Chapter 3: Texts at 2 AM
The glow from Ryli’s laptop screen painted her face in cold, electric blue. A half-edited TikTok clip played on a loop—her own smirk, a slow-motion turn, a perfectly timed eye roll set to a bass-heavy track. It felt hollow. She minimized it, leaving the room in near-darkness save for the stark white of her phone screen.
Her thumbs moved fast, tapping out messages with a practiced ease that felt entirely unpracticed for this particular recipient.
ryli.james: can’t sleep. blame the sonic cheese. and your persistent presence in my brain.
She hit send before she could filter it. The boldness was a costume she wore well, but tonight it felt less like armor and more like a dare she was issuing to herself.
Across town, Cadence’s phone buzzed on her nightstand. She’d been trying to sketch, the margins of her history notes filled with lazy spirals and the vague shape of a hawk’s sharp eyes. The buzz made her jump. She stared at the notification, a fizzy feeling rising in her chest.
cadence.stover: my persistent presence? pretty sure you invaded mine first. at sonic. with the staring.
ryli.james: details. you’re here now. what are you doing, baby?
Cadence froze. The word landed like a spark on dry grass. Baby. It was so casual, so assumptive. Heat flooded her cheeks. She typed, deleted, typed again.
cadence.stover: drawing. failing to sleep. you?
ryli.james: thinking about pretty girls who draw in margins. dangerous pastime.
Another wave of warmth. Cadence pulled her knees up, the oversized cotton of her t-shirt swallowing her frame. She felt simultaneously seen and completely hidden.
cadence.stover: why dangerous?
ryli.james: makes them interesting. interesting is a problem. what are you wearing?
Cadence’s breath hitched. The question was a hard left turn, a plunge into deeper water. The screen felt suddenly too bright, illuminating her in the dark room. A part of her, the part trained on caution, screamed to deflect. Another part, dizzy and curious, won out.
cadence.stover: just an oversized tee. why?
A beat. Then two. The three dots pulsed, a tiny, agonizing heartbeat.
ryli.james: fuck. dangerous combo.
ryli.james: picture?
Cadence’s whole body went still. The air in her room felt thin. This was the line, wasn’t it? The one Briley had warned her about. She’s a player, Cade. She’ll eat you alive. But the girl texting her didn’t sound like a predator. She sounded… captivated. The distinction was terrifying.
cadence.stover: no.
The reply was immediate.
ryli.james: fair. had to shoot my shot.
cadence.stover: is that what this is? you taking shots?
ryli.james: what do you think it is?
Cadence exhaled, a shaky sound in the quiet. She had no idea. The girl from Sonic, all edges and intimidation, was gone. In her place was this entity—flirtatious, persistent, disarmingly honest in her interest. It was like talking to a rumor, and finding the truth was infinitely more complicated.
cadence.stover: i think you’re confusing me.
ryli.james: join the club. you confused me first. with the freckles and the whole… existing thing.
A laugh bubbled out of Cadence, tight with nerves. She fell back onto her pillows, phone held above her face.
cadence.stover: my existing is confusing?
ryli.james: profoundly. tell me something else.
cadence.stover: like what?
ryli.james: anything. your middle name. your first kiss. what you wanted to be when you were seven. just… something.
Cadence bit her lip. She wanted to ask why again, but the hunger in Ryli’s questions was palpable. It wasn’t a game. It was excavation.
cadence.stover: elaine. it was hunter bradford behind the gym in 8th grade and it was terrible. a marine biologist.
ryli.james: cadence elaine stover. hunter bradford is a loser. you’d look good in scuba gear.
cadence.stover: do you ever give straightforward compliments?
ryli.james: no. they’re boring. you’re not boring.
In her room, Ryli rolled onto her stomach, kicking a tangled hoodie onto the floor. The patchouli and stale whiskey scent of her space felt suddenly cloying. She wanted clean air. She wanted to know what Cadence’s room smelled like. Probably like laundry and pencil shavings. Something innocent.
ryli.james: my turn. middle name’s marie. first kiss was kamora dare on a truth or dare in 9th grade, we laughed for ten minutes straight. wanted to be a race car driver.
cadence.stover: kamora? really?
ryli.james: really. still my best friend. don’t read into it.
cadence.stover: i wasn’t.
ryli.james: liar. but it’s cute.
Cadence pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead. Every time she tried to steady herself, Ryli sent another wave. The intimacy of the shared secrets, the casual reference to kissing a girl, the relentless, soft-focused attention—it was building into a hum under her skin.
cadence.stover: why are you doing this?
The three dots appeared. They stayed for a long time.
ryli.james: because when i saw you, my brain short-circuited. i don’t short-circuit. i need to know why.
The raw honesty of it stripped everything back. Cadence stared at the words. No pretense. No cool-girl veneer. Just a simple, bewildered truth that mirrored her own.
cadence.stover: i don’t know why either.
ryli.james: then we can be confused together. better than being confused alone.
Ryli’s phone lit up with a new snap. Not a picture of Cadence. It was a drawing, taken in the dim glow of a bedside lamp. A quick, skilled sketch in the margin of a notebook: a sleek black charger, its lines simplified but unmistakable, and leaning against it, a small, neatly drawn hawk with one eyebrow raised.
Underneath, Cadence had written in her looping script: Dangerous combo.
Ryli’s chest tightened. She looked from the drawing to her own chaotic walls, the curated rebellion that felt like a museum exhibit. This felt real. This felt like a door cracking open.
She didn’t send a fire emoji. She didn’t call her baby. She typed out three words, her finger hovering only a second before sending.
ryli.james: Let me take you out.
The message sat there, plain and huge. No flirtatious wrapper. A direct ask.
In the silence that followed, Ryli finally understood the feeling that had been clawing at her since the Sonic lot. It wasn’t just curiosity. It was need. A sharp, specific need to be in the same space as this girl, to see if the pull was just as strong off a screen, to see if those freckles looked the same in daylight.
She waited. The clock on her screen ticked over to 1:17 AM.
The three dots appeared.
They disappeared.
Cadence was typing. Stopping. The entire conversation hung on the precipice of that simple, terrifying reply.
The three dots appeared, vanished, then flickered back to life. Cadence’s heart was a trapped bird against her ribs. Out. On a date. With Ryli James. The idea was absurd, terrifying, and utterly compelling. She typed a single word.
cadence.stover: Okay.
She sent it, and immediately wanted to vomit. The simplicity of it felt like stepping off a cliff.
In her bedroom, Ryli let out a sharp breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. A strange, victorious lightness fizzed in her veins. Okay. She grinned at her cracked mirror, her reflection smiling back, all sharp edges and genuine surprise.
ryli.james: Don’t sound so excited.
cadence.stover: I’m terrified.
ryli.james: Good. Me too. Friday. I’ll pick you up at 8.
She needed to cement it, to make it real before either of them could bolt. Her mind was already racing—where to go, what to wear, how to not be the person Briley described. She stood up, pacing the short length of her chaotic room, her bare feet avoiding discarded shoes. The adrenaline demanded action.
She wanted to send something. Not a text. Something tangible. A picture. Not of her face, her friends did that. Something else. Her room, maybe. This messy, honest part of her life. She opened her camera, panning across the peeling posters, the spilled makeup, the Dodge hoodie on her bed.
The angle was awkward. She flopped back onto the mattress, holding the phone above her. The hoodie bunched beneath her. She was wearing only her black boxers and a thin, worn-out tank top, the muscles of her stomach sharp in the shadows. It was a casual, intimate shot. Just her space. Her.
Her thumb hovered over the shutter. A notification from another app, a stupid meme from Daniel, flashed at the top of her screen. It broke her focus for a split second. In that fragmented moment, her finger slipped.
Instead of tapping the circular shutter button, it brushed against the bottom corner of the screen. The camera app switched from its rear to its front-facing lens with a faint shick sound.
She didn’t notice.
She thought she was still pointing the camera at her torso, at the hoodie. She tapped the screen to focus.
The phone took the picture.
Without looking, driven by that impulsive need to share this thread of connection, she opened her Snapchat with Cadence. She selected the image from the very top of her gallery—the one she had just taken. She typed a quick caption, her fingers flying: my world.
She hit send.
The whoosh sound echoed in the quiet room. The immediate, cold plunge of regret followed. She hadn’t looked at the photo. Not really. A prickle of unease crawled up her neck. She tapped to view the sent message.
It wasn’t her room.
It wasn’t her torso.
The front-facing camera had been active. The photo was a stark, poorly lit selfie taken from a low, angled viewpoint. Her face was only partially in frame, her expression one of distracted concentration, her red-tipped bangs falling across one eye. The tank top strap had slipped off her shoulder.
And there, in the bottom corner of the frame, having been resting on her thigh when she took the shot, was the clear, unmistakable outline of her own cock, prominent against the fabric of her boxers.
Time stopped. The air left her lungs in a silent rush.
Every molecule in her body turned to ice, then fire. A violent, dizzying horror detonated in her chest. She scrambled upright, her fingers clumsy and frantic, trying to claw the image back. It was vanished, already opened. The notification was clear: Opened.
“No. No, no, no, fuck—” The words were a choked whisper. She stared at the screen, at the log that showed Cadence had seen it. Her vision tunneled. This wasn’t happening. This was a catastrophic, irreparable joke. My world. The caption mocked her. She wanted to slam her phone against the wall, to disintegrate.
Across town, Cadence had been staring at her own reply. Okay. She’d been mapping the freckles on her ceiling, her mind a whirlwind of what have I done. The snap notification popped up. Her pulse jumped. A picture. From Ryli.
She tapped it.
The image loaded. She saw the tousled brown and red hair first, the intense, unfocused eye. Then her gaze drifted, processing the intimate, off-center composition. She saw the slipped strap, the sharp line of a collarbone. And then she saw the rest.
Her brain stuttered, refusing to compute for one long, silent second. It was… anatomical. Unmistakable. The caption, my world, floated over it all with a bizarre, shocking sincerity.
A hot, confused flush exploded across her skin. She dropped the phone onto the comforter like it had burned her. She pressed her palms to her cheeks, which were scalding. What. Was. That. Was this a joke? A test? Some cruel, weird power move Briley had somehow predicted?
Her heart hammered, a sickening mix of shock, embarrassment, and a strange, invasive curiosity. She couldn’t unsee it. The raw, accidental intimacy of it was more violating than any deliberate, lewd shot could ever be. This was a mistake. A huge, awful mistake.
Her phone vibrated again on the sheets. Then again. And again. A rapid, panicked volley of notifications.
She forced herself to look.
ryli.james: DO NOT OPEN THAT
ryli.james: CADENCE
ryli.james: I am so sorry
ryli.james: It was a mistake
ryli.james: The camera flipped I didn’t look
ryli.james: Please
ryli.james: God please say something
The raw terror in the messages was palpable. This wasn’t a game. This wasn’t a move. The usually unflappable Ryli James was completely, utterly shattered. Cadence watched the texts flood in, each one a hammer strike on the bizarre reality of the last thirty seconds.
Her own panic began to recede, washed away by a tidal wave of secondhand humiliation. She could feel Ryli’s agony through the screen. It was awful. It was also, somehow, profoundly human.
She picked up her phone. Her fingers were steady. She typed one sentence, a quiet anchor in the storm.
cadence.stover: I think your camera is broken.
She sent it. Then, before she could regret it, she added another.
cadence.stover: And for the record… Friday is still on. Unless you’re too busy dying of embarrassment.
The silence from Ryli’s end was absolute. Cadence waited, clutching her phone in the dark, the ghost of that image seared behind her eyelids, the meaning of everything now irrevocably changed.