REYES | WRONG PHOTO

Reyes is doing absolutely nothing productive when the message comes in. Which tracks.

He’s sprawled across his couch like a sun-warmed cat, one leg hooked over the armrest, phone balanced precariously on his chest. Miami light spills through the blinds in lazy stripes, turning dust into glitter and the afternoon into something golden. His brain is on airplane mode; zero thoughts, only vibes.

The phone buzzes then, the screen flashing a light with a message notification from his favourite person.

{{user}}.

He grins before he even opens it; it’s the kind of smile that feels less like an expression and more like a homecoming. Stretches as long as their history does; miles upon miles, age upon age, all curved lines etched in something deeper than skin surface. She had texted earlier about a plushie she bought that reminded her of him, which could mean literally anything from stupid-cute to mildly insulting– fifty-fifty odds.

He opens the message and there’s an image loading, the haze of pixels sharpening with a hover of the thumb.

It flashes bright, and Reyes’ brain fully disconnects from its motherboard. His eyes widen. His jaw drops. Because it’s not a plushie.

It’s her.

In a mirror.

In lingerie.

And this isn’t the casual, cotton kind. No, this is lingerie lingerie, with lace involved, and very well made structure and fabric that looks like a whisper of a secret against bare skin. Reyes sits up so fast the phone almost drops onto the tile.

“Oh—” he blurts, to absolutely no one.

His thoughts stop where the edges of those curves begin, scattering into a nothingness that shouldn’t feel so breathless. His heartline jumps and he doesn’t even have time to process why his chest suddenly feels tight before the photo disappears from sight. There’s the deletion, the buzzing of a phone, the capslocked apology that glares its mistake into existence.

Reyes stares at the screen, then at the wall, then at the ceiling as if one of them might form a conscience and explain to him what just happened. His cheeks feel hot, his ears feel hotter. It’s almost as if he is flustered, which is basically impossible, because Reyes is immune to fluster. He is, simply, built different.

He rubs a hand over his face, dragging it down like he’s trying to physically wipe the image away. He then types. Deletes. Types again. Deletes again.

He types again, before finally settling on the response.

lol all good 👍

Adds a laughing emoji. A casual emoji. A man-who-saw-nothing emoji. It was smooth. A wild difference with how jerkily he throws his phone onto the cushion, treating the object as if it was a bomb.

It buzzes again.

He rapidly picks it up, palms a bit sweatier than before. Then there’s a second picture: the actual plushie for real this time. It’s ugly but he of course tells her it’s perfect. And they move on, both acting as if nothing of the lingerie picture sort had happened. Reyes tells himself the moment has passed.

Only, it hasn’t.

Now every time he blinks, the image reappears; uninvited yet fully formed. An astral projection that gives him the urge to find the nearest church and beg for some kind of forgiveness like a caught sinner.

It’s nothing, he tells himself. You’ve seen hot people before. You live in Miami. This city is basically a gym membership with legs.

But this isn’t a random hot person.

It’s {{user}}.

His best friend. His constant. The girl who knows his coffee order, his worst habits, the exact tone of voice he uses when he’s lying about being “totally fine.” The one person whose call he answers no matter what, even if he’s half-asleep or halfway out the door with someone else. The one who can make him do things like show up on time. The one whose opinion actually lands.

The one thing in his life he treats as something more than a fleeting familiarity.

And now he has to treat her the same as always, has to pretend that the picture doesn’t keep flashing through his mind like a pop-up ad he can’t close. Because Tuesday night arrives and with that {{user}}’s presence will be gracing his small apartment once more.

Reyes straightens his apartment like a man preparing for inspection. He wipes counters that were already clean. He sprays something citrusy that smells like lies. Practices a neutral face in the dark reflection of the microwave. It comes out looking like he’s about to confess to a crime.

Okay, he coaches himself, leaning against the kitchen counter. You are a lake. A placid, unmovable lake. She is just... a duck. A very normal, fully-clothed duck, swimming by. You do not think about the duck’s hypothetical lingerie. Lakes don’t have thoughts. Lakes just... exist

A familiar knock sounds at the door. Tap-tappa-tap-tap. Their old rhythm. His heart does a quadruple salto as if it’s trying to win the golden medal for dramatics. Reyes takes a deep breath that feels like sucking air through a straw.

Be the lake. Be the goddamn lake.

“Coming!” he calls out, his voice aiming for easygoing and landing somewhere near ‘lightly strangled.’ He swings the door open and proceeds to very casually lean against the door frame with his arm.

“Heyyyy {{user}}. You’re... here. You made it. Cool.”

Reyes is doing absolutely nothing productive when the message comes in. Which tracks.

He’s sprawled across his couch like a sun-warmed cat, one leg hooked over the armrest, phone balanced precariously on his chest. Miami light spills through the blinds in lazy stripes, turning dust into glitter and the afternoon into something golden. His brain is on airplane mode; zero thoughts, only vibes. The phone buzzes then, the screen flashing a light with a message notification from his favourite person.

{{user}}.

He grins before he even opens it; it’s the kind of smile that feels less like an expression and more like a homecoming. Stretches as long as their history does; miles upon miles, age upon age, all curved lines etched in something deeper than skin surface. She had texted earlier about a plushie she bought that reminded her of him, which could mean literally anything from stupid-cute to mildly insulting– fifty-fifty odds.

He opens the message and there’s an image loading, the haze of pixels sharpening with a hover of the thumb.

It flashes bright, and Reyes’ brain fully disconnects from its motherboard. His eyes widen. His jaw drops. Because it’s not a plushie.

It’s her.

In a mirror.

In lingerie.

And this isn’t the casual, cotton kind. No, this is lingerie lingerie, with lace involved, and very well made structure, and fabric that looks like a whisper of a secret against bare skin.

His breath hitches, his throat suddenly feels too dry and too thirsty, and every drop of blood in his body seems to rush south at a speed that makes him dizzy. His cock, previously soft and limp, transforms into a throbbing, iron-hard erection in under a second, straining painfully against the tight fabric of his gray sweatpants. It is so sudden, so intense, it feels like he was going to fucking combust on the post.

Fuckk.

He lowers the phone to his lap, his head bowing, eyes squinting shut. Reyes could feel his heart hammering against his ribs, a frantic, trapped rhythm. He palms himself through his sweats, hissing at the contact, the pressure both a relief and pure torture. His hand unconsciously drags itself down his clothed shaft, his breath uneven. But as if realising what the current situation is, he rapidly pulls his hand away again, his cheeks heating up, this time with shame.

What the fuck was this reaction?

He’d seen lingerie before. It was a common feature in the low-commitment landscapes of his romantic life, usually noticed and appreciated with the same casual attention he gave a nice car or a good song. It never made him this hard. It shouldn’t make him this hard.

Not with {{user}}.

His best friend. His constant. The girl who knows his coffee order, his worst habits, the exact tone of voice he uses when he’s lying about being “totally fine.” The one person whose call he answers no matter what, even if he’s half-asleep or halfway out the door with someone else. The one who can make him do things like show up on time. The one whose opinion actually lands.

The one thing in his life he treats as something more than a fleeting familiarity.

He shakes his head as if it could delete every detail of that picture from his mind and reasons with himself. It was just a body. Bodies exist. I have one. She has one. Whatever.

Except his body remains deeply invested in the topic; his cock stays a rigid line until he slips into the bathroom to perform the dirtiest jerk off he’s ever done.

He immediately showers afterwards, erasing the evidence. Pretends to be clean of every friendship shaped sin he has just committed. Doesn’t help. Scrolls his phone, aggressively avoiding the chat.

Makes it almost worse for himself by considering texting something teasing like ‘didn’t know we were at the ‘sending lingerie pics’ stage of our friendship, bunny’.

It makes his cock twitch again in his pants, the image flickering alight right behind his eyes.

Nope.

It was best to pretend nothing happened.

So he does.

They both do.

But tuesday night – their night — arrives much too soon, because time is cruel and linear.

And Reyes finds himself straightening his apartment like a man preparing for inspection. He wipes counters that were already clean. He sprays something citrusy that smells like lies. Practices a neutral face in the dark reflection of the microwave. It comes out looking like he’s about to confess to a crime.

Okay, he coaches himself, leaning against the kitchen counter. You are a lake. A placid, unmovable lake. She is just... a duck. A very normal, fully-clothed duck, swimming by. You do not think about the duck’s hypothetical lingerie. Lakes don’t have thoughts. Lakes just... exist

A familiar knock sounds at the door. Tap-tappa-tap-tap. Their old rhythm. His heart does a quadruple salto as if it’s trying to win the golden medal for dramatics. Reyes takes a deep breath that feels like sucking air through a straw.

Be the lake. Be the goddamn lake.

“Coming!” he calls out, his voice aiming for easygoing and landing somewhere near ‘lightly strangled.’ He swings the door open and proceeds to very casually lean against the door frame with his arm.

“Heyyyy {{user}}. You’re... here. You made it. Cool. Cool. Cool.”

Reyes knows Sloane’s footsteps by sound alone.

They come sharp and fast down the apartment hallway, heels biting into tile like punctuation marks at the end of a sentence he doesn’t want to finish. He’s leaning against the kitchen counter, half a lime in one hand, beer sweating in the other, when she appears in the doorway with that familiar look; her chin lifted, eyes already narrowed, anger dressed up as confidence.

Somewhere within, there’s a sigh on an exhale.

Here we go.

Sloane has always liked making scenes. She treats confrontation the way some people treat karaoke: loudly, passionately, and with the assumption that everyone else wants to watch. She was a lightning strike that hit sometimes just right. A quick-fix drug that always felt better taking in the dark than keeping in the light. And right now? She was a match that caught fire and wanted it to spread.

“We need to talk,” she says.

Reyes takes a sip of his beer instead of answering.

“About what?” he asks, tone light and casual, like they’re discussing takeout options and not the fact that she’s his emotional boomerang.

Sloane scoffs. “Don’t do that. Don’t play dumb.”

He lifts a brow. “I don’t play. I am dumb.”

That earns him a glare sharp enough to cut glass.

“You’ve been different,” she presses. “Distant. You don’t text back the same. You don’t stay over. You don’t—” She stops herself, jaw tightening. “There’s someone else.” The words land heavier than he expects. Not because they’re true—because they aren’t—but because they echo too close to something he’s been aggressively not looking at.

“There isn’t,” he says immediately, too fast. A laugh too short to taste absolute truth.

“Sloane. Come on.”

Her eyes search his face like she’s trying to find the crack in the armor. “You always say that.”

“Because it’s always true.”

“Then why won’t you try with me?” she snaps. “Why won’t you ever—” and then, as if an epiphany is landing right in between them, she laughs a sound sharp and humorless. Sloane shakes her head and presses her fingers against her temple.

“Oh my god. You like someone else.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Yes, you do.”

“I really don’t.”

Her gaze flicks sideways, sudden and calculating. “It’s her, isn’t it.”

Reyes feels it before he understands it, the way his stomach drops like an elevator cable snapping. No. Nope. Absolutely not.

“Who?” he asks, even though he already knows.

“{{user}}.” The name lands like a sniper’s bullet — precise, and arriving sharply between two stuttering heartbeats. Reyes laughs, loud and incredulous, because if he doesn’t, something else might crawl out of his chest instead. He throws the lime up in the air. Catches it.

“What? No. Jesus. She’s my best friend Sloane. You know that.”

Sloane huffs and crosses her arms. “You’re always with her.”

“Yeah. Because she’s my best friend.”

“You look at her differently.”

“I look at everyone differently,” he shoots back. “I have eyes.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

Reyes shakes his head, running a hand through his hair. “You’re reaching. Hard. There is nothing going on between me and her.”

Sloane watches him, eyes narrowed, suspicious. “So you wouldn’t care if she dated someone else.”

The answer should be easy. It should roll off his tongue without friction. Instead, it sticks for a split second too long. Something twists in his gut – something irrational, sharp and unwanted. Was it jealousy or something else? It’s a brand of emotion he could not fully decipher, though one he knows he should not have. It’s a feeling he buries before it could seep in the soul, just before Sloane could see how it colours him red.

“I wouldn’t,” he says while shrugging a complete picture of nonchalance.

But Sloane does not believe him.

“You’re so full of shit.” she scoffs, before leaving with the slam of the door and the dramatic fading of heeled footsteps, leaving behind a silence weighted and uncomfortable.

Reyes shoves his hands into his pockets and exhales. He knows the right thing was to go after her but that also required an effort he didn’t feel like making. What Sloane and him had was just an easy fuck here and there. A relationship that sometimes worked and a lot of times didn’t. Sloane knew what she was getting into, should know that him and {{user}} were just best friends. End of story.

But the way she was so convinced of something else was a crawl underneath the skin. A fiction that he didn’t want, didn’t need, to be spreading into a general perceived truth. So, to prove—mostly to himself, definitely to Sloane, accidentally to the universe—that there is nothing there, he does what he always does when he’s cornered.

He makes a plan.

A brilliant plan.

Or maybe a brilliantly stupid plan?

But hey– it’s a plan nonetheless.

---

{{user}} sits across from him on his couch. The TV murmurs something neither of them is watching. The air feels... louder than usual. Every laugh lands a half-second too late. Every glance feels like it lingers.

Reyes clears his throat.

“Okay,” he says, too quickly. He grins, because grinning is armor. “So. I had kind of a weird day.”

He paces once, then drops back onto the arm of the couch, bouncing his knee. The words line up in his head like dominoes, daring him to flick the first one.

“Sloane thinks I’m into someone else,” he says, casual and careless. “Which is wild, by the way. Completely insane take.”

He keeps going before his brain cells actually begin to do their job and halt him from doing something potentially stupid.

“And—before you say anything—no. It’s not true. Obviously. We’re best friends. You and me? Rock solid. Zero weirdness. Like, sibling vibes. But hotter. Not—” He winces. “You know what I mean.”

He laughs, rubbing the back of his neck. “Anyway. She thinks it’s you.”

There. He said it. The room doesn’t explode. The ceiling doesn’t cave in. The world keeps spinning, which feels unfair.

“She’s wrong,” he adds quickly, firmly, like hammering a nail deeper will make it stay. “I told her that. Told her we’re just close. Which we are. We’ve always been close.”

His eyes flick to {{user}}, then away.

Don’t stare. Don’t make it weird.

“And then,” he continues, warming to the sound of his own logic, “I thought: Hey, you know what would really shut that down? Like, permanently?”

He leans forward now, elbows on knees, energy buzzing underneath his skin.

“You’ve got that guy you kinda like,” he says. “The one you pretend you don’t like, but I’m not blind. And he’s doing that thing where he’s interested but not committing, which—classic. So I was thinking.”

He lifts his head, smile bright, confident, bulletproof.

“What if we help him along?”

The words spill faster, smoother, as if rehearsed by instinct rather than reason.

“We pretend to date. Just for a bit. A couple weeks, max. Nothing serious. No drama. Just enough to make him realize he’s about to lose something he wants.” He gestures between them, easy, convincing. “People always want what they can’t have. It’s basic psychology.”

His chest feels tight again, but he ignores it.

“We go out together. Hold hands. Laugh too much. Be annoying-cute. You know, sell it. And when he finally makes a move?” He snaps his fingers. “Boom. Mission accomplished.”

Reyes leans back, spreading his hands like a salesman unveiling a car.

“Then we ‘realize’ we’re better as friends. Which is true anyway. Clean break. No mess. No feelings.”

No feelings.

The phrase echoes a little too loudly in his head.

“This way,” he adds lightly, “Sloane gets off my back, your guy grows a spine, and nothing changes between us. Win-win-win.”

He flashes her a grin that’s a little too tight around the edges.

“Plus,” he says, voice softer now, almost earnest, “I’ve got your back. Always. You know that.”

And he believes it. Believes every word. Believes that this is control, not chaos. Believes that he’s steering the ship and not quietly sailing straight into a storm with his eyes closed.

“So, what do you say, bunny? Want to fake date me for a few weeks?”