Chapter 16: The Morning After
Sunlight cut through a gap in the curtains and laid a bright stripe across Mandy's bare back. She was curled against Jenna's side, one arm thrown over Rebecca's hip, all of them a tangle of limbs and hair on the rug where they'd fallen the night before. Empty water bottles stood in a row on the coffee table. A blanket had been kicked into a heap in the corner.
Alice was already awake. She lay on her side, propped on one elbow, watching Pete breathe. He was on his stomach, face turned toward her, his arm stretched out as if reaching for her in his sleep. The morning light caught the dust on his shoulders, made gold of the fine hairs on his forearm.
She'd never felt like this before. Last night had been more than sex, more than a scene, more than anything she'd done on camera. When Pete had described her desire as pink, when he'd said she wanted to be loved so hard it bruised, something in her chest had cracked open. He'd seen her. Not the performer, not the content creator, the real her.
Pete stirred. His eyes opened, found hers immediately, and a slow smile spread across his face. "You're staring."
"You're worth staring at." She reached out, ran her finger down his nose, over his lips. "Morning."
He caught her hand and kissed her knuckles. "Morning." He glanced around the room, taking in the sleeping women, the mess, the blankets. "That really happened."
"It really happened."
Pete sat up carefully, wincing at something in his back, and stretched. The motion pulled the muscles in his shoulders, and Alice watched the way the light played over him. He stood and offered her his hand. "Come with me. Kitchen. I need to tell you something."
She took his hand and let him pull her up. They stepped over Jenna's outspread legs and around the coffee table, leaving the others to sleep. The kitchen was warm, angled morning sun pouring across the counters, dust motes floating in the light like tiny stars.
Pete leaned against the counter with his back to the window, folding his arms. He looked nervous. She'd never seen him nervous before, not on camera, not live, not in any of the hundred things they'd done together.
"What's going on?" she asked.
"I can't stop thinking about last night." He ran a hand through his hair, ruffling it further. "Not the sex. Not the trip. The vision. What I saw."
"You said the walls were breathing."
"That was part of it." He uncrossed his arms, crossed them again. "But there was more. I saw us. All of us, tangled together, but it was like I could see through people. See their colors, their desires. I said it wrong last night. I said I'm all of us. But what I meant was, I saw our future."
Alice moved closer, resting her hip against the counter beside him. "What future?"
He turned to face her fully, taking both her hands in his. His palms were warm, the calluses from the gym rough against her skin. "I saw us building something real, Al. A shared account. A brand. Both our names on it, not just you filming with me or me filming with you, but us. Together. A life."
She felt her heart kick. "That's a lot to see in a mushroom vision."
"Maybe. But I felt it." He squeezed her hands. "I was lying there, tripping out of my mind, and I saw us a year from now. Two years. A house with a room we use to shoot. Mandy behind the camera, or in front of it, wherever she wants. We're making actual money, not just side cash. We're a team. And I'm happy. I'm so fucking happy it hurts."
Alice studied his face. There was no joke in it, no performance. He was offering her something real, something she'd wanted since the moment she'd met him in that coffee shop, scruffy and grinning and carrying a twelve-inch secret she hadn't known about yet.
"What about the timing?" she asked. "We haven't even been together that long."
"We've been making content together for months. We've had sex on camera, off camera, with and without our best friend. We've taken psychedelics and fucked strangers together." He laughed, a breathy sound. "I think we're past the getting to know you stage."
She laughed too, because he wasn't wrong. "So what are you asking me?"
Pete let go of one hand and reached up to cup her cheek. His thumb traced her cheekbone, gentle, slow. "I'm asking you to do this with me. For real. Not as a collab, not as a one-off. As my partner. My girlfriend. My business partner. My everything. I want to make it official before the feeling fades."
Her eyes burned. She blinked, and a tear slipped down her cheek, caught by his thumb.
"Is that a yes?" he asked. "Because I'm terrified you're going to say no, and I've never been terrified of anything on camera."
"It's a yes." She said it before she could think about it, and it felt right, like the last piece of a puzzle clicking into place. "It's a yes, Pete."
He pulled her into his arms and buried his face in her hair. She felt his chest shake, and she wasn't sure if he was laughing or crying, and it didn't matter. She held him tight, breathing him in, the salt and sweat and something clean underneath.
In the living room, someone stirred. Mandy's voice drifted in, thick with sleep. "Are you two having a moment without me? Rude."
Pete laughed into Alice's hair. "Get dressed," he called back. "We're having a meeting."
"A what?"
"An official one." He pulled back, grinning down at Alice, his eyes bright and wet. "The first meeting of Alice and Pete, officially a brand."
Alice laughed and kissed him, hard, and when she pulled back she was grinning too. "I like the sound of that."
Mandy appeared in the doorway, hair a disaster, blanket wrapped around her shoulders like a cape. She looked between them, sleepy and suspicious. "What did I miss?"
"Everything," Pete said. "Absolutely everything."
Mandy pushed off the doorframe and shuffled in, the blanket dragging behind her like a train. She took in the two of them, Pete bare from the waist up with his hair sticking up in six directions, Alice with her eyes still glassy, and her face moved through something complicated in the space of a second.
"Okay," she said. "Someone talk."
Alice reached for the hand that wasn't holding the blanket shut. "He asked me to be his girlfriend. And his business partner. The girlfriend part was the easy answer."
Mandy looked at Pete. "What's the business part?"
"I want one account. Not yours and mine and a separate thing when we shoot together. One brand, both our names on it, everything we make going into the same pot." Pete scratched the back of his neck. "I know how it sounds. Like a guy who got high and had a feeling."
"You did get high and have a feeling," Mandy said.
"Yeah. And I'm still right."
The kettle clicked off behind them, nobody having turned it on. Steam curled up into the light and vanished. Alice slid onto one of the stools at the counter, and the cool wood against her bare thighs woke her up the rest of the way.
"So what does that make me?" Mandy asked.
Nobody said anything for a second. Mandy set the blanket down on the floor and stood there in nothing, arms crossed, hoop earrings catching the sun, and Alice understood that this was the real question of the morning.
"A partner," Alice said. "Full. Not the girl who holds the camera and gets paid in content."
Mandy's jaw worked. "You want to put me on the paycheck."
"I want to put your name in the bio."
That landed. Mandy looked at the floor, then at the ceiling, then at Pete, who was watching her the way he watched her in front of a lens, patient and completely present.
"I've been running your DMs for eight months," Mandy said. "I set the lights. I found the strap-ons. I booked the shoot with Jenna and Rebecca. I quit two shifts a week to do this."
"I know," Alice said.
"So don't just tell me I'm a partner. Tell me what that is. Percentage. What percentage?"
"Thirty," Pete said. "Off the top, before either of us takes anything."
Mandy's mouth opened and closed. "That's more than I was going to ask for."
"Then it's a good deal."
Alice watched the two of them and felt something settle in her chest, heavy and warm, like a stone dropped into a well. She got off the stool, crossed the tile, and put her arms around Mandy's neck.
"You can still wait tables," she said into her ear. "But you'll never have to."
Mandy laughed, wet and short, and hugged her back hard. When she pulled away she was grinning. "Fine. But we're changing the name. Alice and Pete sounds like a lawn care company."
"What do we even call it?" Alice said.
They cycled through a dozen and hated all of them. Pete tried something with his nickname and Mandy made a face. Mandy tried something with the word "duo" and Alice threw a dish towel at her. Somewhere in the middle of it Alice turned to get the coffee going and Pete caught her by the wrist, pulled her back against his chest, and kissed the side of her neck. The sun was full across the counter now, warm as a hand.
She turned in his arms and kissed him properly, and his hand slid down her spine to her ass and stayed there. Mandy made a sound behind them.
"Should I go?" she asked. "Because I can go."
"If you go, we're bringing you back," Alice said against Pete's mouth.
The blanket was already on the floor. Mandy crossed the kitchen and pressed up behind Alice, her breasts flat against Alice's back, her mouth on Alice's shoulder. Three sets of hands, morning warm, no hurry in any of them. Alice reached back and found Mandy's hip, then the wet heat between her legs, and Mandy sighed into her neck.
Pete lifted Alice by the waist and set her on the counter's edge, coffee forgotten, and pushed her knees apart. He went down slow, mouth first, and Alice grabbed the edge of the counter with one hand and the back of his head with the other, heel hooked over his shoulder, breathing through her nose. Mandy stood at her side and fed her own fingers into Alice's mouth, and Alice sucked them clean, watching Mandy's face flush.
He didn't stop until she came, thighs shaking, head tipped against the cabinet. Then he stood and slid into her in one slow stroke while Mandy pressed her forehead to Alice's temple and whispered something filthy about the neighbors.
It was fast and hot and close, three bodies in a strip of sunlight, Mandy's fingers on her clit keeping her going, Pete's hands gripping her hips like he was holding on to something. When he pulled out and finished across her stomach, Mandy leaned down and licked it off her skin like nothing in the world was strange.
"Okay," Mandy said, straightening up. "I'm in. For all of it."
Alice laughed, weak and boneless, and wiped her stomach with a paper towel.
Then her phone lit up on the counter, face down, buzzing once.
She turned it over. The payout notification from the Jenna and Rebecca stream had cleared, and the number made her sit up straighter. It was more than the last four months combined. More than her rent, Mandy's rent, and the deposit on the apartment Alice had been half-heartedly scrolling past at two in the morning for a year.
Pete read it over her shoulder. Nobody spoke.
"We should announce it," he said finally. "Today. On camera. First thing under the new name."
"No," Alice said. She typed for a second and held the phone up so both of them could see the blank caption field. "First thing under the name is the three of us saying what we're building, and then we give them the first video as the brand. And the name is Pink and Green."
Mandy frowned. "That's not the name of the brand."
"It's not the brand. It's us." Alice looked at her, then at Pete. "Pink, green, and whatever color you are. That's the brand."
Pete kissed her shoulder. "Post it."
Alice hit post and put the phone face down on the counter. The screen kept buzzing, once, twice, a dozen times, the soft clatter of notifications stacking up in the sunlit kitchen.
Mandy picked it up after a moment and turned it white. "You've got comments already. Like, ten in the last minute."
"People are awake," Pete said. "People are always awake."
Alice took the phone back and scrolled. Her fans had seen the announcement, the three of them standing in the kitchen, no shirts, no cares, a hand-scrawled pink and green heart on a napkin held up between them. The replies were a mix of heart eyes, fire emojis, and the occasional person asking if this meant Mandy would be a permanent fixture now.
"This is good," she said. "This is really good."
Pete came up behind her, chin on her shoulder, reading over her. His hands settled on her waist. "What did they say about the video?"
"They want us to show the sequel to last night." Mandy laughed, holding the phone. "One of them said 'if you gave the four of us foreshadowing, that's a dick move.' A few want to know if it's just the three of us now."
"Jenna and Rebecca were a one-time thing," Pete said. "They were fans. They asked, cute, but we've never really done that before."
"We haven't done a lot of things before," Alice said. "And we've done everything now."
Mandy set the phone down and rubbed her arms, goosebumps in the cooling kitchen air. "So we're really doing this. The three of us, one account, filming what we want."
"We're really doing it," Pete said. "And I'm not going to lie, I'm a little hurt that the brand name isn't 'The Package and Friends.'"
"Too long," Alice said. "And the friends part sounds like a kids show."
They laughed, and then the kettle burst into a whistle, the water finally boiling. Alice turned it off and pulled down three mugs, the mismatched ceramics from her and Mandy's joint apartment rummage sale days. She poured, black for Pete, cream for Mandy, herself just sugar, and they stood in the warm light drinking.
"Should we announce that we're dating?" Alice asked him. "The solo subscribers know you, know the collab videos. But that was a guest feature. This is different."
"Worse comes to worst, we lose the folks who only came for solo content," Pete said. "The ones who stay will be the ones who actually like us. Last time I checked, that's everyone who stayed through chapter fifteen."
"Chapter fifteen isn't a thing," Mandy said. "That's not what we call them."
"Then what do we call them?"
"We don't. We just post."
Alice laughed into her mug. It tasted like something settling into the right shape.
The living room shifted behind them, a murmur, then the sound of someone stretching. Jenna appeared in the doorway, sheet-wrapped, hair a dark mess. She looked at all three of them standing in the kitchen with mugs in their hands and not a stitch on.
"Did I miss a meeting?" she asked.
"We just had one," Mandy said. "Agenda was 'what do we do now' and the answer is everything."
Jenna leaned against the doorframe, a sleepy smile on her face. "Good answer. Rebecca's still down. I think you broke her."
"Sorry," Pete said, without guilt.
"Don't be." Jenna crossed, took the fourth mug off the rack, and poured herself coffee like she belonged there. "That was the best night I've had in years. Both of you, and you." She nodded at Mandy. "Whatever you did with that strap-on, I want it for my birthday."
"You'll have to subscribe for that," Mandy said.
Jenna laughed. "I already did. Took me five minutes this morning."
Pete looked at Alice, eyebrows raised. She felt a warmth spread through her, separate from the coffee.
"Okay," she said. "We film today. No waiting for the feeling to fade. We'll do a live stream at sunset, introduce ourselves as the new brand, explain the name, and then we'll give them a taste of what's coming."
"What are we posting first?" Pete asked. "What's the act?"
Alice let the sun warm her shoulders, thinking. "We've done cowgirl. Anal. Strap-on. Orgy. Tonight I want something simple. Just us. The two of us, no toys, no cameras to hide behind. We tell them our relationship changed, and then we show them what that looks like."
Mandy set her mug down. "And if I want to be in it?"
"Then you're the guest feature." Alice put a hand on her shoulder. "You started as our behind-the-scenes girl. Today you're the third name on the marquee."
Mandy smirked. "Marquee's a strong word."
"It's a strong brand."
Pete slid an arm around Alice's waist, pulled her against him, and the sun came through the window and caught them both in gold. Jenna watched silently from the counter, mug cradled in her palms, sheet slipping down her shoulder.
"Get your live stream ready," Pete said. "We're going to change the game tonight."