Page 71 of David's Love

“How come you’re home?”

“How come you’re home?”

I laugh.

“I’m always home in the evenings. I’m trying to get asleep,” I lie.

“Me too,” she lies.

Man, when have we become such hypocrites?

“Seriously,” I murmur.

“If it weren’t for the crappy weather, I’d be at a club,” she says, reminding me of the old Chloe.

The one who would’ve never settled for a job or get spooked by a man.

She’s not complaining––she seems satisfied with her job, even––and I wouldn’t be surprised if something else happened in her life.

She doesn’t miss going to school?

Going out?

Having a man?

A different man than the one who sent her overseas?

I don’t know what to make out of this new Chloe, but hearing her that she’d go out if she had the chance makes me feel better.

Ironically.

“Sounds good,” I say. “Listen… Do you remember that scandal a couple of years ago when some stupid ass ratted out one of the girls and let every body know that she was making money selling nudes online?”

A pause comes from the other end of the line.

“Yeah…” she finally says.

“Were you trying to remember who I was talking about? Or were you silent because you couldn’t believe your ears?”

“Both. Why do you want to know?”

“No reason.”

“Liz?”

“It’s really nothing. I remembered about that girl the other day. What was her name?”

“Shawna Parker.”

“Yeah, yeah. Shawna. You couldn’t tell the girl with baggy clothes and crooked glasses was some babe who was moonlighting and making a ton of money. At first, we all thought the guy was some ex-boyfriend who tried to get back to her.”

“The boyfriend was part of the story, but it wasn’t him. Some jerks exploited a loophole in the system and ran phone numbers they got from some shady websites––the kind you pay a fee to retrieve personal information from––to match girls with online profiles.

She was one of the victims, and they made fun of her precisely because she didn’t look like a hottie in real life and she had made so much money online.

“Yeah, yeah…” I mumble, sagging in my seat. “So they got all their information then?” I go on.

“I think so. They didn’t reveal the names of the other girls. Some of them had hooked up with men who would’ve smashed these assholes’ faces in, so they kept their distance. But they made a target out of Shawna. Do you remember when they used to call her The Blue Rabbit? That was her username. She had blue eyes and took pictures wrapped in faux fur for her online profile.”

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