by Lori L. Otto
“The entire time we were in there, from what I can tell,” I divulge. I look at my uncle.
“Beginning to end,” he says. “I didn’t watch,” he explains. “I just scrolled through. It ends with you two walking out of the frame.”
“To the bedroom,” I comment, putting my head into my hands.
“Where did you find this?” she asks.
“Online.”
“Oh, my God.”
“This could ruin us,” I say, looking around.
“Us?” Coley says. “Me. It will ruin me. It will earn you high praise and accolades.”
“Coley…”
“I was completely naked, Trey. You weren’t!”
“I was as good as naked. We were incredibly intimate together,” I remind her.
“Did you film us?” she asks, looking disgusted.
“Holy shit! No, I didn’t film us! Our first kiss happened last night, Coley. I wanted us to be alone for it, if you remember. I wanted a private night alone with you. Because I wanted you all to myself… and you think I would take a video of us having sex and post it online? Come on, laureate. Knee jerk reaction, maybe?”
She sighs and takes a few breaths.
“I wouldn’t do that. Never, ever. You don’t think I would do that, do you?”
“No,” she says, coming to her senses. “No. I don’t think that. I’m just… shocked. And sick. And I’d feel better if these guys weren’t staring at me in a sheet right now.”
“Of course. Guys? Please?” Matty and Jon turn their backs to us as we both go into the bedroom and close the door.
“How do we know there aren’t more cameras?” she asks, looking around my room.
“In the spirit of full disclosure, there are cameras all over this place for my security system, but none on the patio. And none are recording when I’m here.” She doesn’t look reassured. “From what I saw, it was just that one single shot, from that one perspective,” I tell her as I pull on some jeans. “Take your time. I’m going to go talk to them.”
“Do you have cameras in your bathroom?”
“No,” I tell her, running my hand down her arm before she leaves my room to get dressed.
I meet my brother-in-law and uncle back in the living room. “Who is that?” Jon asks as soon as I see him again. I go out onto the balcony to see the camera. “Don’t touch it, Trey. Leave it for evidence.”
I emit a long, audible breath when I come back inside, rubbing my hands along my jaw. When I meet my brother-in-law’s eyes, I remember his question. “Yeah, this isn’t how I’d wanted to introduce you to my new girlfriend.”
“Girlfriend, or… hookup?”
“Girlfriend, Jon,” I tell him, glaring.
“You just broke up with Zaina a week ago,” he says as he scratches his head, and I can hear the judgment in his tone. “Not even a week ago.”
“Zai and I hadn’t been together since the first week of January. Our relationship had been falling apart even before that,” I explain to him.
“Did you… were you… dude, were you cheating on her?” he asks me.
“No.”
“Does this girl know about Zaina?”
“Absolutely. Can you take me off trial here and get back to the situation at hand?”
“Yeah, sorry. It just seems sudden.”
“You don’t know anything about it. Just do me a favor and call the cops. And get my dad over here, please. I need a lawyer. Shit, have my parents seen that?”
“Don’t you think you would know if they’d seen it?” my brother-in-law asks. I walk over to our phones, remembering that we’d shut them off before our night began. I turn them on, and they’re both overrun with voicemails and texts.
“Did they identify us by name?” I ask Matty. “Specifically her?”
My uncle reads from his phone. “Coley Fitzsimmons. Is that her name?”
“That’s Coley?” Jon asks.
I nod. “Fuck. Who would even know who she is?”
“You can find out anything these days. How do you know her?” Matty asks.
“School. We’re on the paper together.”
“Then she’s probably easy to find.”
“Who would put that camera there?” Jon asks.
Who would want to see a sex tape of me and Coley? My ex-fraternity brothers are the first suspects, but then I remember the paparazzo from Sunday. “Guys, there was a photographer at the airport last weekend that I pissed off. He threatened that he’d do something like this.”
“How would he get in?”
“I don’t know. I need to find out his name.” I look down, distracted by the preview screen on Coley’s phone at the moment. There are voicemails and texts from Mom, Dad, Joel, Teri, Pryana, and about thirty other people I don’t even know. On mine are messages from Jack Holland and Emi Holland and Zaina Mishra, among others–but none of the others matter.
“Mom and Dad know,” I say somberly. “You call the police.” I stare at Jon, hopeless. “I’ll call my father.”
Coley emerges from the bedroom in a tight pair of jeans and a gray, fitted sweater that hits her mid-thigh. She’s braided her wet hair to the side, letting it fall over her left shoulder. Her eyes are red and watery. I go to her to comfort her, handing her the cell phone that’s about to make her morning that much worse.
“Laureate,” I whisper as I pull her into a hug, “it’s not going to be the end of the world.” I try to sound convincing when I say it.
“Just the end of my career,” she says as she kneads her fingers into my back. “And what if my parents see that? They’ll be so embarrassed.”
“Coley, they’ve left you messages,” I warn her.
“What?!”
I nod my head, looking down at her as she swipes at the dripping tears. “Hey,” I say to her. “We’re adults, right? Adults who pledged our love to one another last night, emotionally and physically. We did nothing shameful. Nothing kinky, even. It was pretty fucking romantic, and you are so beautiful. We weren’t careless. We were in the privacy of my home. Someone essentially broke in here and committed a crime, Coley. We’re victims of a crime.”
“Should we call the police?” she asks.
“Jon’s talking to them now. They’ll be on their way soon. I’m going to call my dad and get his lawyer here, too. I think it was that paparazzo from last weekend. The one I told you about.”
“The sweet piece of ass guy?”
“Yeah,” I respond.
“You should sue him!”
“We will; don’t worry.”
“Should I leave?”
“No,” I tell her. “I mean, you can, but please… stay.” She nods. “These guys are two of the best people you’ll ever meet. I promise.” She puts her hand in mine, and I lead her back into the living room where Jon and Matty have made themselves at home.
“Matty, Jon… this is my girlfriend, Coley. She’s a creative writing major at Columbia with me. I’ve been her copy editor all semester, actually.”
“It’s nice to meet you both,” she says. “I feel like I know you already. Trey talks about you all the time.”
Jon looks at me disapprovingly, so I decide to put it all out there.
“Coley, Jon is very concerned that I was cheating on Zaina.”
“No, I–” he begins to backtrack.
I don’t allow my brother-in-law to continue. “Coley and I had maintained a strictly platonic relationship until last night. Yes, I’ve had feelings for her for awhile, and she had feelings for me, but it wasn’t something we allowed ourselves to pursue because of Zaina. I’ve always cared about her and respected her too much to betray her in such a way, and I would never do that to her. But the moment I knew that I could no longer salvage what Zaina and I once had, I knew I had to break things off. I waited until I could do it in person. Coley didn’t know what I was considering until that day. I told her as a friend. I wanted emotional support, and I didn’t think I’d get it from anyone else. Ever
yone else would have encouraged me to try to work things out with her. But my feelings for Zaina fizzled out slowly over the past few months. You can’t rekindle a flame without a spark. The spark was gone.
“Every evening this past week, we’ve spent catching up with each other. Confessing feelings we’ve been hiding. Discussing moments when we just knew. I’m in love with her.” I look down at her and kiss her. “She’s redefined the word for me. It means something different. It looks different, and it sure as hell feels different.”
“Sweetheart,” Matty says, “it’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“I’m not the kind of girl who would be okay with being the other woman, either,” Coley says. “I would never have asked him to leave her.”
Jon nods. “I think this is just an unfortunate circumstance for us to meet,” he says. “It kind of skews a person’s first impression. Forgive me.”
Coley frowns. “And this is how I’ll get to meet all of your family,” she says somberly, coming to that realization.
“It goes both ways,” I tell her. “And it’s easier for a woman to look like a victim in a sex tape than a man. My parents are not going to be happy about this video, but they’ll direct their anger appropriately. They’re going to like you once they get to know you. Speaking of which, why don’t you call your parents? I’m going to call mine.”
“Do yours know?”
“They’ve both left multiple messages. It’s safe to say they do.”
“What do I say?”
I swallow, trying to think of the best way to approach it with two people I’ve never even met. “Invite them here. Invite them here today.”
“Do I apologize?” she asks.
“Did you pledge a vow of chastity to them?” I ask her, half-teasing.
“No,” she says with a slight laugh.
“Then no. Stop feeling guilty for this. I mean it. We had no way of knowing this was happening. We did nothing wrong. Absolutely nothing.” She steps toward me, reaching for the back of my neck. We kiss softly. “I love you,” I whisper to her.
“I love you.”
Mom answers my father’s phone. There was a distinct reason I chose not to call hers, and I have no idea what to say to her. “Hey, Mom.”
“Hey, Mom?” she asks, obviously expecting something more eloquent or appropriate to the situation. “It’s your son,” I hear her say distantly.
“Jackson?”
“Dad, can you come over please?”
“What in God’s name were you thinking? Making a tape like that? And who the hell is that?”
“Dad! I didn’t make a fucking sex tape!” I yell over him.
“What kind of trouble are you in? Is someone blackmailing you? Why wouldn’t you tell us you were in trouble?”
“Dad! Will you shut up for a second?!”
“Jackson, I am so disappointed and ashamed right now, I’m not sure talking to you is the wisest thing anyway, because I may say something I’ll regret. Shutting up might be the best thing at the moment.”
“Dad, listen to me. Someone planted a camera on my balcony. They filmed us having sex. They posted it online.”
“Was it this woman in the video? Who is that, Trey? When was this taken? How could you cheat on Zaina?”
“We raised you better than that!” my mother says into the phone.
“Mom?”
“What?” I can’t tell if she’s crying out of anger or hurt.
“I didn’t cheat on Zaina. You did raise me better than that. This all happened last night. The girl in the video is Coley. I’ve told you about her. We just started dating.”
“You seem pretty close for two people who just started dating.”
“I don’t want to know what you saw, Mom, okay? I’m mortified by this whole thing. But she and I are close. Very close. Glad that came across,” I say sarcastically. “Can you and Dad just come over? Jon and Matty are here. The police are on the way.”
“The police?”
“Is no one listening to me? Someone glued a camera to the balcony railing, Mom, aimed it through the glass doors, and filmed us last night. I did not do that. She did not do that. A crime was committed. We’re reporting it. I’d appreciate it if my own parents didn’t accuse me of it.”
“Oh, God,” she sighs. “Jacks, how do we get that video taken down?” I hear her ask my father.
“You’re sure she didn’t do it?” Dad asks me.
“Absolutely sure.”
“Shit,” he mumbles. “I’ll call Danny. We’ll be there as soon as we can be.”
“Thank you.” I pitch my phone hard into the couch cushions. “Why is it that you and Jon had no doubt in your minds that this was not something I had done myself,” I begin, looking at my uncle, “but my own parents assume I’m now producing porn out of my own home?”
“If they assume the worst, then the truth always looks better,” he says. He motions for me to come closer. “I’m going to blame your mother for this. She has an irrational bent, you know, and I think she’s still upset about Zai. Jacks just got caught up in the hysteria. By the time they get here, he will have come to his senses and talked some into her, as well. I know how they work.”
“Ohhhh, my parents do not like you,” Coley says, all the color drained from her face. “You’re sure you didn’t do this?”
“You did not just ask me that, too…”
She shakes her head. “No, I didn’t. They were in my head, sorry. But they are coming. They don’t like you, and they’re already on their way to your apartment to tell you that in person.”
“Great.”
“I don’t think we need to be here for any of this,” Matty says to Jon as he hands me my phone. “I think our work here is done.”
“You’re not even going to be a buffer for me?” I ask my uncle.
“The cops will be here soon. They’ll be better at that than I will.”
“Her mom’s a cop. Her dad’s secret service. Everyone’s going to be sympathetic to her. I’m fucked. I’m royally fucked!” I pace back and forth in the kitchen, at a loss for what to do next. “Would you mind letting them out, Coley? I need to put on a shirt before everyone gets here.”
“Yeah.”
I walk back into my room and thumb through my shirts, trying to find something that makes me look respectable when I meet her parents. The respectable guy who ate their daughter’s pussy for all the world to see last night.
“Fuck.” How did my life suddenly become this? I shrug into an undershirt and slide on a button-down, fastening two of the buttons and returning to the kitchen, my posture undoubtedly communicating my defeated mood. My phone vibrates in my hand as I reach for the refrigerator door. “Why is Jon already texting me?” I ask the question aloud, but I’m not asking her.
- - She knows your security code? Are you serious?
- She was a guest in my apartment for a week while Pryana stayed in her dorm room. I don’t really owe you an explanation.
- - This just gets better and better. Know that I think it’s incredibly… Stupid.
- Thanks for your unsolicited opinion. I trust her.
- - Like you once trusted Asher?
“Please take this from me before I hurl it across the room again,” I tell Coley, placing it in her awaiting hand. She doesn’t even bother to look at it to see what’s upset me, instead setting it out of the way on the island with hers.
She signs something with her hands, speaking afterwards. “Were you getting something to eat? Or drink?”
I spell out the word yes. She shows me eat and drink again, and I sign drink back to her.
“May I have some water?” I watch her hands closely and nod my head as I get two glasses out of the cabinet. As I prepare our drinks, she teaches me glass, ice, pitcher, countertop and thank you.
“Let’s sit down in the living room,” I suggest. She shakes her head and signs a long string of words. I raise my eyebrows, waiting for an explanation of what she just said.
/> “There’s no way in hell I’m going in there again until that camera’s gone.”
“It’s blocked.”
“I don’t care.”
“Okay.” I offer her a seat at the kitchen table, which she graciously accepts and thanks me by signing once again. In my rudimentary ASL skills, I spell out a question for her: R U O K?
“Do you feel like you’re sitting outside the principal’s office awaiting your punishment?”
“Not really,” I tell her. “I’m angry that those moments were stolen from us like that. I’m angry at myself for not protecting you better. Even though there’s no way I could have ever imagined someone would do such a thing… I just wish you hadn’t been so exposed.”
“How much could you see?” she asks. “Was it clear? Blurry? Is there any way we could say it wasn’t us?”
“We could Google it.”
“I don’t want to.”
“From what I saw, we were looking out the window before we began,” I tell her softly. “And the picture’s surprisingly good. It’s obviously us.”
Someone knocks hard on the door, causing us both to jump. She turns around in her chair, keeping her eyes trained on me as I welcome two uniformed officers into my apartment–an older man and a younger woman. “Mr. Holland,” the man says, “I understand there was a possible break-in at your apartment?”
“I’m guessing there must have been. Someone has glued a camera to the bars on my balcony.”
“A video camera?”
“Yes, sir. I’ll show you.” They follow me through the apartment.
“What do you expect they wanted to film with a camera on your balcony? Birds?” he teases me.
I look back at him, surprised that he doesn’t know already. The woman looks completely oblivious, as well. When they get outside, they realize the lens is pointing inside the apartment. “Oh, look at that,” the woman says. “Right into your living room.”
“Yeah,” I comment.
“How did you discover this?” the man asks.
“Officer… Smart,” I say, seeing his name on the patch on his shirt, “someone posted a video of my girlfriend and me online. We found out this morning.”
“A video of you and your girlfriend?” I nod toward Coley. She waves with tempered enthusiasm. “Hello, miss. And what was this a video of?”
