The “fire” turned to look at the “paycheck.” Jessica looked at Charlie, then at the screen, then at the door. She realized she wasn’t the “other woman” in a grand romance; she was a line item in a fraud case.
The Final Frame
I walked over to the laptop and clicked one final file.
It was the photo from my session. The one where I looked powerful. The one that made Charlie’s phone blow up. I superimposed a single sentence over it in bold, elegant script:
“INVESTMENT RETURN: 100% OF MYSELF.”
I turned back to the room. “The bar is open. The catering is paid for. And as for my husband and his ‘beautiful’ guest… the Uber is waiting outside. Your bags are already in the trunk, Charlie. I packed them while you were ‘at work’ this afternoon.”
Charlie tried to speak, but Sarah stepped in his way. Two of my other friends, guys who had played poker with Charlie for years, just shook their heads. There’s no coming back from a public audit of the soul.
He and Jessica left together—not as lovers escaping into the sunset, but as two people who had just realized they deserved each other’s toxicity. She was screaming at him about her “brand” before they even hit the elevator.
I stayed.
I drank the martini. I laughed with my friends. I looked at the photos of myself on the walls—not as a “revenge” tool, but as a map.
I had been so worried about him commenting on someone else’s beauty that I had forgotten I was the one who owned the gallery.
When the last guest left, the photographer came up to me. “So,” she said, “what do we do with the prints?”
I looked at the woman in the red dress on the screen. She looked back at me, fierce and final.
“Keep them,” I said. “I want to remember exactly what I looked like the day I stopped being an option and started being the whole damn point.”
I walked out of the studio, into the cool New York night, and deleted the Instagram app. I didn’t need the likes anymore. I finally liked myself.
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