Chapter 5: Morning After Reckoning
The fluorescent light in the kitchen buzzed like a trapped hornet, a sound Mack had come to associate with the hollow ache behind his eyes. Weeks had bled into one another, a blur of avoided glances and the incessant, mechanical whir of the ring light from Derek's room—now exclusively Lexi's domain. The camera hadn't been turned on again between them. Its silent tripod in the living room was a monolith to the line they’d vaporized.
Mack was leaning against the cold stainless steel counter, gripping a mug of coffee that had long gone lukewarm. The cracked mirror over the sink showed a fraction of his tired face. He heard the bedroom door open, the shuffle of feet.
Derek padded into the kitchen. He wore impossibly tight navy volleyball shorts that clung to the sweeping curve of his new hips and the solid muscle of his thighs, the fabric strained thin. An oversized white tee hung loosely from one shoulder, the neckline sliding to reveal a collarbone that seemed more delicate now, or maybe that was just the context. His hair was a mess, flat on one side. He had no makeup on, the faint shadow of his beard growing in soft and dark under the kitchen’s unforgiving glare.
He went straight to the fridge, his back to Mack. When he spoke, his voice was a low, gravelly rumble, the voice Mack hadn’t heard in what felt like years. It was Derek’s voice. The real one. It vibrated in the quiet kitchen like a memory.
“Sorry, bro,” Derek said, not turning around, his words muffled slightly by the refrigerator door. “If I kept you up last night. Chad…” He paused, pulling out a carton of egg whites. “Chad really knows how to lay pipe.”
The words, in that deep, casual, utterly masculine tone, were a physical blow. Mack’s knuckles tightened around the ceramic mug. It was a confession and a dismissal, all in one. An apology for noise, and a graphic detail offered like a weather report. The casual cruelty of it stole his breath.
Before Mack could form a sound—a laugh, a snarl, anything—the apartment door swung open.
Chad filled the frame. He was all carved oak and sun-bleached hair, his sculpted abs a topographical map of vanity beneath a thin white tank. He radiated the heat of a morning workout and uncomplicated confidence.
Instantly, Derek’s body changed. His posture dissolved, shoulders softening, one hip jutting out as he turned. The transformation was so swift it seemed neurological. A brilliant, vacant smile lit up his face.
“Ohmygod, Chad!” The voice that came out was high, a sugar-rush bubble, stripping all the gravel and weight from the words he’d just spoken. “You scared me! I thought you left for work!”
Chad chuckled, a deep, unbothered sound. He strode across the kitchen, wrapped a massive arm around Derek’s waist, and planted a loud, possessive kiss on his cheek. His other hand came down in a familiar, echoing slap on the fabric stretched taut over Derek’s ass. The sound was sharp, a gunshot in the tiny room.
“Couldn’t leave without seeing my girl,” Chad said, his fingers lingering, squeezing.
Mack’s world narrowed to the points of contact: Chad’s lips on Derek’s skin, Chad’s hand on Derek’s body. He watched Derek—Lexi—giggle, a light, tinkling sound that curdled the coffee in Mack’s stomach. Lexi leaned into the touch, tilting her head, playing with the hem of Chad’s tank.
“You’re the worst,” Lexi cooed, without meaning it.
“The worst that’s the best,” Chad corrected, grinning. He finally glanced at Mack, his eyes friendly and empty. “Sup, dude? You look like hell.”
Mack managed to unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth. “Late night,” he grunted.
“Tell me about it,” Chad said, winking down at Lexi, who swatted his chest with a perfectly manicured hand. Mack watched that hand. He knew those knuckles, had taped them after bar fights. Now they were painted a shell pink.
“We’re gonna grab acai bowls,” Chad announced, his attention already a closed loop around the person in his arms. “You wanna come?”
“Nah,” Mack said, his voice barely functional. “Got clients.”
“Your loss.” Chad kissed Lexi’s temple. “Ready, babe?”
“Just let me grab my keys!” Lexi chirped. She ducked out of Chad’s hold and skipped—actually fucking skipped—back toward her room. For a single, fleeting second as she passed Mack, her eyes flicked to his. The brilliant vacuity was gone, replaced by something flat and impenetrable, a shutter slamming down. Then it was gone, and she was calling out in that bubbly voice, “Don’t be jealous, Mackie! We’ll bring you a spoon!”
The door clicked shut behind them, leaving a void filled only by the buzzing light.
Mack stood frozen. The image was seared into him: the harsh dichotomy of the deep, confession in the morning quiet, and the instant, seamless pivot to performance. The playful slap still seemed to echo off the steel appliances. He looked down at his hand. He was still holding the coffee mug, his grip so tight the tendons stood out like cables. A hairline crack, invisible until now, split the glaze from rim to base.
He placed the mug carefully on the counter, a surgeon setting down a fragile instrument. The silence was a physical presence, heavier for the ghost of that girlish laugh. He was supposed to be the architect of this. The mastermind. He had the blueprints, he’d secured the financing, he’d overseen the construction.
But he hadn’t calculated this. He hadn’t factored in the sight of his best friend, the person he knew down to the smell of his sweat after a game, dissolving into a stranger for the approval of a grinning meathead. He hadn’t factored in the way his own stomach would twist, seeing the ass he’d paid for, that he’d touched in a moment of shattered clarity, being palmed by someone else like public property.
The plan had worked. Lexi was a sensation. Chad was proof—walking, breathing, spanking proof of the market validation.
And Mack, in the silent, buzzing kitchen, was just the landlord. The confused guy holding a broken cup, listening to the echo of a voice that wasn’t real, and mourning one that was.
The crack in the mug seemed to grow as he stared at it, a tiny fault line mapping the pressure he wasn’t allowed to show. He spent the day moving between the gym and the empty apartment, the ghost of that giggle dogging him between sets. Every clank of a weight plate echoed the sound of Chad’s hand making contact. He cancelled his last client, claiming a migraine, which wasn’t entirely a lie.
The apartment was dark when he finally returned, the neon sign outside painting the mannequin in the corner a sickly blue. He didn’t turn on the lights. He just stood in the living room, breathing in the stale air of protein powder and regret.
The key turned in the lock just after midnight.
The door swung open and Derek fell inside, a silhouette against the hallway’s amber glow. He kicked the door shut with his heel and stumbled forward, collapsing face-first onto the couch with a heavy, ungraceful thump. The impact made his body shudder.
He lay there for a moment, unmoving. Then he rolled onto his back, one arm flung over his eyes. He wore impossibly tight black yoga pants and a thin, ribbed crop top that exposed a solid strip of his stomach and the pronounced under-curve of his chest. With each breath, his new breasts jiggled slightly beneath the stretchy fabric, a subtle, organic movement that was utterly at odds with their origin.
A low, weary chuckle rolled out of him. It was his voice. Derek’s voice. Deep, resonant, and textured with a night’s worth of performed falsetto.
“Bro,” he said to the ceiling, the word a gravelly sigh. “Chad has no idea.” He let the sentence hang, the silence stretching. Then he laughed again, a single, humorless puff of air. “No clue I was a dude. Let alone his old gym partner from sophomore year.” He lifted his arm, turning his head to look toward where Mack stood in the shadows. His face was stripped of makeup, exhausted, utterly real. “I guess I really do pass as a chick.”
The statement landed in the center of the room, brutal and undeniable. It was the goal, the entire point of the money and the scars and the performance. It was a success. Mack should have been cheering, whooping, planning their next monetizable move.
He said nothing. He just stared at the exhausted form on the couch, at the convincing anatomy rising and falling with each tired breath. The victory tasted like acid. Derek had become a perfect phantom, so convincing he’d erased himself for a man who used to spot him on bench presses. The line wasn't just gone. It had been paved over, and someone else was joyriding on it.
Mack finally found his voice, but it was rough, stripped bare. “You let him?”
Derek kept staring at the ceiling. “Let him what? Be an idiot? Yeah.” He brought his hands up to his face, rubbing hard. “He spent twenty minutes talking about his deadlift form. He calls it ‘pulling sumo’ like it’s a philosophical concept.”
“You know what I mean.”
The room went very still. Derek’s hands stilled over his eyes. He didn’t move. The neon light bled across the floor, stopping just short of the couch.
“Yeah,” Derek said, his voice muffled by his palms. “I let him.” He dropped his hands. His eyes, when they found Mack’s in the dark, were hollow. “That’s the job, right? That’s the content. You wanted a sensation. You can’t be a sensation in a vacuum. You need witnesses.”
“It’s not a witness,” Mack said, the words clawing their way out. “It’s Chad.”
“So what?” Derek pushed himself up on his elbows. The crop top stretched. “It’s a subscriber. It’s a walking, talking engagement metric. He’s already paid for a year’s subscription in protein shakes and acai bowls.” He attempted another chuckle, but it died in his throat. “He’s a fan. A really hands-on fan.”
Mack took a step forward. The floorboard creaked. “And that’s it?”
“What do you want me to say, Mack?” Derek’s deep voice sharpened, cutting through the performed softness of his outfit. “You want the details? You want to know if I liked it?” He swung his legs off the couch and sat up, planting his feet firmly on the floor. His bearing, for a second, was all bouncer again—solid, grounded, defensive. “It’s work. It’s weird. The noises he makes are… specific. His condo smells like cedarwood and regret. Is that what you’re asking for?”
“I’m asking if you’re okay.” Mack’s own question surprised him.
Derek looked away, out the blacked-out window. His profile was sharp in the dim light. “I pass,” he repeated, softly now. “The plan worked. That’s the answer. That’s the only answer that matters.” He stood up, the movement fluid. He walked past Mack toward the hallway, the scent of Chad’s cedarwood cologne trailing faintly in his wake. He paused at the mouth of the dark hall, his back to Mack.
Mack
He paused at the mouth of the dark hall, his back to Mack. For a moment, the only sound was the faint hum of the neon sign outside, painting the curve of his shoulder in a sickly blue. Then, without another word, he disappeared into the gloom of the hallway, the door to his room clicking shut with a sound more final than a slam.
Mack stood rooted in the living room, the ghost of cedarwood and the echo of that deep, weary voice clinging to him. He listened to the silent apartment, to the absent whir of the ring light. He thought of the camera, still and cold on its tripod. He thought of Chad’s hand. The image was a blister in his mind, throbbing.
He didn’t know how much time passed before he moved. His feet carried him down the hall, stopping outside Derek’s door. No light leaked from the crack at the bottom. He raised his hand to knock, his knuckles hovering an inch from the wood. He stood there, a massive silhouette in the dark, paralyzed by a question he couldn’t form.
Inside, there was a rustle of fabric, a low, muttered curse.
Then a sharp, metallic snap.
Another one.
A heavy, relieved sigh poured through the door, a sound of pure, physical deliverance. “Ah, fuck me,” the voice groaned, deep and resonant and utterly Derek. It was followed by the soft thud of something elastic hitting the floor.
Mack pushed the door open slowly.
Derek stood by the bed, bathed in the sodium glow from the streetlight outside his window. He was shirtless, his back to the door. His hands were raised, stretching his spine in a way that made the muscles in his back ripple beneath the fresh, pink scars. At his feet lay two black, complicated-looking bras, their hooks sprung open like defeated insects.
He rolled his shoulders back, a full, unencumbered movement, and cracked his neck. The sound was loud in the quiet room.
“Finally,” he said, his voice a rich, unfiltered baritone that seemed to vibrate in Mack’s own chest. “Goddamn. Fuck, finally.” He turned his head, seeing Mack in the doorway, and gave a tired, ghost of a smile that didn’t touch his eyes. “I get it now,” he rumbled, shaking his head. “I get why chicks hate these fucking things.”
He bent, picking up one of the bras. He held it by the strap, letting it dangle from his finger like a dead thing. “A hundred twenty bucks. For this. To strap yourself into a harness all day so the world sees the right silhouette.” He dropped it onto the bed, his gaze drifting to the window, to the city beyond. “Chad kept complaining the underwire was digging into him. My four-hundred-dollar tits, and he’s complaining about the architecture.”
Mack couldn’t move. He stared at the bare skin of Derek’s back, at the familiar sweep of his shoulders now married to the unnatural, perfect curves beneath his arms. The scars were still there, livid and healing. The performance was piled on the floor with the laundry.
“Is that all it is?” Mack asked, his own voice thin. “Architecture?”
Derek didn’t answer right away. He walked to the dresser, pulling out a loose, faded Gray’s Sports Almanac t-shirt from what seemed like a past life. He pulled it on over his head. The soft cotton fell in a straight line, obscuring the careful construction beneath. For a second, he just looked like Derek again. A little softer, maybe. Weary.
“Tonight?” Derek said, finally looking at him. “Yeah. It was just architecture and a script. A real hands-on tour for a valued subscriber.” He leaned back against the dresser, crossing his arms. The posture was defensive, but the t-shirt was a surrender. “He asked me to move in.”
The words landed between them, inert and heavy.
“To his condo. The one that smells like a lumberyard and poor decisions.” Derek’s laugh was a short, sharp exhale. “Said his place has better light for content. Said he could ‘protect the asset.’” He made air quotes with his fingers, the gesture vicious. “He used the word ‘asset,’ Mack. About me.”
Mack’s jaw tightened. He could feel a pulse in his temple. “What did you say?”
“I told him I’d think about it.” Derek pushed off the dresser, walking to the window. He stared out at the flickering signs. “The analytics would be better. Central location. Higher production value.” He listed the points like he was reading from one of their old, drunken business plans. “It makes sense.”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Mack heard himself say, the words louder than he intended.
“Why?” Derek turned, his face impassive. “Because he’s Chad? Because he’s not you?” He let the question hang, a live wire in the dim room. “You kissed me once, Mack. In a fucked-up, drunk mess of a moment. You haven’t touched me since. You just watch. Chad touches me all the time. He pays for acai bowls. He wants to put my name on a lease.” He shrugged, a slow, heavy lift of his shoulders. “The math is pretty simple, bro.”
Mack felt the floor tilt. This was the collision. This was the other side of the line he’d crossed—not passion, but a bleak, transactional calculus. He had created Lexi, nurtured her, and now a competitor was making a better offer for the intellectual property.
“So that’s it?” Mack’s voice was rough. “You’re just gonna go?”
Derek’s eye twitched, the only sign the impassive mask was strained. “I don’t know,” he said, and for the first time that night, he sounded young, and lost, and terrifically tired. “I’m just saying the offer’s on the table. And it’s a solid fucking table. Made of rich mahogany and stupid decisions.”
He walked over to the bed and picked up the discarded bras. He held them in his hands, not looking at Mack. “I’m gonna shower. I still smell like his cologne.”
Mack stood in the doorway, watching him gather a towel from the back of a chair. The moment stretched, thin and fragile. He knew he should leave. He knew he should say something smart, something strategic about brand independence or subscriber loyalty.
Instead, he heard his own voice, quiet and utterly stripped of pretense, ask the only thing that mattered. “What do you want, Derek?”
Derek stopped. He didn’t turn around. His shoulders, under the soft cotton of the old t-shirt, sagged almost imperceptibly.
“I want,” he said, slowly, each word chosen with care, “to not have to put one of these fucking things on tomorrow.”
He walked into the adjacent bathroom, not looking back. He didn’t close the door.
A second later, Mack heard the shuddering spin of the faucet handles, then the sudden, drowning roar of the shower. Steam began to curl out into the bedroom, carrying with it the last, fading notes of cedarwood.
Mack stared at the empty space where Derek had been. He stared at the bras, still lying on the rumpled bedsheets. They looked deflated, pointless. He thought of the cracked mug in the kitchen, of the silent camera in the living room, of the long, suspicious shadows the mannequin still cast. He looked at the open bathroom door, at the plume of steam now billowing out, fogging the cracked mirror on the dresser.
He took a single step into the room. Then another. His shoes were silent on the thin carpet. The roar of the water was a wall of sound, a white noise that swallowed everything. He stood at the threshold of the bathroom, the steam dampening his skin.
He could see the blurred, phantom shape of Derek behind the fogged glass of the shower stall—a distortion of muscle and curve, of scar and surrender, dissolving in the hot water.
Mack didn’t move. He just watched the shape move, watched a hand rise to scrub at hair, at a neck, as if trying to cleanse something far deeper than skin. He stood there until the heat of the steam felt indistinguishable from the fever burning in his own veins, a silent sentry to a ruin he’d lovingly built with his own hands. The water kept falling. The shape kept moving. And Mack, for the first time, had no plan at all.
And Mack, for the first time, had no plan at all.
The steam from the shower unspooled into the bedroom, fogging the mirror and the window, making the world soft and indistinct. He could hear the water hitting Derek’s skin, a steady, cleansing percussion. Mack leaned his shoulder against the doorframe, the plaster cool through his shirt.
“Does he know?” Mack asked. His voice was low, but it cut through the white noise of the shower.
The water didn’t stop. A shadow moved behind the glass.
“Know what?” Derek’s reply was muffled by the spray and the tile.
“Anything.” Mack’s thumb picked at a chip in the doorframe’s paint. “About before. About… any of it.”
A wet, humorless laugh echoed from the stall. The water shut off with a sudden, metallic shudder. The silence it left was filled with the drip of the showerhead and the heavy sound of a towel being pulled from the rack.
The shower door slid open with a screech of protesting plastic. Derek emerged wrapped in a thin gray towel, his skin flushed pink, water beading on the scars and sliding down the dense muscle of his calves. His hair was plastered dark to his skull, removing any suggestion of a styled fringe. He looked at Mack, his eyes red-rimmed from steam or something else.
He rubbed the towel roughly over his head.
“Shit, no,” Derek said, his voice hollow with a kind of amazed disgust. “He’s got no idea.” He let the towel hang around his neck, his hands gripping the ends. He stared at a water stain on the wall as if it held the answers. “I mean, he bought me a Plan B the other day.”
The words dropped like stones into the humid air. They were so mundane, so grotesquely practical. They described a specific, clinical transaction within the fiction. Mack felt the air leave his lungs. This wasn’t just performance anymore; it was consequence management, logistics.
“He was all solemn about it,” Derek continued, a bizarre, detached smile touching his lips. “Like he’d done something wrong. Kept saying ‘we’ gotta be more careful.’” He barked another short laugh. “We. As if there’s a ‘we’ that could ever make that particular mistake.”
Mack couldn’t formulate a sentence. His mind offered only violent, useless images – snatching the pink box from Chad’s dumb, concerned hands, crushing it.
Derek read his silence. “Relax. It’s just protocol. Part of the bit.” He said it like he was reassuring himself. “He thinks he’s being a responsible guy. A stand-up dude. It’s cute, in a profoundly stupid way.” He walked past Mack, back into the bedroom, trailing damp and the clean, sharp scent of generic men’s body wash. He’d washed the cedarwood away.
Mack followed him, his body moving on its own volition. Derek stood at the dresser, ignoring the discarded bras, and opened the bottom drawer. He pulled out a pair of loose, worn basketball shorts and stepped into them, letting the towel drop.
His back was to Mack again, a landscape of healing trenches and taut muscle. He didn’t hurry to cover up. The intimacy of it was casual and devastating.
“So that’s the deal,” Derek said, pulling on the shorts. He turned, leaning against the dresser, arms crossed over his bare chest. “He’s invested. He thinks he’s building something real with a hot, kinda quirky Instagram babe who laughs at his gym jokes. The ultimate fantasy.” He shook his head, a droplet of water flying from his hair. “And the fucked-up thing is, I’m good at it. It’s not even hard anymore.”
“It should be hard,” Mack said, the words ripped from him.
“Why?” Derek challenged, his gaze flat. “You wanted it to be easy. Easy money, easy fame. You wanted a fucking wind-up toy. Well,” he gestured vaguely at himself, “congratulations. It works.”
“You’re not a toy.”
“What am I, then?” Derek pushed off the dresser, taking a single step forward. “Right now, in this room? What exactly is left here, Mack?”
The distance between them was only five feet. It felt like a canyon Mack had dug with his own hands, financed with his own stupid ambition. He saw the exhaustion in the slump of Derek’s shoulders, the defiance in his jaw, the vulnerable truth of his body caught between what it was and what they’d made it.
Mack crossed the canyon.
He didn’t grab him. He didn’t kiss him. He simply lifted a hand and pressed his palm, firm and steady, against the center of Derek’s bare chest. His fingers spanned the space over his sternum, feeling the rapid, jackhammer beat of his heart beneath the warm, damp skin. It was a frantic, animal rhythm, betraying the cool performance of his words.
Derek flinched as if burned, but he didn’t pull away. He just stood there, breathing harshly through his nose, looking down at Mack’s large hand on his body.
“This is left,” Mack said, his voice gravel. He could feel every pound of that heartbeat. It wasn’t Lexi’s heart. It wasn’t a character’s heart. It was the same heart that had raced beside his in the fourth quarter, that had pounded with adrenaline outside a bar waiting for a fight. It was Derek’s. He slid his hand up, over the collarbone, his thumb brushing the base of Derek’s throat where his pulse hammered. “This is real. This is all that’s ever been real.”
Derek’s eyes squeezed shut. A tremor ran through him. When he opened them, they were glassy and fierce. “This is a problem,” he whispered.
“I know.”
“Chad wants to put my name on a lease.”
“I know that, too.”
Derek’s hand came up, covering Mack’s where it rested against his throat. His fingers were long, the nails still faintly glossy with clear coat. He didn’t push it away. He held it there, an anchor. “What are you doing?” The question was pure, unadulterated fear.
Mack had no good answer. No plan. Just the thunder under his palm, the steam condensing on both their skin, and the terrible, thrilling void of the line being gone forever.
“I’m right here,” Mack said. It was the only true thing left.