It was a Tuesday afternoon, the kind of gray, drizzly day that usually calls for a slow cooker roast and a glass of Merlot starting at 4:30. Instead, I was white-knuckling the steering wheel of my Honda CR-V, navigating through a part of the city I usually only saw on the local news when they were reporting a warehouse fire or a drug bust.

“Are you sure this is the right address, sweetie?” I asked, eyeing a row of corrugated metal buildings. A stray dog was sniffing at a pile of wet cardboard near a dumpster. “This doesn’t look like an agency.”

Beside me, my daughter Pinky popped a bubble of chewing gum. She didn’t look up from her phone. Her thumbs were flying across the screen, typing out captions or DMs or whatever it was she did for six hours a day.

“It’s a content house, Mom,” she said, her voice dripping with that specific brand of teenage condescension that made me feel ninety years old. “They convert lofts into studios. It’s the aesthetic. You want the grit for the contrast. You wouldn’t understand.”

“I understand grit,” I muttered, dodging a pothole that threatened to swallow my front axle. “I just don’t understand why an ‘influencer collective’ needs to be next to a scrap metal yard.”

I glanced over at her. At eighteen, Pinky, her nickname since she was a baby due to her rosy complexion, though her legal name was Patricia, was everything I used to be and everything I was currently mourning. She was glowing with youth. But her outfit made my “Mom brain” short-circuit.

She was wearing denim shorts that were, frankly, aspirational. They were basically a denim belt. The frayed hem barely covered the curve of her buttocks when she sat still; every time she shifted in the passenger seat, I saw the smooth, pale skin of her upper thigh and the dangerous curve of her ass cheek. On top, she wore a white crop top that ended just below her breasts, with no bra, because apparently, nipples were an accessory now.

“Pull over there,” she pointed a manicured nail toward a brick building with blacked-out windows. There was no signage. Just a heavy steel door and a security camera blinking red.

“Pinky, are you sure about this?” I asked, putting the car in park but leaving the engine running. “I really should come in with you. Just to vet them.”

She rolled her eyes, unbuckling her seatbelt. “Mom, you promised. You said you’d support my career. This is a huge collab. The photographer has like, fifty thousand followers. Just be chill, okay? Don’t be ... you.”

“I am perfectly chill,” I lied.

“You’re wearing loafers, Mom.”

She slammed the door before I could defend my footwear. I watched her strut toward the steel door, her hips swaying with a confidence I hadn’t possessed since 1998. She tapped a code into the keypad. The buzzer sounded, loud and harsh, and she pulled the heavy door open.

I turned off the ignition. I looked down at my outfit. Black slacks from Ann Taylor, sensible loafers, and a teal blouse that hid my arms. I looked like a substitute teacher.

“Chill,” I whispered to the empty car. “Just be chill.”

I grabbed my purse and followed my daughter.

The interior of the building was a shock to the system. The outside was pure urban decay, but the lobby was sleek, modern, and aggressively air-conditioned. The floors were polished concrete, the walls were painted a stark, gallery white, and trip-hop music thumped softly from invisible speakers. It smelled distinctively of sweat and expensive hair product.

Pinky was already at the reception desk, talking to a young man with a man-bun who looked like he hadn’t slept in a week.

But I wasn’t looking at Pinky. I was looking at the two women sitting on the low-slung black leather couch against the wall.

It was another mother and daughter pair. I breathed a sigh of relief. Okay, so it was legitimate. Other parents were here. I wasn’t just dropping my child off at a kidnapper’s den.

I walked over, putting on my best PTA smile. “Hi there,” I said. “Waiting for the audition?”

The woman looked up. She was black, stunning, and terrifyingly put-together.

If I was “substitute teacher,” she was “Real Housewives of Atlanta.” She looked to be about my age, maybe a year or two younger, but she was wearing her forty-something years very differently. She wore a fuchsia dress that clung to her body like a second skin. It was tight, aggressively tight, highlighting an hourglass figure that was clearly maintained with serious dedication. Her cleavage was prevalent, her skin glowed with some kind of shimmering lotion, and her heels were at least four inches high.

Sitting next to her was her daughter, who looked like a carbon copy, just smaller and firmer. The girl was scrolling on an iPad, looking bored.

“Audition, cast, cattle call,” the woman said, her voice rich and amused. She looked me up and down, taking in the slacks and the blouse. Her eyes lingered on my midsection for a split second longer than was polite. “I’m Tasha. This is Kyrie.”

“I’m Sarah,” I said, sitting on the edge of the couch, keeping a respectable distance. “And that’s Pinky over there. I have to admit, I was a little nervous about the neighborhood. But seeing you guys here makes me feel better. It’s so important to support their dreams, isn’t it?”

Tasha laughed. It was a deep, throaty sound. “Dreams,” she repeated, tasting the word. “Sure, honey. Dreams pay the rent, right?”

“Exactly,” I said, eager to bond. “Pinky says this photographer is very influential. I guess it’s all about ‘collabs’ these days.”

Tasha raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow at me. “You could say that. We’re here for the check. Kyrie’s got college to pay for.”

“Oh, where does she want to go?”

“She’s keeping options open. Hell if this takes off she might not need it,” Tasha said. She leaned back, crossing her legs. The slit in her dress fell open, revealing a expanse of thigh that was smooth and muscular. I found myself staring at it. I quickly looked away, feeling a flush of embarrassment. “You gotta treat it like a job. Clock in, look pretty, clock out.”

“That’s ... very pragmatic,” I managed.

Just then, a door opened at the back of the lobby. A woman with a clipboard and a headset poked her head out.

“Kyrie, Pinky? We’re ready for hair and makeup. Moms, you can hang tight here or come back to the green room in twenty.”

Pinky bounced over, not even looking at me. “Bye Mom. Don’t touch anything.”

Kyrie stood up with the sigh of a veteran employee. She smoothed her tiny skirt. “Coming, Ma?”

“In a minute, baby girl,” Tasha said. “Let me finish this text.”

The girls disappeared behind the heavy door. The silence in the lobby returned, save for the thumping bass of the music.

I sat there, hands folded in my lap. I felt heavy. Beige. Like a piece of unpainted furniture in a room full of neon art. Tasha was typing on her phone, her long acrylic nails clicking rhythmically against the glass. I could smell her perfume, something spicy, like cinnamon and musk. It made my vanilla body spray seem childish.

“I need to use the ladies’ room,” I announced to no one.

Tasha didn’t look up. “Down the hall, second door on the left. Don’t mind the graffiti, honey. It keeps the rent down.”

I stood up and walked down the hallway. It was darker here, away from the lobby lights. I found the door marked with a crude, hand-drawn symbol of a stick figure in a dress and pushed inside.

The bathroom was a stark contrast to the lobby. It was tiled in industrial gray, lit by flickering fluorescent tubes that buzzed like trapped insects. It smelled of bleach and something floral to cover it up.

I locked the door and walked to the sink. I turned on the tap, letting the cold water run over my wrists, trying to calm my pulse.

Then, I did what I always did when I was nervous. I looked in the mirror.

I braced myself for the assessment.

I was forty-four years old. I stood 5’6”. This morning, the digital scale in my master bathroom had flashed 145.4 pounds.

I turned to the side, sucking in my stomach.

145 pounds. It wasn’t fat, exactly. But it wasn’t firm. It was “mom weight.” I carried it in my hips and my lower belly—the “pouch” that two C-sections and twenty years of gravity had gifted me.

I looked at my outfit again. Under my black blazer, I wore a teal blouse was supposed to be flattering, but under these harsh lights, it just looked shapeless. Like a tent. I started to unbutton it, just the top three buttons, peering at the bra underneath.

It was beige. Seamless. Functional. A full-coverage garment designed to hoist and separate my 36Cs into a respectable silhouette.

I looked at my face. There were fine lines around my eyes, laugh lines, my mother called them. I called them cracks in the foundation. My hair was shoulder-length, brown with chestnut lowlights to hide the gray, pulled back in a sensible clip.

I thought about Pinky’s taut, flat stomach. The way her skin seemed to snap back when she moved. I thought about Tasha’s thighs, thick and powerful, shimmering in that lotion.

I looked back at my own reflection. My skin looked pale. Doughy.

“God,” I whispered. “I look like a baked potato.”

I pressed my hand against my stomach, feeling the softness of it through the polyester slacks. I wasn’t ugly. I knew men at the grocery store or the library sometimes looked. But I felt ... deactivated. Like a machine that had been turned off years ago and pushed into the corner of the garage.

Why did Pinky bring me here? Just to hold her purse?

I looked into my own eyes in the dirty mirror. There was a hunger there I didn’t want to admit to. I was jealous.

I was jealous of my eighteen-year-old daughter. I was jealous of the woman in the lobby who looked like she could eat men for breakfast.

“Stop it,” I told the mirror. “You are a mother. You are responsible. You are here to make sure your daughter is safe.”

But as I buttoned my blouse back up, hiding the beige bra, hiding the soft skin, I caught a glimpse of my hips. They were wider than Pinky’s. Heavier.

Womanly, a voice in my head whispered. Not girlish. Womanly.

I shook my head, flushing at the thought. I washed my hands again, aggressively drying them with the brown paper towels that scratched my skin.

I took a deep breath, fixed my “substitute teacher” smile back onto my face, and unlocked the door.

I returned to the lobby feeling slightly scrubbed but no less anxious. The fluorescent buzz of the bathroom still seemed to ring in my ears. When I sat back down on the black leather couch, I made sure to leave a distinct cushion of air between myself and Tasha. Her perfume, mthat spicy, musky scent, seemed to have expanded in my absence, claiming the air around us like a territory marker.

A young woman with a nose ring and a headset, not the one from before, but a clone in ripped jeans, hurried over. She was holding a tray with a bottle of white wine and four plastic Solo cups.

“Refreshments while you wait, ladies?” she asked, not really waiting for an answer before depositing the tray on the low glass coffee table. “We’re running about fifteen behind on the lighting setup. Jason is a perfectionist.”

“Thanks, sweetie,” Tasha said. She leaned forward, the fabric of her fuchsia dress straining deliciously across her chest, and poured herself a generous measure. She didn’t ask; she just took charge.

She poured a second cup and slid it across the glass toward me.

“Drink up, Sarah,” she said, her voice commanding but velvety. “You look like you’re about to vibrate off the furniture.”

“It’s just ... it’s a bit unprofessional, isn’t it?” I asked, eyeing the plastic cup. “Drinking at a workplace?”

“Honey, look around,” Tasha laughed, gesturing with a manicured hand at the stark white walls and the thumping bass vibrating through the floorboards. “Does this look like a dentist’s office to you? Drink the wine.”

My internal “Mom Voice” screamed at me: We do not drink cheap wine in strange warehouses with strangers.

But truthfully, I needed to take the edge off. I reached out and took the cup. It was warm, room temperature Chardonnay that smelled vaguely of oak chips and regret. I took a sip. It was acidic and harsh, but the alcohol hit my empty stomach with a comforting burn.

“So,” I began, needing to fill the silence, needing to normalize this bizarre afternoon. “You mentioned Kyrie is looking at schools? That’s wonderful. Pinky is ... well, she’s planning to take a gap year. Trying to build her ‘brand,’ as she calls it.”

Tasha took a long sip, her dark eyes locking onto mine over the rim of the red cup. “Brand,” she chuckled. “That’s a cute word for it.”

“She has quite a following,” I said defensively. “She does makeup tutorials. Unboxing videos. You know, influencer things.”

“Right. Unboxing.” Tasha set her cup down. Her expression shifted. The amusement remained, but there was a sharpness to it now, a penetrating honesty that made me want to cross my legs tighter. “Sarah, let me ask you something. Do you know what kind of content house this is?”

I blinked. “Well, Pinky said it’s a lifestyle collective. For high-engagement branding.”

Tasha stared at me for a long moment. Then she sighed, shaking her head with a small smile that felt almost pitiful.

“Sarah,” she said, leaning in. Her voice dropped an octave, turning into the kind of conspiratorial whisper women use to discuss affair partners or plastic surgery. “Kyrie isn’t here to unbox eyeshadow. And unless your daughter is here to do the catering, neither is she.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, though a cold knot was already forming in my stomach.

“This is Paradise Media,” Tasha said flatly. “They shoot adult content. High-end, sure. Artistic lighting, 4K cameras, all that shit. But let’s call it what it is.”

I stared at her. “Adult content? You mean...”

“I mean porn, Sarah,” Tasha said. The word hung in the air, blunt and heavy. “Softcore, hardcore, solo, girl-on-girl. Whatever the algorithm wants. Kyrie is here because the pay rate for the shit she’s willing to do is three thousand dollars for four hours of work. And it beats the hell out of working at Starbucks.”

“You’re joking,” I whispered, clutching my plastic cup like a lifeline.

“I don’t joke about my daughter’s money,” Tasha said. She took another sip of wine. “Look, don’t hyperventilate. It’s safe. Everyone gets tested. Jason runs a clean ship.”

“Jason?”

“The owner. The photographer. The ... talent,” Tasha grinned. “Wait until you meet him. You’ll understand why the girls do it.”