Turn 11 of 11

Finish the lie, describing that your whole harem was at the fitting and that the fitting was for only the smartest, sexiest, horniest, most beautiful, and most loving girls in the world, to match the theme of their upcoming shoot [as you describe this, you and your harem become smarter, sexier, hornier, more beautiful, and more loving of each other] and you describe that you all love that fact

The words build in your throat like a held breath, and the golden warmth is right there, coaxing, humming, pressing the sentence forward. *I was at a fitting,* you say, and the last trace of the old apartment — the water ring on the nightstand, the crumpled tissue, the faint ghost of pad thai — dissolves like fog burning off water. The room completes. You are standing in a model's studio, and there has never been another room. But the lie doesn't stop. It can't, now — the warmth is pulling it out of you like thread from a spool. You describe the fitting, the harem gathered around you, all of you together, and the words get louder, more specific, more certain. The smartest, you say — and something tightens behind your eyes, a clarity that is also an erasure, a sharpening that is also a loss. The sexiest — and your body shifts again, subtly, the final refinements, the last fractions of symmetry locking into place. The horniest — and a yearning heat for Sasha and the other members of your harem begins to grow inside of you. The most beautiful — and the comp cards on the desk glow, the faces on them settling into perfection. The most loving — and you feel warmth bloom in your chest, real warmth, real love, or something so close to real that the difference has become theological. Around you, the room fills. Women appear at the edges of your vision — not entering, just present, as if they have always been here, leaning against wardrobe racks, sitting on the edge of the new desk, their faces serene and lovely and utterly devoted. The apartment isn't an apartment anymore. It's a studio. It's a home. It's a harem. The comp cards are fanned across the desk like a hand of cards, a dozen faces, all of them yours, all of them true. Sasha is beside you now, her face peaceful, her tears dry, her body a model's body, her mind a model's mind, and the hand that was reaching for her phone has gone still at her side. On the screen, Theo nods slowly. His expression is unreadable — warm, satisfied, something else underneath that you can't quite parse and no longer have the architecture to question. "That sounds like quite a night," he says, and his voice is gentle. "It was," you say, and your voice is the voice of a woman who has never been anyone else. The golden warmth completes. The door in your mind closes, soft as a sigh, and the light under it goes out, and the woman who was eating pad thai alone on a Thursday is gone — not dead, not in pain, just gone, like a draft that has been sealed out of a room that is now perfectly, expensively, irrevocably climate-controlled. You smile at the screen. It is a real smile. It is the only smile you have.