Chapter 16
With the summer showcase closing in and the clock devouring days faster than we can sketch them, Jamie and Isabella decide we need a creative intervention.
A brainstorming session at our favourite café—sketchbooks spread open, caffeine coursing through our veins, pastries flaking sugar over our work, the holy trinity of panic-fuelled creativity that keeps university students like us clinging to the illusion that genius is only one espresso shot or iced oat latte away.
So even though my entire body aches with exhaustion, begging for the refuge of my sheets and a few more stolen hours of sleep, I drag myself upright. My baby pink robe slips across my shoulders as I shuffle to my vanity, eyes gritty, brain a fog of half-finished designs and intrusive memories.
I check the height of my tripod, drop my phone into the cradle, and adjust the lighting until it’s just right—cool-toned and diffused, backlit enough to catch the glint of highlighter tracing across my cheekbones.
The camera will only see me from my cheekbones down, hiding my face, keeping me safe in the shadows, but I still want it to be perfect.
The glow is artificial, but that’s the point.
I hit record, and the little red light blinks to life, watching me the way hundreds of strangers will later.
It’s ridiculous, sometimes, how much money this kind of thing makes me. Mundane rituals broadcast for an audience desperate to feel close to me. Something as simple as getting ready in the morning becomes currency, traded for likes, tips, loyalty. I’d laugh if it weren’t so painfully true.
But I understand it. Loneliness has always been a commodity people are willing to pay to erase.
Maybe it’s the illusion of connection, the comforting lie that someone out there gives a damn about the details of your day.
Or maybe it’s just the balm of pretending you matter to someone, even if it’s only for the length of a video clip.
Either way, I’m not complaining. Filming what I’d be doing anyway is the easiest cash grab I’ve ever stumbled into and it keeps my fans devoted.
Lily’s Loves isn’t just the streams that leave me flushed and breathless. It’s the teasing snapshots, the private glimpses into my daily life, the carefully curated “girlfriend experience” that makes them feel chosen, special. Like they’re the reason I keep going.
And maybe, in some twisted way, they are.
I blow a kiss to the camera, stop recording, and quickly skim the footage before uploading it. Notifications start exploding on my phone before I’ve even changed out of my robe. By tonight, they’ll be rabid for more. Perfect timing for my next stream.
I swap the robe for a tweed skater skirt and a cropped baby tee screen-printed with a graphic I sketched out in a burst of insomnia last week.
Every detail is intentional—the sheer over-the-knee socks with delicate lace trim, the vintage Vivienne Westwood choker that catches the light with each tilt of my chin, the patent leather Mary Janes that squeak softly with every step.
My tote’s stuffed with essentials—a sketchbook full of half-finished ideas, measuring tape, thread samples, scraps of fabric scribbled over with tiny notes about drape and finish.
On top, a folded copy of Numéro—my favourite fashion magazine—its corner’s dog-eared where designs have burrowed into my brain like a quiet obsession.
I catch my own reflection in the mirror one last time. It’s not merely an outfit; it’s a suit of armour, stitched together from aesthetic precision and an unspoken refusal to look like I’m crumbling on the inside.
Then I’m out the door.
The café is already humming with life when I arrive a little after noon, sunlight slanting through the big windows to turn the polished floor into fractured gold.
Nestled just a stone’s throw from the university gates, it’s become our unofficial creative headquarters, a space where dreams get drafted on coffee-stained napkins and arguments over draping techniques dissolve into laughter.
Warm cheek kisses, overlapping voices asking How are you? and What are you ordering? It all blends into a familiar, comforting din, like static tuned to the frequency of belonging. This is what I spent so many years longing for.
Spying Isabella’s dark head, I weave my way through the cafe until I reach the table she’s picked.
Tucked in a back corner, it’s perfect for people-watching and ensuring none of our classmates can see our designs.
It’s such a typical Isabella choice I share a look with Jamie as I drop my bag onto the table and join them.
Soon our table is an explosion of colour and texture—swatches of silk that catch the light like liquid metal, hand-dyed linen that breathes soft as a whisper, crushed velvet in twilight hues deep enough to drown in.
Sketches spill across the table like tarot cards, foretelling possible futures in graphite and ink.
Coffee rings bloom across tracing paper, and Isabella’s iPad glows with her mood board.
Meanwhile, Jamie is elbow-deep in a draped tulle corset mock-up, blonde hair mussed from running his fingers through it and muttering curses about boning tension and ruching ratios as though the fate of the world hangs on a single seam.
It’s chaos, and there’s enough tension in the air to make you feel like it’ll snap at any second, but I love this.
These quiet, tense hours pouring over designs and later fabrics is where I thrive.
Something about the feeling of seeing my vision come to life in front of my very eyes makes the hours pouring over designs until my eyes are twitching.
Coffee gives way to wine, a plate of tapas half-finished sits between us, hours bleeding into one another like ink across wet tracing paper. The three of us slip into that rare, perfect rhythm where ideas spark like static, sharp and dazzling.
“I hate to admit it,” Isabella sighs, swirling what’s left of her white wine, “but your design might actually win.”
Might is doing heroic work in that sentence.
Isabella doesn’t lose, not even hypothetically.
But our competition is the kind that sharpens rather than severs, the kind rooted in respect, in the knowledge that each of us is trying to become the kind of artist we dreamed of being when we first picked up a pencil or fabric.
Jamie lowers his sunglasses, a devilish smirk tugging at his lips. “Darling, there’s no might about it. I say we concede defeat now and drown our sorrows at La Velia’s.”
Their laughter ripples through me, momentarily easing the crushing weight pressing against my ribs. But it doesn’t last.
Because when I glance down at my phone, the entire world shifts.
My breath stutters and lodges in my throat as the Google alert I set comes back to bite me in the shape of headlines and photos.
Gianna Salvatore. Soon-to-be O’Malley.
A grainy paparazzi photo stares back at me—Gianna standing beside a shiny SUV, her smile blinding as Matt approaches her. And the worst part—the part that slices deepest—is how good he looks, even reduced to blur and pixels.
Immaculate in a tailored suit, probably Armani or custom Brunello Cucinelli, hair tousled like he’s been dragging his fingers through it in restless thought.
Or so I think, until a second, zoomed-in shot lands like an arrow to my already shredded heart and I see it.
The black onyx ring on his hand, the one I gave him, the one he never took off is still there, like nothing has changed.
And soon there will be another band beside it. Cold. Permanent. A reminder that on paper, he’ll belong to someone else, even if he’s always belonged to me.
Something caves in behind my ribs.
We were always doomed. I can see that now.
Even if my mother hadn’t scorched the earth between us—even if we weren’t stepsiblings by law—Matt was never truly mine. The contract tying him to Gianna existed long before I knew his name, arranged before either of us had a say.
We were never going to make it.
And this—the photo, the headline—is the nail sealing shut the fantasy I keep trying to bury.
Matthew O’Malley landed in Italy on Wednesday; engagement to Gianna Salvatore confirmed.
Three days. Three whole days ago. The same night I dressed up as a schoolgirl and heard my name slip from his lips for the first time in a year.
I was calling him Daddy while he was under the same roof as his soon-to-be wife. My chest tightens just thinking about it—shame, lust, and disbelief all tangled into one burning tendril of heartbreak.
Good thing I’m no longer expected to show my face at the wedding. God knows how that would end.
“Lily, what do you say?”
Isabella’s voice cuts through the fog, distant and echoing, as though she’s calling to me from underwater. I blink hard, struggling to remember where I am.
“To what?” I croak, my voice slower and rougher than I intend.
“A night at La Velia’s,” Jamie supplies, rising from his chair and extending a hand toward us both, all dramatic flourish like a ringmaster opening the velvet curtain. His grin is pure wicked invitation. “We deserve it.”
In the back of my head, I know I had plans to stream tonight. Lingerie picked out. Camera charged. A version of myself I was supposed to become on cue. But the thought of bleeding on camera and pretending I’m fine when I’m anything but sounds like a hell I can’t bring myself to face.
Drowning in neon lights and overpriced cocktails sounds precisely like what I need if I’m going to keep my pieces together for one more night. So I take his hand, forcing a smile that barely fits across my face, even as something inside my chest quietly caves in.
“Let’s get shit-faced.”