Him
I stare at Zara's number in my phone, thumb hovering over the message icon. Three days have passed since our encounter, and I still haven't texted her as promised. It's not that I forgot—quite the opposite. She's been a persistent thought, intruding even during my livestreams and photo shoots.
"You're distracted," my manager Tasha observes during a contract meeting. "That's the third time you've checked your phone in ten minutes."
"Sorry," I mutter, placing it face-down on the table.
The truth is, I'm hesitating for reasons I don't fully understand. Women have never been complicated for me—they come and go in a carefully choreographed dance that maintains my image while keeping emotional entanglements at bay. But something about Zara feels different. The way she looked at me, really sawme, not the persona I've crafted for public consumption.
By Friday morning, I've drafted and deleted a dozen messages. Each one feels either too casual or too eager. Too calculated or too vulnerable. My uncertainty is foreign and unsettling.
My phone buzzes with a notification from my management team: "Emergency meeting at 4 PM. Contract issue with SphereX."
SphereX, the sportswear brand that accounts for thirty percent of my annual income. The meeting runs long, stretching past seven with tense negotiations and hastily revised terms. By the time I emerge from the conference room, our Friday date window has long since closed.
I could message her with an explanation, an apology, a request to reschedule. The words form in my mind but never make it to the screen. What would I say? That I'm sorry I stood her up because I was too busy protecting my influencer deal with a multinational corporation? That I was afraid of how normal she made me feel?
Days turn into a week. The moment for a casual explanation passes, making any contact now seem strange and requiring more explanation than I'm prepared to give. I throw myself into work instead—more posts, more partnerships, more carefully cultivated content that shows everything while revealing nothing.
But I can't shake the memory of her standing in the fading New Year's Day light, genuine in a way few people in my world are anymore.
"Who's the girl?" Richard asks during one of our gaming sessions.
"What girl?" I deflect, though we both know exactly who he means.
"The one from the corner store. You've been off since we met her."
I shrug, eyes fixed on the screen. "No one important."
The lie tastes bitter. Because the truth—the absurd, inexplicable truth—is that Zara, a woman I spoke to for less than ten minutes, has somehow become the most real thing in my increasingly artificial life.