Turn 20 of 228
drop everything to the floor and check the reactions from OnlyFans about the post. Text Diane back and ask what she wants to talk about over coffee. Diane says it isn't work related, but personal instead.
Lena drops the bags the moment she's inside the door. Bottles clink against each other, chip bags burst under the weight of the soda stacked on top, and a tube of cookie dough rolls across the floor and comes to rest against the wall. She doesn't organize anything. She steps over the pile, bare feet leaving wet prints on the hardwood — urine still cooling on her legs — and drops onto the couch, which groans under her. The apartment smells like old food and old smoke and the dried stain on the floor from Thursday night and all of it mixes together into something she breathes in deep without flinching. She grabs her phone from where she'd tucked it between her breasts and opens OnlyFans.
The walking-naked post has been up for less than an hour and the numbers have jumped again. Eighty subscribers now — five new since the break room photos, three more in the last twenty minutes. The selfie has a hundred and forty likes. Comments are stacking faster than she can read them: *you actually walked outside like that??*, *this is the most insane account on this platform*, *please tell me someone is filming you*, *I would pay anything to see you in person.* Someone tipped ten dollars with the comment: *you're either the bravest or the craziest person alive and I mean that as a compliment.* She reads the thread twice, her free hand resting on her belly, feeling it rise and fall. The warmth in her chest is steady and full and she doesn't touch herself — not yet — just lets the attention wash over her like the evening air did on the walk home.
She opens her text thread with Diane. The last message is still on the screen: *We need to talk in person tomorrow. Not in my office. Somewhere neutral. Coffee.* Lena types with her thumb, the screen smudged with grease and dried urine: *What do you want to talk about?* She sends it and sets the phone on her belly and stares at the ceiling. The apartment is dim — she hasn't turned on a light — and the only illumination is the glow of her phone and the last orange light from the window. She can smell herself: sweat, old food, the sharp ammonia note of the piss drying on her thighs. She doesn't move to clean up. She waits.
The phone buzzes after three minutes. Diane's reply is longer than usual, the typing indicator having pulsed for most of that time: *It isn't about work. Your work is fine. Better than fine. This is about you. About what's happening to you. I want to understand it and I can't do that over text and I can't do it in the building.* Lena reads the message three times. She feels something shift in her chest — not the wish-voice, not arousal, but something quieter and more complicated. Diane isn't writing her up. Diane isn't calling security. Diane is asking to meet her outside the building, on personal time, to understand. She reads the word *personal* twice and feels it settle into her ribs like a warm stone. She types: *Tomorrow then. Send me the place.* and sets the phone down and closes her eyes and listens to the hum of the refrigerator and the distant traffic and the sound of her own breathing, heavy and slow, her belly rising and falling under the phone's weight.