Stepping over it, he cautiously reclaimed his device.
The picture was still there.
Forster’s picture.
Delicate lingerie, scallops of lace and stars skimming a woman’s bowed figure, fingers curled to cup the tiny freckles scattered across her stomach, the curve of her hip bones just visible above a denim waistband leading down out of the frame, a glass behind her reflecting two dimples set low in her back—
Static buzzed in his ears. His face burned.
What…
Why?
Who—
A new message blinked into the thread.
Forster
Oh my God. This was supposed to be for my mother.
Who sent photos of a woman in lingerie to his mother?
Skin glowing golden in the lights around her mirror, her freckled constellations begged to be drawn and mapped and observed with wonder. Was she Forster’s partner?
…and whowasForster?
Someone he liked, he reminded himself through the buzzing in his head. Someone who’d made him laugh. But now? Now, Forster was also someone he envied. Horribly, irrationally—
Ping.
Forster
She likes to weigh in on options when I’m shopping.
Forster
I’m so sorry, I really didn’t mean to send this to you.
A third typing notification bubbled and vanished. Bubbled and vanished. Bubbled. Then:
Forster
So, I guess that’s that. It’s probably obvious now that my name isn’t Aaron.
My name isn’t Aaron.
Knocked off balance again, he lurched forward against his counter. One sock went straight into the hummus. He didn’t step back.
Forster was a woman.
Thiswoman.
Her.
He vaguely registered Bunsen padding into the kitchen to lick at his sock and the floor, chew stick abandoned. The hummus was laced with peppers; the dog might vomit up a fountain of brown sludge later. But Ethan didn’t stop him. He went on blinking at his phone until another typing notification from Forster appeared. It dissolved almost immediately.
She was waiting. For him. To say…
