Chapter 60 - 107k
The phone buzzed itself across the nightstand.
Ryan was aware of it before he was fully awake — as a fact at the edge of consciousness, not urgent enough to act on but too persistent to ignore. He reached for it without opening his eyes, missed it, found it on the second attempt.
He looked at the screen with one eye.
The system notifications came first.
> RETURNS PROCESSED
> Salary payments x5: $12,500
> Legal retainer fees: $3,200
> Business operational expenses: $1,847
> Total business returns: $17,547
> Date night — Eleven on Park: $840 returned
> Current Balance: $168,932.44
Ryan looked at the $840 figure. Two months ago that number would have made his week. Now it sat at the bottom of a list of larger numbers and barely registered. He noted the distance between the person who had 200 bucks and could not stop staring at every dollar and the person lying in this bed right now, and appreciated it.
He was about to put the phone down when the call notification appeared.
*Mike Benter — Calling*
Ryan answered.
"Good morning, Mike. What could you possibly wan—"
"Dude. You’re trending."
Ryan blinked. "What."
"The photos. You and the model. It’s all over Instagram, it’s on blogs, there’s a Twitter thread—"
"Mike, what are you talk—"
And then it arrived. All at once, the way memories returned when the right door opened. The restaurant and the cameras outside. Her hand in his hair. The flashes going off like it was a red carpet.
"Mike," Ryan said. "Let me call you back."
He hung up.
He went back to the notifications. There was one he’d scrolled past.
> REPUTATION: 20 → 43
He read it twice.
Twenty-three points. In one night. He’d been gaining reputation in increments since the system activated — the Starbucks run, the gallery, the poker table, the balcony photo. Nothing had moved it like this.
He opened Instagram.
He barely used the app. His profile had two photos — one Danny had taken at a rooftop thing two summers ago, one Sophie had made him post of the team after the first meeting because she said a CEO with no social presence was a liability. Forty followers, all people who knew his name before last night.
The app loaded.
The notification count read 99+.
He clicked his profile.
Two photos. Still two photos.
107,000 followers.
He sat up in bed.
He clicked the first notification. It took him to a post from a blog he’d never heard of — bold text over a graphic, presentation that existed entirely to be screenshotted and shared:
*SUPERMODEL ZARA REVEALS BOYFRIEND IN STYLE WITH PASSIONATE KISS AFTER DATE NIGHT!*
Below the text was the photo.
Ryan looked at it for a long time.
He’d known the cameras were there. He’d been aware of the flashes, the lenses, the specific intrusion of it. But he hadn’t seen what the cameras saw until now.
Zara on her toes slightly, one hand at the back of his neck, the other on his shoulder. His hand at her waist pulling her toward him. The low street light catching both of them in a way that looked like it had been arranged rather than accidental. The dark coats, the restaurant entrance behind them, the city doing its thing in the background.
They looked like the cover of something.
He scrolled.
The next set of photos were solo shots of him — taken after the car had driven away, when he’d been standing on the pavement doing nothing in particular except standing in the aftermath of the evening. He hadn’t been performing anything. He’d just been standing there.
And somehow that was the problem, or the advantage, depending on how you looked at it.
The coat. The dark hair, a few strands loose from the evening. The light hitting his face from the restaurant behind him. His hands in his pockets and an expression he couldn’t fully read from the outside but which he knew from the inside had been somewhere between lost and certain at the same time.
He looked good. Better than he’d expected to look. Better than he’d thought he looked standing there.
He clicked into the comments.
Three categories presented themselves immediately and consistently:
The first: *who IS he? what does he do? I’ve never seen him before in my life and I need information immediately.*
The second: *I always said Zara would end up with a normal person. I always said it. She was never going to date another celebrity.*
The third: people tagging his Instagram handle — apparently found via reverse image search — directly in the comments, followed by the people who clicked that tag discovering his profile and following it and coming back to the comments to report their findings.
*found his instagram he only has 2 photos and 107k followers now 😭*
*the 2 photos only is so funny*
Ryan put the phone face down on the bed and sat there.
107,000 people had found a profile with two photos and decided to follow it. He didn’t know what to do with that information so he set it aside and got up.
---
Shower. Teeth. He moved through the morning routine with autopilot, someone whose brain was occupied elsewhere. By the time he was standing at the kitchen counter waiting for the coffee he’d reached a kind of baseline equilibrium about the whole thing — it was what it was, the photo existed, the followers existed, and none of it changed what was happening with the company or the IRS interview or any of the actual moving parts of his life.
He picked up his phone and called Zara.
She answered on the second ring.
"Good morning, Ryan."
"Morning."
"You’ve gotten quite popular since we last spoke." Her voice had that morning quality he’d noticed the one time he’d heard it before — unhurried, a composed version of her slightly further away. "I thought you’d be too busy for old me."
"Oh, shut up."
She laughed.
"In front of the cameras," Ryan said. "You’re quite daring."
"I’m usually not." A pause. "Something came over me in the moment. And you know what—" another pause, shorter, "—I’m glad it did."
Ryan was smiling before he’d decided to. "I’m glad too."
"I am sorry though," she said. "I’ve put your life out there along with mine now. The attention, the comments—"
"I’m actually grateful," Ryan said. "It was getting embarrassing that the CEO of a tech company had forty Instagram followers."
She laughed again. "So how are you finding the fame?"
Ryan poured his coffee. "Mixed feelings. On one hand I have several hundred women calling me handsome in the comments, which I can’t pretend is bad. On the other hand your rather enthusiastic male fanbase appears to have found my profile and several of them have expressed a strong desire to end my existence."
"Oh god. I’m so sorry."
"Don’t be. Honestly? I’m enjoying it. Watching them be furious about someone getting something they all want and couldn’t." He picked up the mug. "That’s its own thing."
Zara’s voice shifted slightly. "And what is it they couldn’t get?"
Ryan let a beat pass.
"You."
A pause on her end.
"You don’t quite have me yet, mister," she said. "But I’ll admit you’re close."
"Then what do I need to do to close the gap? I’m prepared to do most things."
She thought about it as quick as someone who had already thought about it. "Take me to the Pistons game next week."
Ryan went still over his coffee. "Hmm. Okay. Maybe not most things."
"Ryan."
"Fine. Fine. I’ll take you to watch the damn Pistons game."
"Yay." Genuine, unguarded, the word just arriving without holding. Then: "I have a shoot to get to. But I’ll call you tonight."
"I’ll be here."
"Bye, Ryan."
"Bye."
He hung up and stood at the counter with his coffee and the unique quiet of a Monday morning that had started with 107,000 strangers and was settling into something more manageable.
He turned the television on. Found a channel showing highlights from last night’s games. Sat on the couch. Drank his coffee.
Eight days until the IRS interview.
Investment paperwork at two signatures.
Team presentation had been good. Product direction locked. Diana’s dinner done. Zara’s voice still in his ear from thirty seconds ago.
He was still chasing. Everything around it was noise.
He finished the coffee, got up to put the mug in the sink, and heard a knock at the door.
He went to the peephole.
Sophie.
He opened the door. "I didn’t know we had a meeting this morning."
"I’m not here for work," she said.
She came in past him and he caught it immediately — what she was wearing was not what Sophie wore for work. It was not what Sophie wore to most things. Dark fitted trousers that left nothing about her figure ambiguous, a top that was doing considerable work and was aware of this. She looked deliberate in a way that had required thought and effort and was not accidental.
She turned in the middle of the living room to face him.
"You’ve been spending so much time with your model girlfriend," she said, "you’ve forgotten all about me."
Ryan opened his mouth.
Closed it.
"It’s not like that," he said.
Sophie’s expression shifted into something that was adjacent to a pout but had more heat behind it than a pout usually carried. She took a step toward him.
"Then what’s it like, Ryan?"