Page 44 of A Smile Full of Lies
StrayDog777
Four years is a long time to carry guilt for someone else’s feelings, especially someone who broke up with you. You’ve been punishing yourself longer than you ever needed to. Besides that, it seems to me like their friendship is no longer a problem if your relationship with the other guy ended years ago. What’s really holding you back from letting your neighbor in? The guy is obviously interested in you.
GraveyardGirl93
The longer I’m around him, the worse it gets. It’s like my whole body is tuned to him. Half the time I want to fight with him, half the time I want to throw myself at him, and I don’t know which part is stronger anymore. It’s confusing. Overwhelming. Wrong.
StrayDog777
Sounds to me like you’re human, not wrong. Attraction doesn’t make you a monster, and guilt doesn’t erase it either. The fact that you didn’t cross the line when you could’ve says more about you than the thoughts ever will.
GraveyardGirl93
I just don’t know what to do. He’s a nice guy. The serious type, and I don’t do serious anymore since things went bad between me and his friend. I don’t want to string him along or use him in any way.
StrayDog777
Listen, you’ve had a bad day. Don’t try to solve everything tonight. Unwind a little. Doom scroll on your phone and watch something mindless. You need a distraction. Let yourself breathe before you burn out completely.
The tension in my chest eased just a fraction. Maybe he was right. Maybe I just needed to stop spinning myself into a frenzy and give myself a minute to decompress.
I put the laptop to sleep, slid it off my lap, and set it on the other side of the bed, his last message still echoing in my head:doomscroll… you need a distraction.
My gaze lingered on the laptop’s dark screen as I remembered how, a few days ago, he’d mentioned MaskTok when we first started DMing. I hadn’t thought much about it since then, except for checking out the videos creators had linked to from the anonymous confession forum when I searched about it. But now… maybe that was exactly what I needed to help me turn my brain off and unwind.
With a sigh, I pushed Knox’s hoodie sleeves up, reached over and picked up my phone, and unlocked it. The house was cool enough to warrant the hoodie — a steady 68 degrees, same as always — but my skin prickled like I was overheating. Restless and flushed, I shoved the sleeves higher, then gave up altogether and peeled the hoodie off. It landed in a soft heap beside me, leaving just the cling of a thin tank and boy short underwear I planned to sleep in against my skin.
I tried to shake off the guilty awareness of whose hoodie I’d been wrapped in, whose guest bed I was sprawled across, and whose scent I’d just pulled off my body.
Focus, Ros. Just doomscroll. Just… distract yourself.
So I thumbed into the search bar, typedMaskTok, planning to let the algorithm drag me under.
The first video MaskTok shoved at me wasn’t even subtle. A dark figure stepped out of shadow, violet neon stitched across his mask in a grin too wide to be human. The glowing Xs where his eyes should’ve been were unnerving, but I couldn’t look away. His voice rumbled through my phone speaker, low and dangerous even with the volume turned almost all the way down. The words slid over my skin, too intimate for a For You Page. Every word dragged through my mind — slow and dangerous — like it was meant just for me. I should’ve scrolled past. Instead, I tapped his profile: @NoxObscura.
Nox Obscura had hundreds of videos with millions of likes. Every one of them was darker, sharper, and hungrier than the last. The more I scrolled, the more my body hummed with that restless heat, my thighs pressing together like friction alone might help. I had a passing crazy thought then, that maybe it was the name, that maybe, anything with a name that even slightly sounded like Knox was enough to get me off. I shook my head – there couldn’t be any real connection – Knox hid from the media, and Nox Obscura was an on camera personality – how opposite could you get? It was obvious that me finding out that Knox owned that damn magazine had made me see him in everything.Not, came the insidious thought,that I didn’t already see him that way… I turned my attention back to the phone, to the videos, to the intimate, dangerous, seductive images.
By the time I dragged myself back to my laptop, my hands were shaking. I pulled up my DMs with StrayDog777 and typed fast before I could overthink it.
GraveyardGirl93
Okay. Question. Is it crossing a line if I get myself off to @NoxObscura’s videos? Because I want to. Bad. But I feel like that makes me some kind of creep.
I stared at the screen, my pulse hammering in my ears, then hit send. I was practically coming out of my skin by the time he replied.
StrayDog777
They’re thirst traps, honey. You’re supposed to get hot and bothered. That’s kind of the point. Nobody’s gonna revoke your good-person card for enjoying the view. If watching turns you on, then mission accomplished on their end.
The reply should’ve embarrassed me into logging off. Instead, it lit me up hotter than I wanted to admit, as if he’d given me permission.
Nobody’s gonna revoke your good-person card.
Like a switch had flipped, every ounce of my restraint dissolved.
A shaky laugh bubbled out of me, and I clapped a hand over my mouth to stifle it. I didn’t want to disturb Knox, and I definitely didn’t want to give him a reason to wonder what I was doing in his guest room… especially considering what I was about to do.
I unlocked my phone again, thumb trembling just enough to give me away, and pulled his page back up. @NoxObscura. Hundredsof thumbnails of that eerie, unsettling mask filled my screen. It was cold and somehow magnetic all at once. There were so many videos, so many options.
