Wells (The Stone Legacy #5)

Cera

ONE

The Masquerade: A masquerade hides identity so completely that the point stops being the costume and becomes the freedom of going unknown, untouchable by anyone who cannot name you. Behind the lace, the wig, and a borrowed city, she finds that unfindable feels a great deal like safe.

I have been staring at the same rejection email for ten minutes.

"We have decided to move forward with other candidates."

Three jobs in this entire city I was actually qualified for, and that is the second polite no. The third has not answered at all, which is its own kind of answer.

I was so positive about finding a new job after I was let go a month ago. With every day of silence, or, worse, a rejection, my confidence erodes a little more.

Locke plucks the phone out of my hand and sets it face down on the coffee table like he is confiscating a weapon.

"Stop reading it. It's not changing, so we need to figure out something else."

"I'm not expecting it to change. Thanks for the vote of confidence, though."

"I am trying to give you back your morale. Staring at that email won't do it, Darlin'." He folds himself onto my couch, all long limbs and certainty, and hands me the glass of wine he poured before I could pretend I didn't want it.

"Plus, anybody named Mark Rudy sounds like he irons his jeans and alphabetizes his canned goods. So fuck Mark Rudy. Put him out of your life once and for all."

A laugh comes out of me even though I’d rather cry than laugh tonight. It’s the entire reason I let him in tonight. Locke is the only person alive who can find a reason to laugh when the world is falling apart around me.

"Mark Rudy is the recruiter for the biggest hospital system in the city," I say. "I need Mark Rudy in my life if I want to get a job. He recruits for nineteen hospitals, and I don't even know how many clinics. I need Mark Rudy. I need a job."

"You hated that job."

"I hated that job. You're right. I would crawl back to it on both knees right now and thank them for the chance, because the pay is good and I can do it in my sleep."

"Let's recalibrate. We know you've looked at and applied for all of the medical billing-related jobs in the tricounty area. What else can we do with your experience? Let's think outside of the box, Cera Beara."

What I actually want, the thing I went to school for, is to make things.

Layouts, brand work, the kind of design that makes a person feel something before they have read a single word.

But design in this city pays like a hobby, and a hobby does not cover rent.

Learning to code a femur fracture is survival.

"Locke, you're wearing me out. I don't think there is anything else that pays like this that will hire me with my experience. Or, lack thereof."

"That isn't true. People get jobs all the time without experience. Where do you think experience comes from? You've got to create it!"

I huff out an exhale. Maybe he's right. I've only been focusing on what I’ve been doing. I should branch out. Fuck, I don't even know where to start.

"You're allowed to be sad about Cas, too, by the way. Even though good riddance," Locke says, in as gentle a way as he can.

"I'm not sad about Cas."

"Cera."

"I'm not. I promise you." And it's true, which is the part that unsettles me.

"I knew. Somewhere in the back of my head, I always knew he wasn't the one.

I just kept turning the volume down on it, because the apartment was nice and the routine was easy, and being needed felt close enough to being loved that I stopped checking the difference.

Locke goes quiet. He's good at a great many things and best at knowing when not to fill a silence.

"Cas was a loser. You've always deserved so much better."

"I know that in the core of my being. The lease is in my name. I covered us every time his commission months came up thin, which was most months, and I told myself that was partnership."

After several seconds of silence, both of us sipping our wine, he pats my knee.

"And then you lost your job, and the one time, the single time, you needed him to carry it, he looked at you like a bill that had come due. He was gone in six days."

"God, he really is the worst." I shake my head, as if this is the first time it occurred to me. I've known. I just didn't want to admit it.

"You know he packed while I was at that first interview in Slidell, right? He left his key on the counter next to a sticky note that said ‘sorry,’ in lowercase, with no period."

"Shitbird," Locke says. That's the nickname he gave him a year ago after we moved in together. Locke has always hated him, probably because Cas made a gay joke the first time they met. Cas is such an ignorant jerk.

I had to admit that it was pretty funny. Cas's last name is Shebbard, and it really does sound like "shitbird."

"Motherfucker," I retort. "Shitbird is too tame for him."

"Shitbird motherfucker," he confirms, lifting his glass, and we drink to it. It helps more than anything has over the last month since he took off without another word.

There is a thing I have not said out loud until right now, and I only say it because it's Locke and it's late and the wine is doing its job.

"I'm not heartbroken by him leaving. I'm humiliated. I'm so tired of being the reliable one, the one who pays, the one who holds it all together. When does the fun part of adulting come?"

My throat does that little bob-thing where it goes up and down but never completes the swallow. I will not cry over Cas Shitbird. As I’ve already admitted, I knew he wasn’t the one. It isn’t about him.

"You've got to take what you want, Darlin'. No one gives you anything in this life, least of all Shitbird."

"Yeah, I know I'm bad at that. I'm furious at him, but mostly I'm furious at me, because I watched it coming and I let it happen anyway."

Locke reaches over and squeezes my ankle, which is the most affection I will tolerate before I start making jokes to make it stop.

"How bad is it?" he asks. "Money. Do you want to move in with me? We can put a Murphy bed in my office."

"I love you, Locke, but I'd rather live in the Wal-Mart bathroom than move into your brothel of an apartment. No offense."

"None taken. But seriously, do you have enough savings to tide you over until we figure out your job sitch?"

"It's bad." I make myself say it out loud, and saying it is worse than knowing it. "I have about two months’ reserve."

"We're finding you something before two months, I can assure you. And we're going to find you that fun you keep putting off."

"Hell, yeah. I'm taking life by the horns starting now." As I say it, I know that's never going to be my reality. I'm too responsible for that. I've always had to rely on myself, so I don't have the luxury of winging it.

He swirls his wine and says nothing for a moment. I know that face. That is the face he makes right before something either brilliant or arrestable comes out of him.

"Don't be weird about what I'm about to say."

"That is the single most alarming sentence you've ever said to me. Now I'm scared."

"I know a girl from the studio. She makes more in a weekend on OnlyFans than you made in a month coding clavicles, and she does it from her couch in her pajamas. Granted, they’re silky, and she has to fake orgasms, but she’s still on her couch.”

I look at him. "You can't be serious. You want me to do porn?"

"Silly girl, it isn't porn!"

I laugh because I don't know much about OnlyFans, but I'm pretty sure what little I know amounts to video-chat sexting with strangers who pay to play.

"Okay, then if not porn, video-prostitution."

"Nope, neither. Are you done? Because I'm being serious. I want you to hear me out. I've been thinking about this for you."

“You’ve been thinking about this for me? Okay, I’m definitely weirded out.”

"I want you to consider a revenue stream," he says, prim as a banker.

"It isn't porn or prostitution. It's selling access to you in whatever format you're comfortable with.

You set the boundaries, you set the price, no one lays a finger on you, and half of them only want someone to talk to them like they matter, which, between us, you already do for free. "

The horrible thing is I'm a tiny bit curious about how one actually makes money doing this, and wondering if it could work for me. That is what two months and a lowercase apology will do to a person. I run the math without deciding to, because I can't stop running every math lately.

Ultimately, though, I know this isn't realistic for me. The internet lives forever. Nothing is ever scrubbed.

"That's not an option for me, Locke. I can't show my face," I say, and I am startled to hear that it's still not a no.

"I am still applying for real jobs. Corporate, background-checked, business-casual jobs. I can't be someone who wants to be taken seriously at a firm by day and be attached to an online sexually-objectified side hustle that will live forever."

"So don't show your face. And duh, we don't use your real name or IP address."

"Showing your face is the entire deal. I doubt someone will pay to look at my feet.”

“Actually, that is a thing.”

“Huh?”

“Feet. Never mind.” He sits up, and his eyes light from the inside the way they do when an idea has him. "Half the appeal is mystery. Give them a fantasy they have to finish themselves."

He is already reaching for his phone. "You don't need your face. You need a face."

Before I can stop him, Locke pulls up and starts adding things to his cart with the focus of a man planning a heist. He's moving so fast I can barely keep up.

He adds a masquerade mask first, black lace over a hard shell, a scatter of tiny rhinestones around each eye, and silk flowers running down the side. It's the kind of mask I've seen a hundred times around New Orleans during Mardi Gras.

"Absolutely not," I say.

"Absolutely yes. She isn't you. That's the whole point. Just wait. I'm building her."