Dirty Damage: Chapter 3

My apartment complex’s pool isn’t exactly luxurious.

The water’s over-chlorinated, the concrete deck is cracked in places that management keeps promising and failing to fix, and sometimes, the underwater lights flicker like they’re sending Morse code distress signals.

But at sunset, with the sky painting purple over orange, it feels almost peaceful.

Almost.

I slice through the tepid water, arms burning with each stroke. This is one of the few places I can think—or, more accurately, not think. My mind empties with each lap, my cares dissolving into chlorine and sweat.

Lap seven.

Eight.

Nine.

I push myself until my lungs protest and my shoulders ache.

With every kick and flip, the stress of the day gradually loosens its grip on my chest. By lap fifteen, I’m floating on my back, watching palm fronds sway against the darkening sky.

But the universe hates letting me relax for more than five consecutive minutes.

My phone, perched on my pool towel, lights up with a notification. Then another. And another.

I climb out, water streaming down my legs, and reach for it with a sense of dread.

Please be Mara with some ridiculous meme. Please be Sydney checking in. Please be a spam call about my car’s extended warranty and an exciting opportunity to renew it.

It’s none of those things.

Hey beautiful. Been thinking about u.

saw those pictures. u still got it. When u coming back to Vegas?

we should talk. i’ve changed.

Drew.

My stomach clenches like it’s trying to eat itself. I blocked his number after leaving Vegas two days ago—just like I blocked the number before that, and the one before that.

It doesn’t matter. He always finds me.

Another text pops up: I miss that body. Remember how good we were together?

“Good” is a stretch.

“Toxic” would be more accurate.

“Soul-destroying” if we’re being precise.

I type back angrily: Sydney showed you?

His reply is immediate: She didn’t have to. Paul’s phone syncs with hers. He showed all of us. You’re still fucking hot, Sutton.

My hands shake as I drop the phone onto my towel like it burned me.

Of course. Of-fucking-course Paul has access to Sydney’s phone.

And of course he’d share those photos with that idiot pack of hyenas he calls “friends.”

I wrap my arms around my body, suddenly feeling exposed despite being alone at the pool. Drew seeing those photos makes my skin crawl.

Two years of carefully constructed distance, erased with a few taps on a screen.

When we were together, Drew had been obsessed with my body—not in a way that made me feel cherished, but in a way that made me feel like property. Something to be displayed, profited from.

“We could make bank if you’d just loosen up,” he’d say, showing me profiles of girls making thousands on OnlyFans.

I grab my towel and phone and hurry back to my apartment, locking the door behind me. The texts keep coming:

i know you’re reading these.

don’t be a bitch.

I’ve got a new gig. Good money. You’d be impressed.

I turn off my phone completely and stash it into a drawer where I won’t have to look at it.

Drew will keep texting, keep calling. That’s his pattern.

Eventually, though, he’ll get bored.

That’s his pattern, too.

My bed beckons—a modest queen with sheets that smell like lavender fabric softener. I fall into it, exhaustion crashing over me like a wave.

Tomorrow, I’ll deal with Oleg Pavlov. Tomorrow, I’ll call Sydney about Paul and her phone. Tomorrow, I’ll figure out how Drew got my new number.

But tonight?

Tonight, I’ll sleep and dream of absolutely nothing.

My phone greets me before my alarm does, pinging with the persistence of a demented woodpecker that stole someone’s Adderall prescription.

Sunlight filters through my bargain bin curtains, painting urine-yellow streaks across my bedspread. I wince and try to lie still.

Maybe if I ignore it hard enough, the day will decide not to happen.

No such luck.

Tuesday has arrived with all the gentleness of a freight train.

I crack one eye open to find ten new messages waiting. Great. Fantastic. Exactly what I need after yesterday’s dual debacles.

First, the usual from Drew:

Answer me bitch

I said i fuckin know ur reading these

Don’t make me come find you

Delete. Block this number, too. Reset the clock on how long it’ll take him to find another way to contact me.

Next, Sydney has texted a string of messages:

OMG those pics are SEXXXXXAY!!! Paul literally gasped

He said the photographer deserves a raise

But it’s the third cluster of notifications that most concerns me.

The Pavlov Industries employee group chat has exploded overnight. Thirty-seven new messages.

That can’t be good.

My thumb hovers over the red bubble, a sense of dread creeping up my spine like kudzu. The employee chat is usually dead except for birthday announcements and lost-and-found posts about abandoned lunch containers.

I tap it open.

The screen fills with messages, most sent between 2 and 4 A.M. I scroll up to find the catalyst, the message that started⁠—

Oh.

No.

No no no no no.

My boudoir photos. All of them. Right there in living color on the company chat.

Me in black lace, arched across a velvet chaise.

Me with a sheet barely covering the important bits.

Me looking over my shoulder with bedroom eyes and hair that took an hour to style in a way that suggests someone very rough and very male just spent a while wrapping it around his fist.

The blood in my veins crystallizes.

My lungs forget how breathing works.

The messages cascade beneath the photos:

Is this really Sutton from daycare???

Holy shit who knew she was hiding all THAT under those baggy sweaters

Does HR know about this???

My eyes are now blessed

I drop the phone like it’s suddenly transformed into a venomous snake. It bounces on my comforter and lands face-up, still displaying the photos I’d explicitly deleted yesterday.

Photos that should never, ever have made it onto my company’s group chat.

Who could have done this?!

My first thought is that Drew has found an unusually creative way to ruin my life. My stomach lurches. Acid climbs my throat. The room tilts and spins as I grab my phone again with trembling fingers, desperately scrolling to see how the hell he posted them.

But when I get to the top, I see it wasn’t him at all.

It was…

ME?!?!

I’m an idiot. I must have fat-fingered the Forward yesterday. Instead of sending the pictures to just my sister…

I sent them to every single person I work with.

All eight hundred employees of Pavlov Industries have now seen me with my legs behind my head.

A violent tremor works through my body. I can’t breathe. Can’t think. Can’t process.

Everyone. From the janitors to the executives. From my fellow teachers to⁠—

To Oleg.

Oh, God. I’m supposed to meet with him today. After he’s seen… after everyone has seen…

What’s worse than Code Red?

I throw the covers back and sprint to the bathroom, just making it before my stomach empties itself. Sweat breaks out across my scalp as I heave, clinging to the porcelain like it’s the only solid thing left in a world that’s suddenly made of quicksand.

When there’s nothing left in me, I sink to the bathroom floor, pressing my forehead against the cool tile.

All I can think as I kneel there and moan is, Why does this kind of thing always happen to me?

The answer is the same as it’s always been: The Palmer Women Curse.

A memory starts rolling. I’m four, maybe five. Our apartment smells like cheap hairspray and drugstore perfume.

Mom stands in front of our cracked bathroom mirror, painting her lips the color of cherry popsicles while Sydney and I perch on the edge of the bathtub, watching the transformation.

“Third date this month,” Sydney whispers, her voice carrying that edge of grown-up knowing that makes me jealous. “He works at the Bellagio.”

Mom catches Sydney’s eye in the mirror. “Don’t get your hopes up, baby. You know how these things go.” She blots her lipstick on a square of toilet paper, leaving a perfect kiss mark. “Palmer women and good men mix like oil and water.”

“What does that mean, Mommy?” I ask, swinging my legs against the chipped porcelain.

“It means we’re cursed, sweet pea.” Mom sighs, fluffing her blonde curls. “Pretty enough to catch ‘em, dumb enough to want ‘em, and just unlucky enough to pick the wrong ones every time.”

She winks, but it doesn’t reach her eyes.

The doorbell rings. Mom kneels down, cups my cheeks in her warm hands.

“Syd’s in charge ‘til I get back. No answering the door, no touching the stove.”

Then she’s gone, swishing and clomping out the door.

“He looks nice,” I observe as we peek through the curtains, watching her click-clack across the parking lot in her too-high heels.

“They all look nice at first,” Sydney says, sounding just like Mom. “But they never, ever are.”

In the present, I drag myself back to bed and stare at my phone’s screen. The messages are still coming in. One from Mara:

CALL ME NOW. I don’t care what time it is.

I can’t face her. Can’t face anyone.

But I have to. I have thirty minutes before I need to leave for work, where every person I pass will have seen what I look like in lingerie. Where my boss—who already saw me half-naked yesterday—will now think I’m some kind of…

What? Cam girl? Attention seeker? Gold-digger.

I curl into a fetal position, my breaths coming in short, panicked bursts.

This can’t be happening.

But it is.