“You’ll stay over, right?” he said as we got close to the city. He put a hand on my hand and I made a fist. He picked up the fist and licked it. In the garage, he drew a cover over the car. In the elevator, we kissed.

“Stay all weekend,” he said into my mouth. “Water my plants.” In the morning, he was flying to Arizona for a night. “Stay forever,” he whispered and I felt my body give, every muscle relaxing, like a pill had kicked in. He opened the front door, dangled the key at me. I looked at myself in the hallway mirror, then followed him to the living room.

“Stop,” he said, and I did. He crossed the room, sat on the couch. “Get on all fours.”

I just stood there. “Why?” I asked and he smirked but didn’t answer. Slowly, I lowered to my knees. “Beg me,” I said, and he said, “No,” and the smirk became a grin.

I waited for him to speak again. When he didn’t, I crawled toward him.

“Good girl,” he said.

WE WENT TO bed early. Sometime in the night, I thought I felt Jake kiss my forehead. But I woke alone.

I made a nest of sheets and pillows and hid inside it with my phone. Jake had airdropped me the Vegas images; we’d set a post-time, and a caption, Luck Be a Lady. In my favorite picture, I leaned over the craps table. The silver dress drooped at the bust, my clavicle jutted forward. The bones looked beautiful, expensive, like pieces of an antique ship, graceful and worth naming. I edited my jawline to a heart shape, filtered my skin to a textureless glow. I closed the picture, opened it again, to see it as a follower would, then replaced some of the texture, and posted. I left my nest, walked around the condo, opening drawers and doors. I sat on Jake’s toilet watching Instagram. The stories feature was less than a year old, but already it had changed the way I shit. I ate one of Jake’s low-carb collagen breakfast bars, which tasted like glue. I made coffee with his Nespresso and imagined breaking it. When I checked my phone again, I had seven hundred likes, one hundred comments, and a voicemail from my mom:

“Anna, I need to get on the phone with you. I’ve been looking at your Instagram as it seems to be the only way for me to know what’s going on. You look sick in your latest post, and unhappy. Are you making money yet? Where are your girlfriends? Where are you? When I call, you don’t pick up. When I text, you take days to answer. I feel very out of control when it comes to your health and I need to make contact. Call me as soon as you get this.”