Page 30 of The Casting Couch

So now it was Monday, and here I was… deep in an online rabbit's hole called Boys On Film.

The site wasn’t exactly subtle.The home page had this big neon script font like a late-night dive bar sign: “Where Fantasy Becomes Reality.”I tapped through to the model profiles, and that’s when the real gut-punch hit.

Jack and Liam.Together.

There they were in full color, in bed, all limbs and smiles and skin.The still frame showed Jack on top, grinning like a wolf, Liam half-laughing beneath him with this flushed, radiant face that looked...weirdly soft?I blinked at it for a good ten seconds, trying to process that this wasn’t Photoshop or some elaborate prank.

They looked like they were actually enjoying it.

I backed out of that tab like it was about to catch fire and tapped to another one.

Laura.

Standing in front of a black backdrop in full dominatrix gear.Leather corset, thigh-high boots, a riding crop in one hand and a whip coiled in the other like she was about to lead a cavalry charge.

I blinked again.

Laura??

She’d been the voice of reason back in the day.Glasses and ponytail.The girl who loaned me her psych notes when I was flunking out of Intro to Sociology.Now here she was looking like she ate bad boys for breakfast and washed them down with whiskey.

It didn’t compute.

I guess I’d always thought of Jack and Liam, and Laura too, as...normal.Like me.People who did laundry on Sundays and bought two-for-one frozen pizzas and spent more time worrying about student loans than sexual liberation.

But apparently I didn’t know them at all.

And then there was that other guy.

Nico.

Just thinking his name made something twist low in my stomach, and not in a way I liked.I’d barely spoken to him, but he was stuck in my head.Maybe because he was...intense?Or too confident?Or the way he looked at me like I was a puzzle he already knew how to solve?

Whatever it was, it unsettled me.

I wasn’t exactly what you’d call a sexual person.My parents were the kind who treated sex like Voldemort.That-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named.We didn’t talk or joke about it.I was a sophomore in college before I realized most people weren’t going to hell for having sexual urges.

And me?I could count all my sexual partners on one hand.

A door creaked open at the far end of the room, yanking me out of my spiral.

One of the guys from my dorm shuffled in, Jonah or Jory or something like that.He smelled like weed and stale booze.Wearing the same clothes he’d left in Friday night.His jeans looked like they’d been through a war, and his sweater had a mystery stain I didn’t want to solve.Without even glancing my way, he climbed into the top bunk across from mine, shoes still on, and passed out face-first into his pillow.Within thirty seconds, he was snoring loud enough to rattle the metal frame.

Great.Just the cherry on my existential crisis sundae.

My phone buzzed against my stomach so hard I nearly threw it across the room.

“Jesus!”I scrambled to grab it before it slid off my lap.

Liam.

I froze for half a second, staring at his name like it might morph into something else.Then I answered.

“H-Hey,” I said, voice cracking like I was thirteen again.

“Morning, sunshine.”Liam’s voice sounded way too chipper for this hour on a Monday.“You busy?”

I glanced at the snoring corpse across the room.“Not exactly.”

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