Chapter 3: Hungover and Exposed
The apartment at 10 AM was a cathedral of hangovers and regret. Chad stood at the counter, methodically scooping vanilla protein powder into his shaker. The clink of the metal scoop against plastic was the only sound. He’d been awake for hours, lifting weights at the empty gym, trying to burn the strange, staticky energy out of his muscles. It hadn’t worked. His mind kept replaying the previous night in disconnected, shocking clips: the feel of her skin, the flat, awful sound of her voice saying ‘He has no idea who I was.’
He added water, then ice, his movements robotic. The sad, lone avocado on the counter seemed to judge him. He didn’t hear her approach.
A groan from the hallway preceded her. It was a low, guttural sound of profound suffering.
Chad turned.
Kayla shuffled into the kitchen doorway, barefoot, wearing only a pair of black satin sleep shorts slung low on her hips. She was topless. Her pale skin was flushed from sleep, and the dramatic, surgically enhanced curves of her breasts moved with a heavy, pendulous weight as she walked, completely exposed. The morning light from the slatted blinds painted stripes across her torso, over the faint, pink scars underneath.
“Fuck my life,” she mumbled, her voice gravelly. She squinted against the light, one hand coming up to shield her eyes, the other pressed against her forehead. She looked like hell—puffy-faced, her blonde hair a chaotic nest, yesterday’s mascara still faintly smudged beneath her eyes. She was wholly, unselfconsciously Kyle in the brutal aftermath of a bad night.
She bee-lined for the cupboard above the microwave, the one where they kept the painkillers. Chad stood frozen, his shaker in hand, his brain short-circuiting. This was a thousand times more confronting than the drunken, intentional exposure of the night before. This was casual.Mundane. A body she now lived in, unthinkingly on display.
She reached up, stretching on her toes, her back arching. The movement was fluid, unconscious. As her fingers fumbled for the bottle of Advil on the high shelf, the side of her body brushed against Chad’s arm where he stood, rooted to the spot.
The contact was a bolt of pure, startling sensation.
The skin of her ribcage was warm, soft. The firm, rounded curve of her breast pressed against his bicep for a split second. He felt everything: the slight coolness of the morning air on her skin, the texture of a raised mole he remembered from a hundred beach trips, the shocking, intimate softness of her. And then, unmistakably, the hard, erect point of her nipple grazing his arm.
Chad jerked back as if electrocated. The protein shaker slipped from his hand, hitting the linoleum with a loud, hollow crack. Icy water and gloopy vanilla mix splattered across both their legs and the floor.
“Shit!” he barked.
“Jesus, dude!” Kayla yelped, stumbling back herself, the Advil bottle clutched to her chest. She looked down at the mess, then at her own bare torso, then at Chad’s horrified face. Understanding dawned, slow and then all at once.Her eyebrows shot up. “Oh.Right. Sorry. Forgot the… apparatus.”
She said it like she’d forgotten her keys. She didn’t cover herself. She just looked from the puddle on the floor to Chad’s stricken expression, and a weak, shit-eating grin spread across her face. It was pure, unadulterated Kyle. “Dude, relax. They’re just tits. Expensive, Grade-A, made-in-Thailand tits, but still. You’ve seen ‘em before.”
“Last night! When you were wasted!” Chad’s voice was too loud. He grabbed a roll of paper towels, tearing off sheets, crouching to sop up the spill—anything to avoid looking at her. The cold, sticky protein mix soaked through his sweatpants at the knee. “You can’t just… walk around like that!”
“Why not? This is my house too.” She finally popped the cap on the Advil, shook two into her palm, and dry-swallowed them with a grimace. “You walked around in your boxers for, like, three years. I’ve seen your butt more than my own.”
“That’s different!”
“How?” She leaned back against the counter, crossing her arms under her breasts, a move that lifted and accentuated them. A calculated move, Chad realized. She was watching him, gauging his reaction. The vulnerability from last night was gone, burned away by the hangover and replaced with a defensive, theatrical bravado.
“It just is!” He stood up, clutching the sopping wad of paper towels. “You’re… you’re a…”
“A girl?” she supplied, her head tilting. “Newsflash, Chad. So are you, technically. We’re both dudes. Well,” she looked down at herself and gave a little shrug, “mostly.”
“Stop it.” He threw the towels into the sink. “Just stop talking in circles. You know what I mean. You have… that body now. And Aiden, and the Instagram, and the… the whole thing. You can’t just be topless in the kitchen like it’s nothing. It’s not nothing anymore.” He gestured vaguely at her, his face hot. “And you’re hard.”
He hadn’t meant to say the last part. It just came out, blunt and embarrassed.
Kayla glanced down. A faint, pink blush actually colored her chest and neck. It was the first truly Kayla reaction he’d seen—a flash of feminine self-consciousness. But it was gone in a second, replaced by a smirk. “It’s cold in here, bro. Don’t be a pervert.” She pushed off the counter and finally, mercifully, padded out of the kitchen. “I’m gonna shower. My head is trying to escape through my eye sockets.”
He stood there, alone with the mess and the silence. The spot on his arm where she’d brushed against him still felt branded. He could hear the shower start, the pipes groaning in the walls.
When she emerged twenty minutes later, she was wrapped in the uniform: tight leggings, a cropped hoodie, her hair in a towel turban. She looked more put together, but the pallor of a brutal hangover remained under her light foundation.
She found him still in the kitchen, now scrubbing the last of the protein paste off the floor. He didn’t look up.
“Hey,” she said, her voice softer.
“Hey.”
She opened the fridge, stared into its bleak interior for a moment, then shut it. “About last night,” she started. “The talking part. Not the… other part.”
Chad stayed crouched, scrubbing a spot that was already clean. “Yeah.”
“I shouldn’t have laid all that on you. The Aiden stuff. It’s my mess.”
“He’s using you,” Chad said to the floor. “You know that, right?”
She was quiet for a long moment. He heard her lean against the fridge. “Yeah,” she said, and the word was hollow. “But I’m using him, too. His followers, his connections. It’s a trade.”
“It’s gross.”
“It’s business.” The defensiveness was back. “You think those supplement companies you’re trying to rep for aren’t using you? You’re just a guy with good lats to them.”
The truth of it stung. He finally looked up at her. The towel was off, her damp hair hanging around her shoulders. Without the full makeup, she looked younger. More like the person he remembered. The dissonance was breathtaking.
“It’s different,” he muttered, knowing it was a weak argument.
“It’s not.” She walked over and pulled two energy drinks from the bottom shelf of the fridge, tossing one to him. He caught it on reflex. “It’s all the same game. I just switched leagues.” She cracked hers open, the hiss loud in the quiet kitchen. She took a long drink, her throat working. “I need a favor.”
Chad stood up, wiping his hands on his pants. “What?”
“He’s taking me to some beach club thing in Malibu on Saturday. A big influencer thing. Hot new scene, all that.” She couldn’t meet his eye. “I need you to come.”
Chad blinked. “What? Why?”
“Because I don’t know anyone there,” she said, her words coming out in a rushed stream. “They’re all his friends, or other people like him. It’s all surfaces and secret handshakes. I need… I need someone there who knows what a deload week is. Who remembers that time I puked in the gym parking lot after that pre-workout challenge.”
She was asking for a lifeline. A piece of her old life to cling to while she navigated the new one. The request was so naked, so fundamentally Kyle, that it disarmed him completely.
“You want me to third-wheel on your date with your fake boyfriend who doesn’t know you used to be a guy?”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” she snapped, then sighed.“And yes. Exactly that.”
Chad laughed, a single, sharp exhale of disbelief. He looked at the energy drink in his hand, then at her pleading, anxious face. The loyalty, that old, deep-buried thing, tugged at him. It was a terrible idea. It would be agony.
“What do I even wear?” he heard himself say.
The relief that flooded her features was instantaneous. It transformed her. For a second, she wasn’t Kayla the influencer or Kyle the ghost. She was just his friend, grateful and scared. “Wear your normal stuff. Just… maybe a polo. And for the love of god, don’t talk about macros to anyone.”
She reached out and punched his shoulder, a firm, brotherly thump. “Thanks, bro.”
The touch was familiar. The context was not. He looked at her hand on his arm, then at her face, and saw the complicated, painful truth of her life in that moment. She was both people, trapped in one skin, and she was asking him to bear witness to it all.
The shower was still dripping in the bathroom. The sad avocado on the counter seemed to have given up. Chad took a swig of the energy drink. It tasted like battery acid and bad decisions.
“Yeah,” he said. “Okay.”
The word hung in the air between them, a reluctant agreement that felt like stepping off a ledge. Chad immediately regretted it.
“Seriously?” Kayla’s entire posture unclenched. The performative edge melted from her face, leaving pure, grateful relief. She set her energy drink down with a soft clink. “Okay.Good. Great, actually. This’ll be fun.”
“It will not be fun,” Chad corrected, dragging a hand over his face. “It will be weird. And I will not know what to say to anyone.”
“You don’t have to say anything. Just stand there and look big and confused. It’s your brand.” She was buzzing now, the hangover forgotten in a surge of planning. She snatched her phone from the counter, thumbs flying. “I’m texting Aiden. He’ll love it. He thinks you’re, like, my tragic bodyguard cousin or something. It adds ‘texture’.”
Chad groaned. The thought of being Aiden’s idea of set-dressing made his teeth ache.
“Look,” Kayla said, leaning against the counter, her eyes bright with a scheme. “I’ll make it worth your while. I’ll be your wingwoman.” She waggled her eyebrows, a bizarre gesture with her fresh, dewy face. “Think about the hot chicks that’ll be there. Influencers, models, bottle-service girls with trust issues and perfect abs. You’ll clean up.”
The proposition was so deeply, fundamentally absurd it stole his breath. He stared at her—at the friend who once judged a woman’s worth by her deadlift form—now offering to broker connections for him at a beach club. The ghost of her nipple against his arm seemed to burn all over again.
“I don’t want to ‘clean up’,” he muttered, looking away. “And you offering to wingman—wingwoman—for me is the most messed-up thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Why?” She threw her hands up, genuinely exasperated. “I know what guys like! I am a goldmine of intel. I can tell you who’s just here for the vibes, who wants a free protein shake, who’s looking for a daddy.” She paused, her head tilting. “Okay, maybe not that last one yet. Still learning.”
This was his punishment for loyalty. He was being drafted into a surreal game where the rules were written in a language he didn’t speak. The kitchen felt too small, the air thick with the cloying smell of her coconut shampoo and the chemical bite of his spilled protein.
“What do I get out of this?” he asked, the question more defeated than curious.
“You get to keep an eye on me.” Her voice dropped, the manic pitch fading. She looked at the smudged screen of her phone, at Aiden’s waiting message. “And I get to remember who I am for a few hours. While I’m pretending to be someone else.”
The honesty landed like a punch. It was the same raw truth from last night, stripped of its drunken tears and packaged in daylight terms. He saw the fear beneath the spray tan. The trade was simple: his discomfort for her stability.
He gave a single, tight nod.“Fine. But I’m not calling you ‘Kayla’ all night. It feels stupid.”
A real smile, small and uneven, touched her lips.“Deal. You can just grunt and point. He’ll think it’s a Midwest thing.” Her phone buzzed. She glanced at it, and her expression hardened into something pleasant and blank. The transformation was instant. “He says ‘lit’. We’re in.”
She pushed off the counter, the energy back.“Saturday. Wear the blue polo. The one that almost fits. And for god’s sake, Chad, get a tan.” She headed for her room, already typing a response, her bare feet silent on the floor.
Chad was left with the ghost of an agreement and the dread of what he’d just promised. He looked at his own reflection in the dark microwave door: a confused man in a messy kitchen, about to enter a world where his best friend was both his guide and the main attraction.
Chad’s reflection in the microwave door wavered, a funhouse version of his own confusion. The blue polo he’d reluctantly pulled from the back of his closet felt like a costume, the fabric tight across his shoulders in all the wrong ways. Saturday had arrived with the silent menace of a scheduled root canal.
“You ready in there?” Kayla’s voice, pitched to a brighter, more melodic register than her usual tone, sliced through his bedroom door. “The Uber’s, like, two minutes away! We can’t keep Aiden waiting!”
“Yeah, yeah,” Chad grunted, giving up on the polo’s third button. He opened the door to a wall of coconut and faux-sweet perfume. Kayla stood in the hallway, a vision of meticulous construction. Her hair fell in perfect beachy waves, her makeup was sharp and glimmering, and she wore a flowing, white linen cover-up that hinted at something underneath. She looked like a stranger. She smelled like a department store.
“You look…” he searched for a word that wasn’t a lie, “…clean.”
“A glowing review.” She rolled her eyes, the motion careful not to disturb her eyeliner. She did a slow spin. “The cover-up works, right? Not too ‘resort-wedding’?”
“It’s fine.” He grabbed his wallet and phone, shoving them into his pocket. The entire apartment felt charged with her nervous energy, a buzzing static that made his skin itch. He could see the ghost of Kyle in the restless tap of her foot, in the way she kept cracking her knuckles—a habit she’d tried to break for years.
Her phone chimed. She glanced at it, and her painted-on smile tightened. “He’s downstairs. Showtime.” She took a deep breath, her chest rising dramatically under the linen. For a second, her eyes met his, and the performance faltered. He saw the stark, familiar fear. “Remember,” she said, her voice dropping back to its normal register, “you’re my cousin from Arizona. You fix tractors.”
“I’m from Ohio. And I’ve never touched a tractor.”
“Then you watch people fix tractors. Be mysterious.” She flashed the smile again, brittle and brilliant, and turned to leave. Then she stopped, her hand on the doorframe. She looked back at him, her expression shifting into something more calculating. “Hold on.Before we go. I need your honest opinion.”
“On my tractor-watching mystique?” he muttered, following her into the living room.
“On the product.” She said it flatly, a business term. She let her oversized straw bag slide off her shoulder and onto the couch. Her fingers went to the tie of her linen cover-up. “This is the main event. The beach club is all about the look. The fit. The asset utilization.”
Chad felt a cold dread drip down his spine. “Kayla, no.”
But the knot was already undone. With a shrug of her shoulders, the white fabric slid down her arms and puddled at her feet. She stepped out of it, standing in the center of their grimy living room.
The black bikini was less fabric than idea. The top was a series of intricate straps that dug into her shoulders and back, engineering her chest into two dramatic, looming peaks of tanned cleavage. The bottom was a thong, a narrow strip of material that vanished between the generous, sculpted curves of her ass. Her hourglass figure was on full, breathtaking display, a cartoon exaggeration of femininity forged in a Bangkok clinic and tanned under California lights.
The sight was utterly divorced from the person he knew. The gym-bro nostalgia of their apartment—the faded posters, the dusty protein tubs—formed a surreal backdrop to this hyper-real, curated body. She did a slow, awkward turn, the muscles in her back flexing. The scent of coconut oil was overwhelming.
“Well?” she asked. Her voice tried for casual, but it came out strained. “Does it work? Is it… too much? Or is it just enough?”
Chad’s mouth was dry. He saw the faint, pink lines of scars under the bikini bottom, barely visible against the tan. He saw the way the straps cut into her skin, the slight, unnatural lift of everything. This wasn’t a body for swimming. It was a billboard. A weapon.
“It’s… a lot,” he managed, the words thick.
“But does it look real?” She pressed, turning to face him again, her hands on her hips. Her eyes were sharp, demanding a technical assessment. “From, like, five feet away in bright sunlight? Does the silhouette read as authentic?”
He couldn’t answer. His brain short-circuited between the clinical language and the visceral reality. He remembered the weight of her against him, the feel of her skin. This was that body, packaged for public consumption. He saw the ghost of his friend in the anxious set of her jaw, completely at odds with the sexual spectacle of her form.
The Uber honked outside, a sharp, impatient sound.
“Kayla,” he started, but no other words came.
“Forget it,” she said, her face closing off. She snatched the cover-up from the floor, her movements quick and irritated. “You’re no help. Just stick to the plan.Grunt.Point. Look protective.” She wrapped herself quickly, hiding the assets, burying the engineering under flowing white fabric. She was just a pretty girl in resort wear again, but the image of what was underneath was burned onto Chad’s retinas.
She strode past him, grabbing her bag. “Let’s go. And remember,” she threw over her shoulder, the Kayla-voice back in full force, “you think Palm Springs is too dry. It’s your only personality trait.”
He followed her out, the door clicking shut on the silent, empty apartment. The hallway air was stale. His heart thumped a dull, protesting rhythm against his ribs. He was no longer just a confused man in a messy kitchen. He was an accomplice, walking his best friend to the auction block, and she had just asked him to approve the merchandise.
The Uber was a silent, air-conditioned capsule. Chad’s polo collar chafed his neck. Kayla sat perfectly still beside him, staring at her own reflection in the darkened window, her fingers tracing the edge of her phone case in a rapid, nervous tattoo. The manic energy from the apartment had condensed into a brittle, silent focus.
“Remember,” she said, not looking at him, her voice a low monotone. “Tractors. Arizona. Dry air gives you nosebleeds.”
“I’m from Ohio,” Chad repeated, the argument feeble.
“Now you’re from Sedona.” She finally glanced over, her eyes wide and unreal under the false lashes. “You love the red rocks. You think they’re spiritual.”
“I think they’re rocks.”
The Uber slid to a halt before a gleaming, bamboo-fronted entrance perched above the Pacific. The thump of a deep house bassline vibrated through the car doors. A crowd of beautiful, nearly identical people in minimalist linen and bright swimwear milled behind a velvet rope, their laughter sharp as broken glass. Chad’s gut tightened.
“Showtime,” Kayla whispered. She inhaled deeply, held it, and transformed. Her posture melted into something languid and effortless. Her shoulders dropped, her chin tilted up, and a vacant, pleasant smile settled on her lips. The shift was so complete it felt surgical. She slid out of the car, her cover-up flowing around her.
Chad followed, a clumsy shadow. The smell hit him first: salt air, expensive coconut sunscreen, and the cloying sweetness of vaping. A bored-looking giant in a black polo shirt scanned a list on a tablet, his eyes lingering on Kayla’s covered form.
“Kayla,” she said, her voice now higher, softer. “With Aiden Decker’s party.”
The giant nodded, unhooking the rope. “Go right up, Miss Kayla. He’s at the main cabana.”
They ascended a bamboo staircase. With each step, the music and the din of conversation grew, a wall of sound. Chad felt his sweat start to seep through the blue polo. At the top, the world opened into a sprawling, whitewashed terrace of daybeds and dipping pools, all overlooking the endless, flat blue of the ocean. Bodies gleamed under the sun. It was a marketplace of perfected flesh.
“KAYLA! Over here, baby!”
Aiden stood from a large, canopied cabana, waving. He wore tight, salmon-colored swim trunks and no shirt, his torso a lean, hairless sculpture of minimal effort. His smile was a flash of white. Kayla’s performative laugh tinkled across the space as she moved toward him, her walk becoming a deliberate, hip-swaying saunter.
Chad trailed behind, a forgotten piece of luggage.
Aiden embraced Kayla, his hands sliding possessively down her back to rest on the swell of her ass. He kissed her cheek, lingering too long. “You look insane,” he breathed into her ear, loud enough for Chad to hear.
“This old thing?” Kayla trilled, pulling back just enough to gesture vaguely at Chad, who stood adrift. “Aiden, you remember my cousin, Chad. From Arizona.”
Aiden’s gaze flickered over Chad as if assessing a piece of furniture. His eyes caught on the strained fabric over Chad’s shoulders, and a spark of bland recognition lit in them. Not of Chad, but of a type. “Right, right. The big one.Cool. Grab a drink, man. Don’t be a stranger.” The dismissal was absolute. He immediately turned back to Kayla, his hand finding the small of her back. “Jasper from Aloe Vera Dreams is here. He’s been asking about you. Says your skin’s glow is ‘next-gen’.”
And just like that, Chad was ejected from their orbit. He stood there, a monolith in a too-tight polo, surrounded by a sea of glowing, chatting strangers. He watched Kayla get absorbed into a circle of tanned, attentive men and sharply beautiful women. Her laugh, that higher, unfamiliar sound, cut through the air. She accepted a frothy drink in a hollowed-out pineapple.
He found a barren corner of the bar, ordered a beer he didn’t want, and tried to become invisible. He watched. Aiden’s hand never left her. It was a constant point of contact: on her lower back, her hip, the back of her neck. A branding iron. Kayla sipped her drink, her nods practiced, her smiles perfectly timed. Once, she caught Chad’s eye across the crowd. Her own eyes held his for a fraction of a second—a blink of stark, shared reality—before she let her gaze go pleasantly vacant again, turning to laugh at something Jasper said.
Hours bled together under the punishing sun. Chad’s beer grew warm. He watched a guy in mirrored sunglasses explain the “hydration hierarchy” of alkaline water to a rapt group. He saw Kayla pose for a dozen photos, her body angled and tucked into a series of flawless, effortless contortions. During one, where she leaned back against a railing with the ocean behind her, Aiden’s hand slipped from her waist to squeeze her hip. She flinched, a tiny, almost imperceptible jerk, and then laughed, swatting his arm playfully.
The playfulness didn’t reach her eyes.Chad saw it. He saw the tightness at the corners of her smile, the slight strain in her neck. He saw Kyle, trapped behind the glassy facade, screaming.
Aiden whispered something in her ear, his lips brushing her skin. Kayla nodded, her smile stiff. She extricated herself from the group and walked, with a purpose that looked like swaying, toward the restrooms. Aiden watched her go, his expression one of pure, smug ownership. Then his eyes scanned the crowd and landed on Chad, alone by the bar. Something flickered in his gaze—amusement, or a challenge.
He sauntered over, the crowd parting for him. He leaned against the bar beside Chad, not looking at him, surveying his kingdom. “So. ‘Cousin’.” He made air quotes with his fingers. “How’s the tractor business?”
Chad stared straight ahead, his fist tightening around the damp beer bottle. “Dry.”
Aiden smirked, sipping his clear drink with ice.“I bet. She’s something else, isn’t she?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “A total natural. Most of these girls,” he gestured vaguely at the terrace, “they’re trying so hard you can smell the desperation. Kayla’s just… effortless. Like she was born for this.”
Chad’s jaw ached from clenching. He took a long, slow pull of his warm beer to keep from speaking.
“The body, the face, the attitude,” Aiden mused, almost to himself. “It’s a complete package. A work of art, really. You can tell she’s never had to struggle a day in her life. It’s all just… innate.” He finally turned his head, giving Chad a condescending once-over. “Must be weird for you. Seeing your little cousin all grown up and killing the game.”
Before Chad could form a sentence, a burst of louder laughter came from near the pool. Kayla was emerging from the bathroom hallway, but she’d been intercepted by two other women in microscopic bikinis. They were doing a dance move, some syncopated, hip-shaking Tik Tok trend. Kayla, flushed from drinks and sun, joined in.
The movement was jerky, a half-second behind the others. She threw her head back, laughing a real laugh for the first time that afternoon, but it was edged with a drunken, loose hysteria. As she shimmied, the engineered assets of her body moved with a distinct, separate physics. Her breasts bounced in a firm, synchronous arc. The implants in her backside shifted with a slight, perceptible lag against the muscle and fat beneath.
One of the other girls squealed, pointing. “Oh my god, the bounce is, like, perfect! What do you even do?”
Kayla caught her breath, her hands going to her hips. She threw a glance toward the bar, her eyes finding Chad’s for a beat. A wild, unguarded grin split her face—a grin he recognized. It was the same grin she’d had after chugging a raw egg for a dare.