Page 18 of The Bet
I unlock my phone, scroll through the camera roll, and turn the screen toward the table. The photo is slightly blurry, but unmistakable: it’s the man, shirt askew so that there’s a glimpse of his broad, bronzed chest, lying back against a bookcase, my lipstick smeared along his jaw and his cock half-hard against his thigh. He’s looking straight at the camera, blue eyes eyes piercing and direct, with a quirk at the corner of his mobile mouth. Basically, he’s totally yummy and my pussy twinges just seeing the photo.
I giggle. “Isn’t he fucking hot?” I say.
The table erupts, Stella making a sound somewhere between a sob and a scream, Mary Kate gasping, and Kayleigh just muttering “holy shit” over and over. The girls are vibrating with a mix of … I don’t even know, to be honest.
“What? What?” I demand. “What’s going on?”
My friends continue to twitch, staring at my phone.
I blink, unsure what detonated the bomb. “Guys?” I say. “What is it? This is the guy. The hot older dude.”
Mary Kate is the first to move. She leans forward, her eyes flicking to the phone, then to Stella, then back. “Um,” she says, voice soft as a baby blanket, “maybe put the phone down, Andie.”
Kayleigh doesn’t say anything. She’s just staring at Stella, pupils dialed up to max, mouth a taut pink line. Even the air seems to know something’s wrong—it smells sweeter, sharper, and the espresso machine in the background fades to a faint, submarine hum.
Stella is shaking, and not in a performative way. Her hands tremble, knuckles white, and her eyes fill up with the kind of tears that never get spilled, the kind that just sit there, hot and trapped, waiting for permission to overflow.
I glance at the screen. Still just the photo—the man lying back, a glint of sweat along his abs, his massive cock glistening, his smile crooked and effortless. For a moment, I can’t connect the dots, like there’s a piece missing.
“Stella?” I say, suddenly unsure. “You okay?”
She draws in a breath that sounds like it’s scraping out from under a door. “Andie,” she says, voice too loud for the moment, “where did you get this photo?”
My heart hitches. “I… I took it. Last night. He didn’t mind. I thought it was fine. Is that—do you know him?” I’m babbling, filling the silence with words I can’t hear. “OMG, it’s your professor, right? Or your TA?”
Stella puts her hands flat on the table, as if bracing for an impact that’s already happened. She doesn’t look at me. She doesn’t look at anyone. For a second, I think she’s going to get up and run, but then she just breathes, lets it out slow.
“No, not my professor. That man is my dad,” she says, and the words hang there like smoke.
I laugh, because I don’t understand. I think she’s making a joke. “Shut up,” I say. “No way.”
Her eyes find mine, then, and I see it—the hollow, haunted shine, the way her jaw’s clenched so tight it must hurt. “I’m serious,” she says. “That’s my father. Thomas Moreland. You just showed me a naked photo of my dad.”
The bottom drops out of my chest. For a moment, I can’t even breathe. All the confidence, all the pride, drains from my body so fast I feel physically lighter. My hands go numb, and the phone slips out of my fingers, thunking to the tabletop.
No one says anything. Not even Kayleigh. The table is a black hole; we’re all just matter spiraling into it.
Mary Kate is the first to recover. She reaches over and puts her hand on Stella’s, gentle and careful, like she’s afraid Stella might shatter into pieces. “Hey, hey, it’s okay,” she whispers, eyes flicking to me in silent warning. “We all see our parents naked sometimes. I mean, I even saw my grandma in the shower once and it wasn’t pretty!”
Stella manages a tight, brittle laugh. “Jesus Christ. I can’t believe—” Her words crash. She shakes her head, once, hard. “This is so weird.”
I try to speak, but nothing comes out. My tongue feels like a chunk of eraser.
Mary Kate, soft: “You didn’t know, Andie. How could you?”
But I can feel the blood roaring in my face, the heat climbing up my neck, my whole body prickling with embarrassment and horror. I try to say something, to apologize, but every word feels wrong. All I can do is stare at the phone, the picture frozen on the man I let fuck me—twice—without ever asking who he was.
Kayleigh, of course, finds her voice next. “I mean… he’s really, uh, attractive for a dad, if that helps?” She shoots me a look that’s half-shock, half-guilty admiration, but it withers and dies in the nuclear silence.
Stella doesn’t say anything for a long, long minute. She just sits there, breathing, hands still flat on the wood. Finally, she looks up at me, and her face isn’t angry—it’s something worse. It’s hurt.
“Andie,” she says, voice glassy, “you have to promise me, right now, that you’ll never tell anyone about this. I mean it. No one.”
I nod so fast my head might come loose. “I promise,” I croak, but my voice sounds like it belongs to someone else.
She swallows, nods, and lets her eyes drift away from me, to the window, to anywhere that isn’t this table. “He’s on the Board of Visitors,” she mutters. “I should’ve guessed.”
Mary Kate glances at me, and there’s sympathy there, but also an edge—like I’ve crossed a line I didn’t know existed. I want to crawl under the table, dissolve into the grout.
