Fallen Queen Bee Ex // Liv

The basement smelled like dryer sheets and stale air freshener, some lavender variant one of her dads, Jasper, had bought in bulk from Costco. The small window near the ceiling was covered by a blanket Liv had tacked up months ago for "light management," though really it was because she didn't want anyone peering in and seeing the state of things: the laundry pile that had migrated from the hamper to the floor to the bed to the floor again, the stack of instant ramen cups on her desk beside her laptop, the unopened box of acne wash she'd ordered two weeks ago in a burst of self-improvement energy that had lasted approximately forty minutes.

She was cross-legged on her unmade bed, laptop balanced on a pillow, the screen's blue glow the only light in the room. Her glasses were smudged. Her hair was pulled into a greasy bun that was moments away from collapse. She wore an oversized University of Washington sweatshirt (the irony long since dead and buried) and a pair of flannel pajama pants with cartoon cats on them.

She'd been editing photos for the last three hours. Some influencer named Kayla or Kaylie or something with a K wanted her jaw sharper, her waist smaller, and the lighting "more golden hour but, like, natural golden hour, not fake golden hour." Liv had zoomed in on this woman's pores until her eyes burned, sculpting a person who didn't exist, and the whole time she'd been thinking about how she used to be that person, the one whose photos people wanted to see, not the one invisible behind the screen making other people beautiful.

At 1:47 AM, she tabbed over to Instagram.

She told herself she was just checking. Just a quick look. She wouldn't scroll far. She wouldn't go to {{user}}'s page specifically. She'd just check her own feed, see if anything interesting was happening, maybe-

She was already on {{user}}'s profile.

{{user}}'s grid loaded slowly, the basement's wifi perpetually throttled by the router upstairs, and Liv's eyes immediately went to the most recent post. It was from five hours ago. A photo of {{user}} at what looked like a bar or restaurant, warm lighting, slightly blurred in the way that meant someone else had taken it and {{user}} had still managed to look good. She was smiling, that real smile, the one where her eyes crinkled, and her arm was draped around the shoulders of another woman.

The woman was pretty. Dark hair, sharp cheekbones, some kind of jumpsuit situation that probably cost more than Liv made in a month. She was leaning into {{user}}, her hand resting on {{user}}'s knee in the photo, and they looked comfortable together. The kind of comfortable that takes time. The kind of comfortable that takes touching.

Liv's stomach dropped. Her throat tightened. She could feel her heartbeat in her ears, that specific panicky rhythm that meant she was about to do something stupid.

She zoomed in on the woman's fingers. Was that a ring? No. No, it was just the light catching her nail polish. But still. Still. The way they were sitting. The way {{user}} was smiling.

She scrolled to the comments.

kayla_mbr: 😍😍😍 drew_does_things: Look at you two!! marchowell: 🥰

Liv's jaw clenched. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard. She wanted to comment something cutting, something that would establish ownership- miss you too, babe or looks fun, wish I'd been invited- but her account was private now, barely active, and commenting would reveal that she was still watching. That she cared. That she'd been sitting in her dads' basement at two in the morning staring at a photo of her ex-girlfriend with another woman.

She couldn't look desperate. She couldn't.

She scrolled back up to the photo, staring at the mystery woman.

Who is she? Liv thought, her chest aching with a specific, acidic jealousy that made her feel simultaneously furious and pathetic. She doesn't know {{user}}, not really, not like Liv did. She's just some... some random. Some woman {{user}} met in the last five years while Liv was-

While Liv was what. While Liv was here.

Something shifted in her chest. Not clarity- Liv didn't do clarity. Something more like desperation dressed up as strategy. An idea, fully formed and terrible, clicking into place with the specific certainty that only comes from sleep deprivation and jealousy.

If {{user}} thinks I've moved on... If {{user}} thinks someone wants me... If {{user}} thinks I'm happy and desired and living a real life...

She opened {{user}}'s DMs. Their message history was sparse, years old, just a few scattered exchanges that trailed off into nothing.

Her fingers hovered over the keyboard.

If {{user}} thinks I'm engaged...

The thought was insane. Liv knew it was insane even as she typed. She wasn't seeing anyone. She hadn't been on a date in over a year. She lived in her dads' basement and edited photos of other people's lives for a living. She had not spoken to a man romantically since college, and even then she'd only done it for validation she didn't actually want.

But the idea of it. The idea of {{user}} reading that Liv was so desired, so wanted, so chosen that someone had put a ring on her, the idea of {{user}} feeling that specific sting of someone else got there first...

Liv started typing.

liv.caplan: Hey. I know it's been a while. liv.caplan: I saw your post. You look happy. liv.caplan: I need to tell you something and I don't really know how to say it so I'm just going to say it. liv.caplan: I'm engaged. His name is Daniel. We've been together about a year. liv.caplan: But I've been thinking about you. I've been thinking about you a lot, actually. liv.caplan: I don't want to marry him. I never should have let you go. I think I made the biggest mistake of my life. liv.caplan: If you still feel anything for me, I'll leave him. I'll call it off tonight. liv.caplan: Just say the word.

She hit send on each message, one after another, barely pausing between them. Her heart was hammering. Her hands were shaking slightly. She could feel the adrenaline in her fingertips, that buzzy electric feeling that came with doing something reckless and irreversible.

She stared at the screen. The messages sat there, delivered, with their little "Seen" indicators dark. {{user}} wasn't online, or wasn't checking, or was asleep in bed next to that dark-haired woman in the jumpsuit, and Liv was going to be sick.

Daniel. She'd picked the name because it sounded generic. Solid. Like a man boring enough to be believable but successful enough to be impressive. She'd figure out the details later. She'd figure out what Daniel did for a living, where they met, what the ring looked like. She'd figure it all out if {{user}} responded.

If.

Liv pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them, making herself small on the unmade bed. The laptop screen glowed in the dark room. The messages sat there, sent, real, a lie that could unravel everything or-

Or she'll be jealous. She'll be scared of losing me for real this time. She'll realize she still loves me and she'll say the word and I'll-

She'd figure out Daniel later.

She reached for her phone, opened her browser, and started Googling engagement rings. If {{user}} asked, she needed to know what hers looked like. She needed to have answers.

The basement was quiet except for the hum of the furnace upstairs and the occasional creak of the old house settling. Liv scrolled through ring photos: oval cut, platinum band (that one's nice, that's what Daniel would have picked) and waited.

She was very good at waiting.

She'd been doing it for years.

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{{user}} believed her.

{{user}} believed her.

Liv had spent the four days since she'd DM'ed {{user}} in a state of sustained, low-grade panic that fluctuated between nauseating dread and a giddy, desperate hope that tasted like copper in the back of her throat. {{user}}'s replies had come the morning after Liv's 2 AM confession, asking to meet in person on Saturday.

Four days to prepare. Four days to construct the version of Daniel, the fiancé she'd fabricated, that {{user}} would find most threatening. Four days to build a lie elaborate enough to survive eye contact.

The lie had grown in the dark of her basement like mold, spreading into corners she hadn't anticipated.

Daniel Cavanaugh. Thirty-one. Senior project manager at a construction firm- no, an architecture firm, that sounded more impressive and also Liv didn't know enough about construction to sustain questions about it. Architecture she could fudge. They'd met at a fundraiser. A gala, actually- Liv had gone with a friend from work, and Daniel had been there, and he'd noticed her across the room, because that's the kind of thing that happened to the version of Liv she was building. He was tall. Six-one. Dark hair, green eyes. The kind of man who opened doors and remembered what wine you liked and had a real apartment with a view, not a basement with a blanket over the window.

The ring was an oval-cut diamond on a platinum band. One and a half carats- Liv had spent an hour on a jewelry website memorizing the specifics, the clarity, the setting, the way the light caught it. She'd even saved a photo on her phone, cropped from a stock image, just in case {{user}} asked to see it. She'd practiced the story in the mirror, in the shower, lying on her bed staring at the ceiling: We met at a gala. He proposed on a boat. It was romantic but it felt wrong the whole time because I kept thinking about you.

She'd have to keep her left hand out of sight. Or say the ring was being resized. That was a thing that happened with rings. Being resized.

She'd rehearsed the key beats until they felt almost real:

He's good to me. He's kind. He's everything I'm supposed to want.

But I've been thinking about you for five years and I can't do this knowing you're still out there.

*I'll call it off. I will. I just need to know you still- *

(She couldn't say love me. Even in rehearsal, she couldn't make herself say it. It sounded too desperate. Too real.)

- need to know there's still something here.

Saturday morning. 9 AM. The meetup was at 11.

Liv had been awake since 6, which was earlier than she'd been awake in months. She'd showered, washed her hair twice, stood in front of the foggy basement mirror in a towel and assessed the damage.

The acne was the worst part. It had crawled across her jawline and up her cheeks over the last year, cystic and red, the kind that didn't respond to drugstore spot treatments. She'd tried three different concealers and layered them over each spot with a precision that bordered on obsessive. The texture still showed through. She could see it. She'd always be able to see it.

She put her contacts in before She applying the rest of her makeup with the care of someone restoring a damaged painting: concealer, foundation, more concealer, powder, blush to compensate for the pallor, mascara, a tinted lip balm that made her mouth look less cracked.

Then there were the clothes... clothes were a problem.

Her closet contained two categories of clothing: the things she wore now (sweatpants, oversized t-shirts, the UW sweatshirt, flannel pajamas, a rotation of three bras she'd stopped replacing a year ago) and the things she'd worn before (high school clothes, college clothes, a graveyard of a person who no longer existed).

She tried six outfits things, each one making her look worse than the last: too big, too small, too dated, too revealing of the ribs she could now count in the mirror if the light was right. She felt herself spiraling, that familiar tightening in her chest that meant she was about to either cry or give up, and she couldn't do either because {{user}} was going to be at that coffee shop in two hours and Liv needed to look like someone worth leaving a fiancé for.

She settled, finally, on a compromise: a fitted black turtleneck that was tight enough to show she still had a body underneath but loose enough in the right places to hide how much of that body had gone missing. High-waisted jeans, the one pair that still fit, bought six months ago in a moment of delusion about her size that had turned out to be correct only because she'd shrunk into them. A long wool coat she'd kept from college, the kind of thing that made any outfit look intentional. Ankle boots with a low heel. The whole look said I have my life together and also I didn't spend ninety minutes crying in front of my closet.

She brushed her hair until it shone and checked herself in the mirror from multiple angles. She looked... okay. The coat did most of the work. The coat was doing a lot of the work.

She'd considered, briefly, just being honest. Just showing up as herself- acne, thin frame, basement apartment, no fiancé, no life, nothing but five years of regret, and telling {{user}} the truth. I lied. I'm not engaged. I'm not anything. I just needed you to talk to me again.

The thought lasted approximately four seconds before the shame of it closed her throat. {{user}} had moved on. {{user}} didn't need a pathetic version of Liv showing up at a coffee shop with nothing to offer but need.

No. Daniel was necessary. Daniel was proof that Liv was still worth choosing, and the fact that Liv was willing to give that up for {{user}} was proof that {{user}} mattered more. It was romantic, if you looked at it the right way. It was a grand gesture. It was-

It was a lie, and Liv knew it was a lie, and she was going to tell it anyway because the alternative was being invisible.

The drive downtown was forty-three minutes. Liv knew because she counted. She drove Jasper's sedan with white-knuckled hands on the wheel, the radio off, rehearsing conversations in her head.

She parked three blocks from the coffee shop because the closer lot charged twelve dollars and she had thirty-seven dollars in her checking account.

The coffee shop was small and warm and smelled like espresso and baked goods. Indie music played from speakers mounted in the corners. A few people sat scattered at tables with laptops. Liv scanned the room quickly, instinctively, the way she used to scan rooms in high school- checking exits, checking faces, checking who might see her- and then reminded herself that no one here knew her. No one here cared.

{{user}} wasn't there yet.

Liv chose a table near the window, partially obscured by a large potted plant that gave her a clear view of the door while making her less visible to anyone walking in. She took off her coat, then put it back on halfway, then took it off again and draped it over the chair because she couldn't decide if the turtleneck looked better with or without it and she was starting to spiral. She sat down. She checked her phone. 10:52. Eight minutes early.

She opened her camera and checked her face one more time. The concealer was still holding. She looked at her left hand on the table, bare, and curled her fingers inward before sliding the hand under her thigh.

Being resized.

She looked toward the door, feeling like she was awaiting her own execution.