Chapter 29: The Midnight Upload
The golden light of late afternoon bled across the floorboards, painting long, distorted rectangles that reached toward Suki’s bed. She sat cross-legged in the center of the rumpled duvet, her laptop open before her. The screen showed the upload page, a stark white field with a single, pulsing blue button: Publish.
The edited video was queued. The thumbnail was a frozen moment from the villa—Aidan turned toward the camera, his expression caught between exertion and something softer, almost like recognition, while Thea’s hand rested possessively on his chest. It was intimate. It was a lie that felt truer than any solo shot she’d ever posted.
“My finger’s cramping,” Suki muttered, hovering her index finger over the trackpad. “I’ve been hovering for ten minutes.”
Catriona lounged against the mountain of velvet pillows, sipping from a glass of ice water. She’d changed into one of Suki’s oversized band t-shirts. “You’re not having second thoughts. You’re having a premiere night panic. It’s normal. Just think of the analytics.”
“I’m thinking of his face,” Suki said, her voice small. “What if he sees it and… I don’t know. Regrets it? Thinks we’re monsters?”
“Aidan?” Catriona laughed, a warm, genuine sound. “Sweetheart, he asked for the raw files. For his personal collection. He’s fine. More than fine. He’s probably showing his mates right now, all fake-casual, ‘Oh, this old thing?’”
Suki knew she was right. The text from Aidan that afternoon had been characteristically straightforward: ‘Heard the cut is fire. Can’t wait to see it.’ No angst. No weirdness. Just Aidan.
It was her own weirdness she was wrestling with. The memory of her own voice, breathy and undone in the headphones, was now permanently grafted onto those images. She had given a piece of her interior world to an audience of thousands. It felt like publishing a page from her diary, if her diary was mostly about her best friend’s husband’s orgasms.
“I feel sick,” Suki confessed.
“That’s the adrenaline,” Catriona said, setting her glass down on the nightstand with a sharp click. “It tastes the same as fear. Don’t confuse them.” She unfolded her legs and slid across the bed in one smooth motion. Before Suki could protest, Catriona’s hand closed over hers on the trackpad. “On three. One… two…”
She didn’t say three. She just guided Suki’s finger down in a firm, decisive click.
The blue button vanished. A thin, green progress bar appeared, filling with agonizing slowness.
“You bitch,” Suki gasped, but she didn’t pull her hand away. She watched the bar crawl across the screen. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic bird. This was it. The point of no return. The video, with her haunting, intimate narration, was leaving her hard drive and entering the ether, forever.
The bar filled. A cheerful ‘Upload Successful!’ message popped up.
For a second, there was only the hum of the laptop fan and the distant sigh of city traffic thirty stories down.
Then Suki’s phone, lying face-up on the duvet, exploded.
It buzzed and chimed in a frantic, percussive symphony. The screen lit up with a cascading waterfall of notifications—likes, tips, new subscribers, comments. The sheer velocity of it was physical, a digital roar flooding the quiet bedroom.
“Oh my god,” Suki breathed, snatching the phone. The numbers were climbing so fast they blurred. She tapped on the comments, her thumb trembling.
The first one sat at the top, already pinned with hundreds of likes.
‘This is the hottest thing I’ve ever seen. The voiceover killed me. You sound so into it. Who is this guy?’
She scrolled, a mesmerized kind of horror gripping her.
‘The genuine connection here is insane. This feels real.’
‘Subscribed for life. This is ART.’
‘The way he looks at the camera… like he’s doing it just for you. Fuck.’
‘Suki, you genius. This changed the game.’
They weren’t just lustful grunts. They were engaged. They heard her. They saw what she and Catriona had built—the narrative, the vulnerability, the complicated thrill. The subscriber counter ticked upward, a number she hadn’t seen in eight months.
“We can’t take this back,” she whispered, the phone’s glow lighting her wide eyes. She looked at Catriona, the reality of it crashing over her. “This is out there. Forever. People are… they’re hearing me. They’re hearing what I said.”
Catriona’s grin was all wicked triumph. She cupped Suki’s face, her thumbs brushing the high arches of her cheeks. “Why would we want to?”
Then she pulled her in and kissed her.
It wasn’t a gentle, reassuring kiss. It was fierce and celebratory, tasting of ice water and victory. Suki stiffened for a half-second, then melted into it, the phone falling from her grip onto the duvet, still buzzing incessantly. The metallic taste of Catriona’s lip gloss, the familiar scent of her shampoo—it was an anchor in the surreal whirlwind of the moment. When they broke apart, both were breathing a little faster.
“Okay,” Suki said, laughing shakily. “Okay. So that just happened. The video and the… that.”
“A good day at the office,” Catriona said, her eyes sparkling. She reached for the laptop. “Let’s see the damage.” She opened the analytics dashboard, letting out a low whistle. “Five figures in tips. In eight minutes. Suki. Look.”
Suki looked. The graphs spiked like mountain ranges. The comments kept pouring in. A specific, giddy kind of power began to replace the panic, intoxicating and sharp. They had done it. They had literally cracked the code.
Her phone buzzed again on the sheets, a different tone this time—a regular text message. She grabbed it.
It was from Aidan.
‘Just watched it. Fucking hell. You two are artists. That voiceover…’
The text ended there, with an ellipsis. He’d heard it. Heard her whispered confession, her private reaction, all of it. A fresh wave of heat washed over her, different from the anxiety, different from the triumph. It was slower, deeper, coiling in her stomach.
She typed back, her fingers unsure. ‘You’re not weirded out?’
His reply was almost immediate. ‘Weirded out? I’m honored. And seriously turned on. Cat’s idea?’
‘Of course,’ Suki replied. She hesitated, then added, ‘It felt true.’
She looked up from the phone. Catriona was watching her, a knowing, playful smile on her lips. “He likes it.”
“He does,” Suki said.
“Good.” Catriona slid off the bed, stretching her arms over her head. “Now comes the fun part. The subscribers are going to demand a follow-up. They’re going to want to know what happens next.” She walked to the floor-to-ceiling window, silhouetted against the deepening cobalt sky. “The narrative demands it.”
Suki’s phone continued to chime in her hand, a steady pulse of validation and desire. She looked from the screen, to Catriona’s confident silhouette, to the frozen thumbnail of Aidan on her laptop. The fear was still there, a tiny, cold stone in her gut. But it was outweighed now by a thrilling, terrifying curiosity. They had opened a door. The audience was screaming for them to walk through it.
“What,” Suki asked, her voice barely above a whisper, “does happen next?”