something to me. I want you to take a Sharpie and write my name on one breast. Write slut on the other. Then video call me and show me the writing. Then show me your pussy and then show me the plug.

I stared at the thread until the screen dimmed, then woke it again.

Beth: That is a large ask for a woman on shift.

Tyler: I want you to tell me how all of it makes you feel. I want to hear it in your voice. I want to see it written on you.

The first reaction was heat. Immediate, traitorous heat, low in my belly, as if my body had voted before the meeting started.

The second reaction was Amber in the kitchen doorway. Maybe take a step back. Breathe for a minute. That is fast. I locked my phone and walked to the supply closet like inventory might save me. It did not. I stood there with my forehead almost against a shelf of saline flushes and ran the inventory that actually mattered.

The replacement earrings. Diamond studs that had shown up to solve a problem I created when I lost Mike’s anniversary pair in Tyler’s house. I was wearing another man’s apology in the holes where Mike’s gift had been.

The plug. In me. All day. Again. Because he asked, and because I had told Amber I liked it, and because I did.

The ankle bracelet. His letter. Never take it off. If Mike asked, it was a cross.

And now he wanted his name on my skin. Slut on the other side, like a caption. Proof, he had called it.

Was it proof, or was it another flag?

I thought about the talk I was supposed to have. The looking. The permission. The way I had faked it in Mike’s bed because my body had started waiting for a sentence that was not Mike’s. I had decided last night I would say it the next time I saw him. That time was tonight. The speech was packed in the overnight bag next to clean underwear, which felt like a metaphor I refused to unpack.

Then I thought about Friday.

Not the bar, the night at my house and the dinner I had made. The way we had moved around my small kitchen like people who had been doing it for years, hip-checks and stolen spoons and the social contract voided because he had eaten the cook. The stupid stepbrother joke that should have killed the mood and instead made us laugh into a kiss that felt like a couple. The way he had asked why I wanted him to stay and had not let me because I want you to be enough. The way I said, “I am yours,” while looking at him. The passion, the fun, the laughter. How being around him made the air feel aimed. How the sex was not just better; it was the kind of better that rearranges what you think a body is for.

I was falling in love with him. I thought it like it had not finished happening yet, as I could still catch it on the stairs and send it back down. Deep down I knew it had already become a fact.

Facts do not care if you use the future tense on them.

If I did this, I was writing the fact on my skin in ink that would take days to fade.

If I did not, I would spend the afternoon calling myself a coward in a bathroom mirror, and he would hear the no as I only want the sex, which was the one thing that was no longer true.

I could do this for him. I could give him the proof. I could let tonight be tonight. And in the morning, after we got up, when the heat was not making the decisions, we would have the talk. Yes, tomorrow morning there would be some resolutions. If the talk went badly, if he heard a boundary and decided I was too much work, then tonight would be the last night I got with him. That thought hurt so cleanly I had to put my hand on the shelf.

So I would allow myself to enjoy tonight. I would take the picture that he wanted, and I would save the argument for daylight.

Beth: Give me ten minutes. If I get caught writing your name on my tits, you will need to pay for the resulting therapy.