Nora was in bed, staring up, counting the glow-in-the-dark stars and moon clipped to the ceiling. A beeping sound pulled her attention back to earth.
She reached for her phone. A notification dropped from WhatChat. One message. Daine.
"Girl. Class group chat. RIGHT NOW. You need to see this."
Nora sat up so fast she nearly knocked the laptop off her thighs. Daine was not a person who used capital letters casually. Capital letters from Daine meant something had actually happened, not just the usual low-grade drama of someone saying something shady in the comments of someone else's post. This was group chat territory. This was serious.
She swiped out of Textagram first without a second thought and landed in Whatchat, thumbing her way to the class group chat, Westbrook High School'26. The notification badge on it read 890 unread messages, and by the time she tapped in, it had ticked up to 992.
The messages were coming in fast, piling on top of each other in the chaotic way that only happened when the entire class collectively lost its mind at the same moment. She scrolled up to find the source, past strings of emojis she couldn't fully process in her haste. Crying, laughing faces, flames, wide-eyed shock icons, and loads of comments from the girls that ranged from incoherent screaming to things that were technically words but barely.
"I'm not okay."
"A demi-god."
"God literally had a plan when he made this man."
"My phone is going in the bin because I can't."
"Some call an ambulance, I've stopped breathing. Lol."
Nora's scrolling slowed as she reached the source. The photo had been posted by Cassie, who had captioned it with nothing but three fire emojis and a crown. That was what it needed to throw the group into chaos.
And then Nora saw him. Benjamin Damien.
Her jaw dropped. Just slightly, just enough to let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding.
Ben was standing in what looked like a gym, the background blurred just enough to put every ounce of focus on him. He was looking slightly off-camera, his head turned just so, as though someone had called his name right at the moment the shutter clicked, and he hadn't fully turned yet. It gave the photo an accidental quality, like a real moment rather than a posed one, which somehow made it worse—more dangerous.
His chest was bare.
Nora became very still. She had known, in the abstract way you know things about people who exist on a different plane of social existence, that Benjamin Damien was good-looking. She was not oblivious. She had eyes. She attended the same school, sat in some of the same hallways, and had watched him walk through the double doors of Westbrook with the particular loose-shouldered ease of someone who had never once in his life worried about whether he belonged somewhere. She knew all of this.
But knowing something and seeing it at close range on a screen, zoomed in with two fingers because her hands apparently had an agenda of their own tonight, were entirely different experiences.
His eyes came into sharper focus first. Grey, she noticed. His nose was straight and pointed, almost carved, as if whoever had put him together had taken extra time on that detail. And then the dimples, she hadn't let herself properly register the dimples before, which she now understood had been an act of self-preservation. They sat in the corners of his cheeks like punctuation, appearing even now at the edge of whatever almost-expression his face was holding.
And then there was the rest of him. The bare chest, the sculpted definition of someone who clearly treated the gym with the same dedication most people gave to nothing at all in their lives. The muscles on his stomach were solid.
Nora became very aware that she had been staring at her phone screen for an amount of time that could no longer be described as a casual glance. She lowered the phone to her lap. Then picked it back up.
"Stop it, Nora! This is an unhinged behavior." She muttered.
But she did not stop. The thoughts came anyway. Unbidden and absolutely unwelcome and entirely too vivid to dismiss. She imagined what it would feel like to be close to him, actually close, not hallway-passing close, not sitting three rows behind him in English-Lit close. Real close. She imagined his hands, large and sturdy, at her sides, her waist traveling upward to cup the side of her neck with a grip that was firm but careful—pulling her in. The way she'd have to tilt her chin up to meet him, and the way he might look at her in that half-second.
Nora closed her eyes.
The image sharpened rather than faded, which was deeply unhelpful. She pressed her lips together and tried to think about something else. Her homework. The glow-in-the-dark symbols. The sound of the television downstairs, where her mom was watching one of her shows. Anything.
It didn't work.
She gave herself ten more seconds of it, which she recognized was a negotiation with herself that she was losing, and then she opened her eyes and set the phone face down on the mattress beside her.
Nora was very clear-eyed about this, in the way that people who spend a lot of time living inside their own heads learn to be. She knew exactly where she stood in the landscape of Benjamin Damien's world. She had observed enough, listened enough, paid enough quiet attention to know the shape of the girls he moved through. They were the kinds of girls who took up space easily, who laughed loudly without checking first whether it was appropriate, who wore the right things without appearing to try. She had seen his last girlfriend, Taylor Jackson, a model and one of the most influential girls in Westbrook. She had seen the one before that, and the one before that.
She was not one of those girls. And she had made peace with herself, or at least a workable truce. But she was not naive either. There was a type that orbited Benjamin Damien, and she was not it, not in the way she looked, not in the way she moved through school, not in the particular social mathematics that determined who was visible to someone like him and who wasn't.
She picked up her phone again. Flipped it over. Looked at the photo one more time. At least there was this. At least the world was occasionally generous enough to produce something worth looking at, and at least the Whatchat group chat had delivered it directly to her bed on an otherwise unremarkable Tuesday night. She didn't need to be the girl he looked back at. She didn't need to exist in his orbit or matter to him in any way that the world could see.
But here, in the low blue light of her room, with nobody watching, she could want and do things. Here she could let the images come and stay for a little while before she put them away again. She could fulfill her fantasies like Ben was right in the room to do the unspeakable to her.
She traced her finger lightly across the phone screen. Not zooming this time and just looking.
"Fine." She said.
Nora slid out of her outfit until she was in only her panties. She knew if she touched her clit right now, she would feel pleasured by her fingers.
Nora lay on the bed, her knees up and legs spread wide. Her body shook as she caressed the clit spot on her panties. She pulled off the panties as her fingers were so eager to touch her clit. And when she did, she found a drenched and wanting core that ached so much for a man's cock; Ben's cock, to be precise.
She tried to picture his tongue on her needy core as her dripping wet fingertips coated her clit, and a spasm of pleasure made her moan softly.
Nora spread her pussy lips wide, lifted the smooth clit higher, and began to circle the outside edges of her clitoris. She made small, small flicks on the tip, and it made her squirm. She pictured Ben's mouth greedily sucking on her core. And it triggered her arousal.
"Fuck!" She moaned.
Nora plunged two fingers deep into her pussy just like she had imagined Ben would do it, and she made a hit on her G-spot. She began to feel her inner walls tighten and an orgasm building up deep inside her belly. All of her thoughts were filled with pictures of Ben's cock thrusting in and out of her tight pussy and making her cum so hard.
She needed the sexual relief she would feel if she got rammed by his throbbing dick. She wanted him so badly. Why has she been so timid in approaching him? Why was she letting other girls have him? Why hasn't she made the first move? She questioned in her mind, even though she already knew the answers.
Nora's whimper grew louder as she worked her fingers faster into her core. A moan escaped her lips as she slid in one more finger. A flow of nectar creased her fingers and thighs as her need to release increased. She craved Ben's cock.
Nora sat up abruptly, increasing the force of her fingers. "Oh shit! I...am almost there!"
Her fingers pounded her so hard that it took her breath away. Her hips lifted, her thighs shaking as her imagination of Ben's naked body grazed her mind's eye. Nothing else existed in her world at that moment except Benjamin Damien.
The tiny line between her and orgasm broke off, and her eyes shut as she released all over the bed sheet.
Nora let out a moan. Her breathing was heavy as she lay her back slowly on the bed.
"I need him." She grabbed her cell phone, her fingers working on the keyboard.
"Hi Ben.' She sent him a text.