My Boyfriend Found My Secret Account

My boyfriend found my secret account.

And now he was reading it out loud.

Not the boring account with the latte photos. The other one. The one where, for eight solid months, I had left unhinged thirst comments under a fitness influencer's shirtless videos like it was a paid internship.

Julian sat across from me on the couch, my iPad balanced on one knee, thumb scrolling, in no particular hurry, and I watched my entire good-girl reputation get quietly repossessed in front of me.

He read them in his normal voice. The calm one. The one he used to order at restaurants.

He found one he liked. I could tell, because he slowed down.

Something I'd posted eight months ago, under a video of a man I have never met flexing in a gym mirror:

Me: [daddy it's really coming down hard where i am tonight is it coming down hard where you are?]

He let it hang there in my living room like a bad smell.

Then he tilted his head, one degree, and looked at me over the top of the screen.

"'Daddy,'" he read again, like he wanted to be sure he'd said it right.

I have never in my life wanted to be deleted from the internet so badly.

Chapter 1

He scrolled to the next one. Read it slower, dragging the last few words, then raised his eyes to me like a judge reaching for the gavel.

Me: [growing up, they told us longing was a postage stamp. a whole ocean between you and the one you love. for me it's just a screen. i'm out here. my husband's in there.]

Julian's mouth moved into something that wasn't quite a smile.

"'My husband,'" he said. Cool. Even. "You're handing that word out to strangers now, Quinn."

I made a small dying noise and pulled my knees up to my chest. I would have paid him actual money to stop.

"Funny thing." He set the iPad flat on his thigh. "I've never once heard it from you."

"That's not it was a bit," I said. "I was copying other people. It's an internet thing."

He didn't answer. He just went back to my profile and, with the calm of a man doing his taxes, opened the fitness guy's video.

And watched it.

Head tilted, expression serious, studying a stranger's abs like an art critic while I bled quietly out of both ears.

The video ended.

"You like this kind of build," he said, thoughtful. Like it was data.

A landmine of a question. I, a genius, said, "Not as good as yours."

"You've seen mine?"

"...No."

He breathed out through his nose. "Quinn. You're not like this in front of me." He wasn't wrong, and I hated that he wasn't wrong. "Your mother says you're a nice, sensible girl. A good girl your whole life. Never dated once before you graduated. I planned two weeks ahead just to hold your hand."

I knotted my fingers together. "I only ever run my mouth online," I mumbled. "And it was months ago. I haven't left a single comment like that since I met you."

"Since you met me, you've just been quietly window-shopping. That it?"

I choked.

Rude. Accurate. He knew me right down to the studs, and somehow that was worse than the comments.

Here is what nobody knew, him included until roughly nine minutes ago. The girl in those comments was the real one. The soft, hands-folded, waits-to-be-held girl he'd been dating for months was a full-body performance I'd been running since I was old enough to disappoint my mother. Online, in the dark, under a stranger's gym video, I got to be loud. I got to be a menace. I got to want things out loud and mean them.

I never should have left my phone face-up on the table.

"It just came up on my feed," I tried, very quietly. "That's the only reason I clicked."

Julian said nothing. Kept scrolling. Through months of me.

When he goes quiet, I panic. It is a law of physics.

I wanted to snatch the iPad out of his hands. I did not dare.

He scrolled. A muscle jumped at his brow. And then I caught something that did not fit the breakup I'd already scripted in my head.

The tips of his ears had gone red.

He set the iPad down. Stood. Looked at me with a face wiped perfectly blank.

There it was. Curtains. In his head, the sweet girl he'd signed up for had just been quietly written off.

Because that was the whole reason Julian had said yes to me in the first place. I looked a little like the girl he'd wanted since he was a kid.

Serena. Soft-spoken, graceful, the kind of gentle they don't make anymore. She was his blueprint, the one that got away. I was just a girl who'd spent her whole life shrinking under her mother's thumb until the shrinking passed for demure, and our families had nudged us into each other, and he'd let himself believe I was the quiet, easy kind.

Now he'd seen the tape. I gave us until morning.

"Julian," I said, with a lot of feeling. "Please don't tell my mom."

He looked at me for one long, cold second.

Then he picked up my iPad, walked out, and shut the door hard enough that I felt it in my teeth.

I stared at the spot where he'd been standing.

Fine. Leave. Storm off. Very dramatic of you.

But why did he take my iPad?

Chapter 2

I didn't sleep.

I lay in the dark building a detailed legal case for why my life was over, and somewhere around 4 a.m. the jury came back and agreed.

The next morning at work, a coworker took one look at me and made me a coffee. "You look rough. You've got bags."

I have bags. I'm twenty-three years old and I have bags.

"I got dumped," I said mournfully.

She gave a slow, knowing nod, patted my shoulder, sighed like a woman at a graveside, and left.

By lunch the whole department knew. I spent the afternoon in a warm bath of pity. Someone let me cut the bathroom line.

At six, one of the women offered me a ride home. She was very experienced and very gentle about it. I shouldn't take it too hard, she said. She'd pegged Julian as a flake months ago, and honestly it was a blessing this sweet summer child of mine had never gotten chewed up by him.

"Quinnie. Ready to go?"

The voice came from behind me. Familiar. Low.

Julian walked up in a crisp shirt and slacks, in the last of the daylight, looking frankly unreasonable, like the sunset had been staged around him.

"Hungry?" he said.

My kind coworker's entire face rebooted. I watched her silently revise her entire sweet-summer-child theory.

He nodded to the little cluster of them, lifted my bag off my shoulder like it was already his, and said, "Come on. I'll feed you."

So, under the frozen stares of my coworkers, I got into his car.

He didn't talk. I cracked first. "It's kind of warm."

He didn't even look over. "Then take your jacket off."

The old Julian would have turned the AC down before I finished the sentence.

I shut my mouth and sulked. He was officially done being patient with me. Cool. What a prize.

He took me to the sushi place we always went to, and I got the distinct feeling this was a farewell dinner, and the thought turned me so sour I ordered extra sake. A few bottles of it.

He frowned. He didn't stop me.

A secret: I can't actually drink. But just looking at it all lined up, I already felt a little drunk.

We ate in complete silence, two people with nothing to say, chewing. I swallowed the last piece of sashimi without tasting it and decided it was time. Surely now he'd say it.

Julian looked me in the eyes, voice level. "Want to catch a movie?"

I blinked. "It'll be really late by the time it ends."

"That's fine. I'll take you home."

I assumed it would be some fitting, tragic little romance.

I learned at the opening credits that it was a Thai horror film.

He knows I'm terrified of ghosts. He knows this about me. And he brought me to a ghost movie.

I turned to make a break for it.

"Shh." Soft. "It's starting. Watch."

When I kept measuring the distance to the exit, he leaned in close. "It's a comedy, actually. Barely scary."

Fine. I'd believe him this once.

...I'm an idiot. I believed a man.

The movie hit its big scare and I hunched down and clamped my eyes shut like a coward. Warm breath moved over my ear. Julian's voice, low: "There. It's over."

Reassured, I opened my eyes.

A face flew out of the screen and every hair on my body stood straight up.

Beside me, a low, muffled laugh.

He did that on purpose. He did that on purpose.

I wanted my sweet, thoughtful Julian back, effective immediately.

When it ended and the lights came up, I got to my feet on unsteady legs, still half-dead, and watched the couples file out wound around each other. Any second now he'd reach for my hand. He knew exactly how small my nerve was.

Instead, cool as anything, he said, "Let's go. Any longer and you'll be stuck in here alone."

...Oh, screw him.

Chapter 3

I pulled my reaching hand back and fell in close behind him.

The drive home was quiet. I sat there marinating in my own misery while Julian steered like he hadn't registered I had a mood at all.

He'd changed.

He used to get me home before eight, no matter what. If I ran late with friends, he couldn't settle until he'd driven over to collect me himself. He knew I was scared of the dark, knew I was a coward about it, and there was a stretch in my complex where a streetlight had died, and he used to take my hand there and hold it tight the whole way through the black. When they finally fixed the light, I was a little bit disappointed.

Now that he'd found out I wasn't what he'd ordered, the temperature had dropped about a thousand degrees.

Had all that gentleness been meant for Serena 2.0 the entire time?

Thirty minutes later the car stopped outside my building.

Julian turned. Caught the red rims of my eyes. Reached over and brushed his thumb under one of them, almost laughing. "Did the movie make you cry?"

"I won't be able to sleep tonight," I accused.

"So what do we do about that." Flat. Not really a question. "I stay over?"

My eyes went round.

He patted my cheek, a laugh hiding somewhere behind his face. "Relax. I'll watch you get inside."

I climbed out in a daze and stood there a long time, unable to reassemble myself.

Was that Julian being a menace?

Then, at my door, disaster.

I'd been too busy being tragic that morning to grab my keys. The one and only spare lived with Julian.

Nothing for it. I had to call him back.

The line rang. It took him a second to pick up. "What's wrong?"

"I forgot my keys. I'm locked out." Small voice. "You can't have gotten far. Could you bring yours over"

Two seconds of silence. Then a sigh. "How are you this helpless."

"Is that a yes" I pleaded.

And then, from his end, a woman's voice, low and soft. "Is that Quinn?"

Serena. Serena was with him.

My chest cinched tight like a drawstring. I smoothed every crack out of my voice before I used it. "You know what, forget it. Just grab a cab and have the driver drop it off."

"Mm," he said. And hung up.

Here's the thing. I could have asked. Any functional person would have asked. Why is she there. Why does she sound like that. Why is your voice doing the careful, patient thing it does when someone is quietly falling apart.

But I had social-suicided in front of this man barely a day ago, and asking would have meant hearing the answer, and I was not structurally built to survive the answer. So I asked nothing, and let my imagination do the thing it does best, which is redecorate the worst-case scenario until I could move in.

A few minutes later, a text. Julian: Here.

Me: What's the plate number? I'll come down.

I'd just reached the elevator when the doors slid open on their own.

Julian was inside.

"Huh?" I said. "You came up yourself?"

"You lose your keys?"

I shook my head. "Left them inside."

He walked straight to my door, slid a hand into his pocket, and came out with a key. "Count yourself lucky I keep it on me."

I looked at the lean, narrow cut of his waist. "Julian, did you lose weight? Have you been lifting?"

"Always have," he said, mild.

"So do you have abs, then?"

There was a knowing edge to his voice. "You want to see?"

Me: ""

Ever since he found out who I actually was, our conversations had developed a texture.

He stood at the door with the key and didn't move. Just held it there, thinking about something I couldn't read.

"Hurry up and put it in," I said, and immediately went red to the ears.

He gave me a long, meaningful look.

Yeah.

We were never getting back to the nice, simple version of this.

Chapter 4

Julian slid the key in and gave it an easy turn.

The door finally opened.

I kept my head down and slipped past him with all the dignity available to a girl in my position, which was none.

Right before I could shut the door, he said, "You're not going to let me in for a glass of water?"

I didn't want to. But he'd gone to all that trouble bringing the key over, and I couldn't exactly slam it in his face.

Julian stepped inside on those long legs, and his gaze went straight to the couch in my living room, and something shifted behind his eyes. Thinking about yesterday again, probably.

He opened his mouth to say something.

His phone rang.

His whole expression went soft, all at once. Serena.

Sure enough, he lowered the phone. "Never mind. Water another time."

Then he took one long look at that couch, and left.

Great. He walks out to go find another woman, right in front of me, and pencils me in for "another time" like a dentist appointment.

What am I to this man, exactly.

Before bed, the flake texted me: You up?

I didn't answer.

Julian: Still scared?

Two minutes later he sent a video with a cute thumbnail. Burned once, I opened it braced for the worst.

A compilation of funny cats.

Okay. Not a jumpscare.

It put me in a marginally better mood. I still wasn't texting him back.

The next day, nothing from him. Three days straight, radio silence.

I got it secondhand from a friend: Serena had blown up at her fianc and taken off alone to another city, no one knew where, her family tearing the place apart looking for her. Word was she was pregnant, and everyone was frightened about her being out there by herself, not okay, in no state to be alone.

Julian had to be the most frantic of all of them. No wonder he had nothing left over for me.

I was busy mourning the fact that my boyfriend's real love was someone else when my mother called to ask why I wasn't answering Julian's messages.

My mother. Who apparently now had opinions about my response time to Julian.

"How do you even know about that?" I said, alarmed.

She sniffed. Yesterday had been her birthday, and Julian had come all the way over with a gift in hand. Where, exactly, did I think I was going to find a more devoted, better-mannered son-in-law? I should date him properly and stop being so wishy-washy.

The injustice of it.

"You have no idea," I told her. "The wishy-washy one here is not me."

She wasn't hearing it. She ordered me to accept Julian's dinner invitation this instant. The man had just dragged himself off a business trip and still carved out time for her birthday.

A business trip. Was it a business trip? Or was it going to find Serena?

The second she hung up, Julian texted: Dinner tonight.

With my mother's boot on my neck, I caved.

Every other time I'd seen him, I'd dressed myself up into a demure little lady the way he liked. This time I threw on a grey sweatsuit, didn't touch my hair, and went down exactly as I was.

I walked up to him with my hands in my pockets, lazy, and just stubborn enough to make a point.

He looked me over, head to toe. The corner of his mouth ticked up. He didn't say one word about it.

And then it turned out the man had booked one of those aggressively upscale, money-incinerating restaurants. Candlelight. Fresh flowers. Wine. Everyone else in formalwear, and a waiter watching me like I'd wandered in off the street, until my whole face went hot.

Chapter 5

Julian, meanwhile, was completely at ease, not remotely troubled that I was making him look bad.

I reached over and pinched his arm, hard, on the sly. "Why didn't you warn me?"

He grunted, then produced a hair tie from somewhere, gathered my hair, and smoothed it back into a tail. "This works too," he said. "Mm. Very off-duty."

Over the pre-dinner wine, I remembered I was supposed to perform concern. "How's Serena? Is she all right?"

Nothing moved on his face. "She's been found. She's fine."

Concern: delivered. I said "oh" and settled in to wait for my steak.

"Nothing else you want to ask me?" Julian said.

Apparently my concern was under quota. So I tried again. "Did she lose weight?"

His face spasmed. He produced exactly one word. "Gained."

Well. She's pregnant. Gaining is on brand.

"How much?" I blinked at him, riding the momentum.

He looked at me. "No idea."

Doesn't even know how his sweetheart's baby is coming along. Flake.

Then Julian redirected fire without warning, his gaze dropping to the softer curve of my chin. "You, though. You've put on three or four pounds."

""

That was the moment I decided to strike first and break up with him.

I started assembling my speech. My delivery. My whole aura. My eyes narrowed into something sharp and closing in.

Julian said, "A little softer is nice. Easier to hold."

The heat shot up my neck and took every prepared word with it.

He was doing it again.

After dinner he mentioned an escape room nearby, top-rated, did I want to give it a shot. I declined on the spot and explained, very generously, that he'd just gotten off a flight and should rest, that throwing himself into something so high-adrenaline straight off a business trip really couldn't be good for the heart.

He studied me a moment. Then agreed.

Maybe the rejection put him in a mood, because he didn't say a word the whole way back.

Outside my complex, to my surprise, he got out of the car behind me.

"What are you doing?" I said.

"Streetlight's out again."

Right. Sure. Even though I was used to walking it alone by now.

We made it to my door without a single ghost. I waved. "Bye, Julian."

He said "mm," and put his hand on my waist.

Every nerve in my body flagged the contact as unfamiliar. The old Julian had been unfailingly proper with me, a gentleman down to the molecule, never once laying a hand on me without asking first.

Julian had changed.

Julian had gotten bold.

My pulse tripped. I leaned back half an inch and my feet stayed exactly where they were. And, God help me, I was hoping.

He bent his head, slow, until the space between us went to nothing. His chest rose and fell against me. The heat poured off him, and his mouth stopped a breath short of mine, and stayed there.

So solid. Almost bigger than me now.

He caught my face in his hand and smoothed my hair back, gentle.

"This is better," he said, low. "You were too well-behaved before. I couldn't make myself touch you."

Something shorted out at the crown of my head.

Then he kissed me.

And the whole time his mouth was on mine, one thought kept circling and refused to land:

For three days he'd gone dark on me, and I'd decided it was because he was frantic over her, the girl he'd wanted his whole life, out there alone and pregnant and lost. At dinner he couldn't give me one real detail about her, and I'd decided that was because he'd been too busy watching over her to notice.

So why was he kissing me like I was the answer to a question he'd been asking for years?

Chapter 6