Chapter 2: Chapter 2
Riverside Studios smelled like hot dust and hairspray. The rigs threw a white glare across the concrete, and somewhere behind the backdrop a fan rattled against its stand. I took the chair by the lighting rig at a quarter past four and made myself part of the furniture.
Connie found me within ten minutes, clipboard in hand, and steered Elsa over between setups.
"Elsa, this is Louis. He's a consultant reviewing her revenue structure," she said, without meeting my eyes.
"It's a lot of numbers," I said. "It's kinda boring."
Elsa looked at me the way her followers described her in comments. Big eyes, quiet face, watching everything. "Oh. Okay." Her voice was soft enough that I had to lean in to catch it.
Then they put her back under the lights, and I got to watch her work.
She was a different animal on camera. The costume was the armor set from the rooftop clip, rebuilt with real budget this time, and she wore the music rather than the steel. Hips first, then shoulders, then that held breath between poses where the photographer just stopped talking and let her go. Three costume changes in an hour. During each one, she retreated behind the backdrop and came back smaller, wrapped in a robe, mumbling to the stylist about water temperature. Then the track would start, and the girl with two point one million followers would unfold again.
The photographer called a dance sequence on the second set, and Elsa closed her eyes for the whole thing. She wasn't performing for anyone in the room. That was the secret, I thought. She performed for a camera she could pretend wasn't a person.
At six, the photographer called the wrap.
Elsa came out from behind the backdrop in her robe, silver bracelet catching the last of the rig light, and stopped a careful six feet away.
"So the numbers are bad?" she asked.
Connie started packing paperwork at the craft table while I stood and crossed to her, keeping my hands loose and my voice easy.
"Not bad. Just flat. You're worth more than you're charging for it."
"Oh." She looked at her feet. Her toes curled against the concrete in the fuzzy slippers she'd changed into.
"The dancing, that's yours. Nobody teaches that. But every dollar you make comes through someone else's camera." I nodded at the rig. "Your face, your body, your craft. Someone else's lens."
"That's how it works, though." It came out small, almost a question.
"Does it?"
She looked up at me, and I let the silence sit. Connie had warned me she was skittish. She was also twenty, six hours into a shoot, and hungry for anyone who talked to her like she had a brain. I could feel the pull already, faint as a current under still water.
Connie zipped her folio shut and stood. "I've got contracts in the car. Louis, walk her through the highlights. Elsa, he knows the numbers better than I do."
"You're leaving?" The words came out of Elsa faster than she meant them.
"Ten minutes. Listen to him. You can trust him." Connie's heels clicked across the concrete, and the loading door boomed shut behind her.
And there it was. I was alone with the girl behind three million views.
Elsa hugged the robe tighter and drifted toward the craft table, where someone had left a plate of grapes. "Do you want one?" she asked. "They're kind of warm."
"Sure." I took one and ate it. Sweet, soft, half-melted under the rig lights. She ate two of hers standing very straight, like a bird at a feeder.
"Connie says you fix money," she said.
"I find where people are leaving it on the ground and pick it up for them." I let that land, then nodded at the costume rack. "How long did the armor take you?"
"Sixty hours." For the first time, her voice had color in it. "The filigree alone was two weeks of evenings."
"Sixty hours of work. And the shoot pays what the market pays anyone." I set the stem down on the table. "Elsa, do you like creating content?"
"I like making things," Elsa said. She turned a grape between her fingers without eating it. "The costumes. The dancing. The content part is just what you do after."
"Then let's call the content a side effect." I kept my voice at the same low level I'd used for the whole conversation. Loud rooms made her shrink; I'd watched her do it three times today. "You said the filigree took two weeks. Who saw that work? The close-ups of your hands, the stitches, the paint drying."
"Nobody. I post the finished thing."
"That's sixty hours of process sitting in a drawer." I let that sit for a moment. "Your fans would pay for that. Not the costume. The seeing-how-it's-made. People pay for proximity, Elsa. To the work, to the person. Right now you give them both for free."
She looked at the costume rack, at the armor hanging there with its shoulder plates catching light. "Connie said you'd say stuff like this."
"Is that why you're not looking at me?"
Her eyes came up. Big, careful, reading my face the way she read a camera. "Sorry. I'm bad at this part."
"You're not bad at it. Nobody's taught you that it's a part you can play." I leaned back against the table, unhurried. "You dance with your eyes closed. That's a choice. It works because you decided the camera isn't anyone. Talking is the same problem. So don't talk. Let other things talk for you."
"What things?"
"Your phone," I said. "A tripod costs forty dollars. You set it up over your sewing table and you film the sixty hours nobody sees. The stitching, the paint, the fittings. You post it slow. Three minutes a week."
Elsa turned the grape over in her fingers. "People want to watch me sew?"
"People want to watch you be good at something. You're good at this." I nodded at the armor on the rack. "And then, when it's finished, you dance in it. Same camera, same room, no crew, no lights you don't turn on yourself. Just you and the costume you built."
"That's," she started, then stopped, working the sentence over before she spent it. "That's just my apartment."
"Your apartment is free. Studios charge by the hour." I kept my tone light, like we were discussing groceries. "Here's the part that matters, though. Tell me something honest. Do you like dancing while you're wearing them? The costumes you make?"
She looked at the armor again, and something in her face loosened, the careful reserve slipping a notch. "Yeah. I do. Sometimes I finish one at two in the morning and I put it on before I even clean the table. Just to see it move."
"There it is."
"There what is?"
"That's the product, Elsa. Not the shoot. Not this." I gestured at the glare, the rigs, the photographer's marked spots taped to the floor. "Two a.m. in your apartment, wearing something you made, moving because you want to."
Elsa ate the grape she'd been turning over. Her cheeks had gone pink under the studio glare.
"There it is," I said. "Okay. Platforms. Walk me through them. Where do you post, and what does each one pay you?"
"TikTok. Instagram. Twitch." She counted them off on her fingers, grape juice shining on her thumb. "The Twitch pays the rent, mostly. Subscriptions."
"And the other two?"
"Nothing, really. They're just where people find me."
I nodded slowly, like she'd confirmed a diagnosis. "So your biggest venues are free showrooms. You decorate them, you fill them, and you collect nothing at the door."
"That's just how it works."
"Things that are just how it works are usually just how somebody else profits." I pulled out my phone and turned it face up on the table between us, casual as a card dealer. "Has anyone ever talked to you about subscription platforms?"
"Like Patreon?"
"Like OnlyFans."
Her face did something interesting. Not shock. More like a word she'd heard a thousand times and never once applied to herself. "No. I mean, I know what it is. Everyone knows what it is."
"But?"
"But that's for..." She stopped, recalibrated, tried again. "Girls who do that stuff. I do cosplay. It's craft."
"The craft is what they'd be subscribing for," I said. "The dancing in your apartment at two in the morning. The fittings. The costume coming off at the end of a sixty-hour build, because you're tired and it's just you and the mirror."
She stared at the table. The fan behind the backdrop rattled on, filling the silence for both of us.
"Connie asked me about it once," she said, trailing off, turning the grape stem between her fingers. "A few months ago. I said no, and she didn't bring it up again."
"Why'd you say no?"
"Because I didn't know what I'd even post." She shrugged into the robe's collar. "It felt like a door to a room with nothing in it."
"That's because nobody showed you the room." I tapped the phone once, didn't unlock it. "You already told me what goes in it. Two a.m. fittings. The builds. The dancing when the costume's finished and nobody's watching. None of that is anything you're not already doing for free."
"But behind a paywall."
"Behind a door with a handle on your side." I watched her absorb that, her big eyes going somewhere middle-distance, doing math she didn't yet have numbers for. "Ninety-one percent of your audience is men who found you through your body in a costume. You know that?"
"Connie showed me a chart once."
"The chart doesn't say what they want. I will. They want to feel like the apartment is theirs. Like the two a.m. is theirs." I kept my voice level, unhurried, the way I'd talk about weather. "Right now they get thirty seconds of you in a studio with ten people in the room. You'd be giving them the version that doesn't exist anywhere else. The real one."
"The real one," she repeated, tasting it.
I knew what was happening behind those big careful eyes. I'd seen it a hundred times, in hotel rooms and cafés and chairs exactly like this one. She wasn't sure why she was still talking to me. Some part of her had drawn a line years ago, quiet and private, the way shy people draw all their lines: she would never do OnlyFans. She'd said it to herself in the shower, in the checkout line, whenever the thought drifted too close. Never. And now she was sitting in a robe with grape juice on her thumb, doing arithmetic about a room she'd sworn she'd never enter, and she couldn't feel the floor giving way under her.
That was the trick of it. She didn't feel pushed. She felt like she'd arrived somewhere on her own.
"I'm not saying yes to anything," she said finally.
"Good. Saying yes is my job, not yours." I smiled and let it sit. "All I want is for you to know the door exists."
"I always told myself I'd never do that." It came out before she could stop it, and her hand went to the silver bracelet, turning it once around her wrist.
"And now you're wondering why you're even having this conversation."
She looked at me sharply. "How did you..."
"Because it's the right question." I leaned forward, elbows on the table, and kept my voice where it was, low and unhurried. "You're not breaking a promise, Elsa. You're checking whether the promise was ever yours or something you picked up because it was easier than deciding."
The fan rattled. She didn't answer right away, and I watched her not answer, the way her jaw worked through three false starts.
"I don't know if I could do that. I mean... are you asking me to...?"
She never finished it. Her mouth opened and closed twice, and the question stayed behind her teeth, too blunt to say out loud in a robe with grape juice on her thumb. Are you asking me to take my clothes off? I watched her not say it, her eyes flicking to the costume rack, to the door, back to me.
I didn't make her say it either.
"I'm not asking you to do anything," I said. "I never ask. I wouldn't ask you to do a single thing you weren't comfortable with. That's not how I work."
"Then what would I..."
"You'd decide what the room contains. Every post, every picture, chosen by you. The craft stays the craft. Nothing you'd flinch to show your mother, if that's the line you want." I shrugged, easy, like the whole thing weighed nothing. "But I'll tell you the truth, because numbers are the only thing I'm honest about. Girls with your audience, your engagement, starting on that platform for the first time? They make a lot of money, Elsa. First month, six figures isn't a story; it's a floor."
The fan rattled. Her thumb stopped on the bracelet.
"Six figures," she repeated. "A month?"
"Conservatively. If you run it the way I'd show you." I stood, unhurried, and dropped my card on the table between us. "You don't have to answer tonight."
"Wait!" She caught me halfway to the door, one hand out, the other still twisting the bracelet. "If I did it. If I even tried. Would you... would you help me? With the account?"
Louis knew she would tell him to wait. They always do.
I let the pause stretch just long enough to feel like consideration. "I don't take clients who aren't sure."
"I'm not sure." Her voice dropped, honest in a way the camera never got. "But I'm not sure about anything anymore. That counts, right?"
"It counts." I came back to the table and sat on the edge of it, close enough that she had to tilt her chin up to keep my eyes.
"But if I wanted to see what it felt like," she said, "without making an account. Without putting anything out there. Could you show me that?"
"What do you mean, show you?"
"Like a rehearsal." The words tumbled quicker now, her voice finding a gear I hadn't heard all afternoon. "Just me, no cameras, and nobody ever sees it. You'd tell me what to do, and I'd do it, and I'd know if I liked it. Before anything's real."
I let the silence work for me. Rehearsal. She'd handed me the word herself, wrapped it in safety, and offered it across the table like it was her idea. It was, in every way that mattered. That was the part she'd remember later.
"A rehearsal," I said. "Just so we're clear on the word. Nobody sees it. Not Connie, not a camera, nobody."
"Nobody," she said. "I'd want that. It would feel safer."
"Then that's what it is."
She looked at the costume rack, then at the taped marks on the floor. "Could we do it here? Now? Before I change my mind?"
"We'd need the lights. You'd want to know what it looks like under lights."
"Yeah. That's exactly it."
I walked to the rig and killed the key light, leaving one soft fill glowing amber across the backdrop. Rooms felt safer when they weren't fully lit. I dragged a stool onto the taped mark and sat her down.
"First thing you learn. The camera isn't here, so I'm not here either. Pretend it's two a.m. and the costume just got finished."
She closed her eyes the way she'd done for the dance sequence, and I watched her breathing slow. When she opened them, they'd gone somewhere else entirely.
"Show me how the armor comes off," I said. "Slow. Like you're tired."
Her fingers went to the shoulder plate. She worked the clasp with a craftsman's care, let the steel slide down her arm and hang from her wrist. The bodysuit underneath had a high collar, but the zipper started at the nape of her neck, and I told her to pull it down only as far as felt honest.
She pulled it to the middle of her back and stopped, trembling a little.
"That's honest," I said. "That's exactly the frame."
"What comes next?" Her voice had lost its mumbling. It was small, but it was aimed.
"Turn around. Face me, not the lights."
She turned. Her face was flushed pink from the collarbone up, and her hands were steady on the zipper pull, and I understood why 2.1 million men followed her.
Then her hands stopped.
The zipper hung half down her spine, and she stood there in the amber fill light with her fingers frozen on the pull. The fan rattled behind the backdrop. She didn't move at all, and I watched the tremor come into her wrists before it reached her face.
"I don't," she said, and stopped. Her thumb slid off the zipper and she looked down at it like it belonged to someone else. "Why am I doing this?"
"Take your time."
"No, I mean it." Her voice came out raw, aimed right at me. "Why am I doing this? I've never wanted to do anything like this before. Never. I don't look at that stuff, I don't think about it, and now I'm standing here with my..." She pressed her lips together. Her eyes were wet at the edges. "I've never wanted this. So why do I want to now?"
The room held its shape around us. I stayed on the table's edge where I was, hands loose, and gave her the silence to fill.
"Because you never had a safe room before," I said. "You told yourself no for years, and that's easy when nobody's ever offered you the version with a handle on your side. A rehearsal nobody sees. No camera. No Connie. Just you finding out where your line actually is instead of where you guessed it was." I kept my voice low. "Wanting to look at your line isn't the same as crossing it."
She breathed. Once, twice, the robe shifting at her throat.
"So it's me," she said. "It's my idea. That's what you're telling me."
"It's always been your idea. I just didn't interrupt it."
Her fingers went back to the zipper pull. They were steadier than before, and she didn't close her eyes this time. She kept her big, careful gaze on mine while the steel teeth whispered down another inch.
"I want to keep going," she said. "Tell me what's next."
I stood and crossed to her, slow enough that she could hear my footsteps on the concrete.
"Zipper first. All the way, this time. Then the shoulders."
She pulled it down to the small of her back and rolled the bodysuit off her shoulders one at a time. The armor plate dropped to the floor with a soft clank. Underneath, she wore plain white cotton, a simple bra and little briefs, pale skin glowing amber under the fill light.
"Good," I said. "Now look down at yourself. Tell me what you see."
"I see a girl in her underwear in a studio." Her voice shook, but she didn't look away.
"Look harder. You built everything on that rack in sixty hours. The body wearing it earned it too."
Her hands drifted up her own ribs, feeling the shape of herself like she was checking a seam. Her nipples had hardened against the cotton, small peaks under white fabric, and she noticed me noticing and flushed darker.
"You're staring," she whispered.
"Of course I am. That's the job you're rehearsing for. A million men staring, and you learning to like it." I stopped an arm's length away. "Does it feel bad?"
"No," she said, and swallowed. "That's the weird part. It feels warm."
"Then push the straps off."
She slid the bra straps down her arms one at a time, unhooked the clasp behind her back with clumsy fingers, and let it fall. Her breasts were small and high, pink-tipped, rising fast with her breathing. She crossed her arms out of habit, and I said, "No. Arms down. Own it."
She let them hang at her sides, trembling, chin up, watching my eyes the way she watched a camera.
"Turn for me," I said. "Slow. Like the dance sequence, eyes closed if you want."
She turned, hips finding that loose rhythm on their own, and by the second rotation her eyes were shut and her thumbs had hooked the waistband of the briefs, waiting.
"Ask me," I said quietly.
"Can I take these off too?"
"They're yours. It's your room."
She pushed them down over her hips, slowly, the cotton peeling away, and stepped out of them with one foot, then the other. She was bare now under the amber fill, pale all over, a small neat strip of strawberry blonde between her thighs, and she stood on the taped mark with her hands open at her sides like she didn't know where to put them.
"What do I do now?" she whispered.
"Whatever you'd do at two a.m. if you thought nobody was looking."
Her hands came up on their own. She touched her own throat, then her collarbones, then lower, fingers tracing the swell of her breasts. Her nipples were stiff, pink, and when her thumbs brushed them her mouth fell open a little.
"That's it," I said. "Don't stop."
She cupped herself, squeezed softly, and a sound came out of her, half breath and half voice, the first real sound I'd heard her make. Her hips started moving, that loose rhythm finding her again, and her hand slid down her stomach, hesitated at the soft skin below her navel.
"Go on."
Her fingers slipped lower, through the pale curls, and she gasped when she touched herself. Her knees bent a little. She rubbed slow circles, eyes shut, cheeks blazing, and the wet sound of it carried in the empty studio, louder than the rattling fan.
"Look at me while you do it."
Her eyes opened, glassy, and fixed on mine. She kept going. Her fingers worked faster, two of them slick and shining when she lifted them, then pressed back down against her clit. Her thighs trembled. The bracelet caught the amber light with every small jerk of her wrist.
"I feel," she panted, "oh, I feel it."
"Don't hold it back. It's your room."
She came standing up, knees buckling, one hand slapping against the stool for balance, a long shaky moan tearing out of her loud enough to echo off the concrete. She sagged against the stool, chest heaving, fingers wet, staring at me like she'd just been born.
"Oh my god," she breathed. "I've never. Not like that. Not ever."
"I know," I said. "Now you know what the room's for."
She sagged onto the stool, legs still loose, and laughed at herself. A small, shocked sound.
"I liked it," she said. "I liked it a lot. That's so weird. I didn't know it would feel like that."
"Nothing to be weird about."
"And you were watching me the whole time." Her fingers were still sticky. She looked down at them, then up, cheeks blazing. "I liked that too. I liked that you were watching."
"There it is again."
"I keep thinking about the comments. Fourteen thousand of them, all wanting to see me." She bit her lip. "I always pretended I didn't read them. But I think I'd like it. All those men, watching." She said it slowly, like she was testing ice. "I like that idea."
"I'm glad you liked it," I said, and stood.
I crossed to the sound system bolted to the wall by the loading door. The photographer's playlist was still queued. I scrolled until I found it, the same track the DJ had used in her rooftop clip, the one her hips already knew by heart.
"One more thing I want you to try."
She looked up from the stool, bare and glowing amber, waiting.
I hit play.
The song filled the concrete room, bass rolling off the steel rafters. She recognized it in the first two bars. I saw it hit her face before it hit her body.
"Dance," I said. "Just for you. Nobody's here."
She slid off the stool and found the mark with her toes, and when the beat dropped, her hips answered before her shyness could.
The bass rolled through the concrete and up through my shoes. She danced bare under the amber fill, the strip of strawberry blonde between her thighs catching light with every swing of her hips. Her fingers traced down her own stomach the way she'd learned an hour ago, like the body was hers to discover on camera.
Halfway through the track she opened her eyes and found me instead of the wall.
"Do you want me to keep going?" she called over the music.
"Turn around. Slow."
She turned, and the armor of shyness was gone. Her ass rolled with the beat, pale and full where the rest of her was slim, and she looked back over her shoulder at me while she did it. The song wound down. She didn't stop. She danced through the silence after it, and then she was walking toward me, hips still moving, until her fingertips landed flat on my chest.
"Your turn," she said. "It's not fair if I'm the only one."
I let her take the hem of my polo. She pulled it up with the same care she'd worked a clasp, folding nothing, just dropping it on the stool. Her hands were warm on my stomach.
"I've never," she started, then laughed at herself. "You know I've never. You probably know everything I've never."
"Then pick one and we'll fix it."
She went to her knees right there on the concrete. Looked up at me with those big watching eyes and asked, "Can I?"
"Open my belt and find out."
Her fingers fumbled the buckle twice, then had it. She pulled my trousers down my thighs and my boxers after, and my cock came out hard, right at her face. She stared at it the way she'd stared at the zipper, like a word she'd heard a thousand times and never applied to herself.
"It's bigger than I thought they were."
"Touch it first."
She wrapped her small hand around the shaft and stroked once, slow, feeling the weight of it. Her thumb smeared the wetness at the tip and she made that little sound again, half breath and half voice. Then she leaned in and licked the head, tentative, tasting.
"Is that okay?"
"You've got a mouth on you nobody's found yet. Use it."
She took me in. Shallow at first, lips stretched around the crown, her tongue working the underside. I kept my hand light on the back of her head, not pushing, just present. She took another inch, gagged softly, pulled back and went in again. Determined. A girl who'd spent sixty hours on filigree, bringing the same patience to it. Spit slicked her chin. Her bracelet clicked against my hip with every small bob of her head.
"Breathe through your nose," I said. "Relax your throat. Take what you can."
She did. Two more inches slid past her lips and her eyes watered up at me, proud of herself. When I finally pulled her off, strings of spit hung from her mouth to my cock and she was panting, grinning like she'd landed a trick she'd been practicing in secret.
"I liked that too," she said, wiping her chin. "God, I like everything. That's not normal, right?"
"Stand up. Turn around. Hands on the stool."
She bent over it on the taped mark, presenting her ass to me, that pale heart-shaped swell with the pink glisten of her cunt underneath, already wet from her own fingers and the dancing. I ran a hand over her hip.
"Last check. This stays in the room, same as everything else."
"I know. I want it." She looked back at me. "Please."
I pressed into her slow. She was tight around me, unbelievably so, and she gasped as her body opened inch by inch, her knuckles whitening on the stool's seat.
"Oh fuck. Oh, it's big. Keep going, keep going."
Bottomed out, I gave her a moment, then started a rhythm. She met it, hips finding that same loose instinct, pushing back onto me with every stroke. The studio filled with the sounds of it, her moans echoing off concrete, the slap of skin, the fan still rattling behind the backdrop like it had seen this all before.
"Harder," she panted. "Please, harder, I'm close already."
I gripped her hips and gave her what she asked for. She came fast, loud, clamping down around me while her legs shook and her cries bounced off the steel rafters. I wasn't far behind her. I pulled out and she spun around and dropped to her knees before I said a word, mouth open, and caught me across her tongue and lips, blinking up at me as it landed.
She knelt there a long moment, dripping, then swallowed and laughed the small shocked laugh from before.
"So," she said. "Do rehearsals usually go like this?"
"No," I said, helping her up off her knees. "This was just the taster."
I picked my polo off the stool and pulled it back on while she watched, still pink, still glowing, her fingers working at the bracelet like it needed adjusting.
"I have a room reserved for us," I said. "A hotel off the causeway. A week."
"A week?" She sat back down on the stool, legs pressed together, unaware or unconcerned that she was still bare. "Doing what? Rehearsing?"
"Rehearsing, and setting up your accounts."
"Accounts." Her brow creased. "I thought it was one. OnlyFans."
"It's two." I kept my voice level, matter-of-fact, the way I'd say the studio charges by the hour. "The first is the subscription account. The dancing, the builds, the two a.m. stuff. That one you understand already."
"And the second?"
"The second lets your fans book you. One-on-one meetings, private, paid by the hour. A fan pays, and he gets you, in person, alone, for as long as he's bought."
Her mouth opened. "Like, meet a stranger? In a room? That sounds..." She didn't finish it, but her eyes went to the floor, and I watched her do the math anyway. Two point one million fans; each of them could have access to her.
"That's why the week isn't just rehearsal," I said. "It's training. I'll teach you how to handle a room. What to charge. How to make a man feel like the two a.m. is his and still keep the handle on your side of the door. By the time the week's done, you'll walk into that room as you danced into this one."
She looked up at me, thumb stopped on the bracelet. "We'd be there the whole week?"
"We'll be there as long as it takes. Longer if we want to stay and have fun."
"Go get your things, then," I said. "Bag, phone, charger. Whatever you need for a week. We leave when you're ready."
"Now?" She stood, and only then seemed to remember she was naked. She gathered the cotton briefs off the floor and stepped into them, cheeks still pink. "Like, right now tonight?"
"No time like it. Your calendar's clear; Connie cleared it herself. We drive over, you settle in, we order food, and tonight we continue what we started."
She nodded slowly, fastening the briefs, then the bra, hooking it with less fumbling than before. "Okay. Okay, I'll go get my bag."
She padded toward the dressing area in her slippers, then stopped. "Louis? Tonight. What happens tonight?"
"Food first. Then we talk about what you liked and what you didn't. Then we practice the parts you liked."
She bit her lip and disappeared behind the backdrop.
I checked my phone while the stylist helped her pack. Two texts from Connie. The first was the hotel address, confirmed. The second said only: her calendar is cleared; don't call me until Sunday. I pocketed it.
Elsa came out twenty minutes later in leggings and a hoodie, hair tied back, duffel over her shoulder. Without the costume, she looked smaller, a college girl at an airport. Her cheeks were still pink, though. She kept glancing at me when she thought I wasn't watching.