The world is in greyscale today.

The images in my eyes have been sapped of their vibrance, dulling until they are rounded and blurry and muted. I watch the sky from my backyard, the clouds so close I could grab one in my fists, strangle it. A bird screams from somewhere. It's a windless day, the heat sitting heavy on my skin like something tangible, something suffocating.

"Dude," a voice says behind me, "it's not that deep." The world goes dark. When my eyes readjust, I see Jasper's dumb, ugly face hovering over me, squinting in disapproval. "Everyone knows she's a liar."

She is Avalon. The Ex-Girlfriend. Fellow influencer, with a following of girls who also have sword tattoos, septum rings, and boots that could knock you dead in one kick. She's like a Goth Barbie, dressed in all black and sharp, threatening eyeliner, but with bloated lips and boobs that she got done from her first big check. She'll get you drunk off the strawberry vodka on her breath and then lure you to your death, telling you how pretty and funny you are the whole way down.

We called things off six months ago, closer to the start of the year, when I caught her in bed with a basketball player from a team she'd never cared about. 

That detail will die with me, partly out of my own mortification and partly for her own sake. She's a sweet enough girl, if not a bit insecure, and she doesn't need to be burned at the stake for her private wrongdoings. A breakup is a fair consequence, in my opinion.

Except for now, with the video of me socking Loser Supreme in the jaw, she's released her tell-all on my violent and unpredictable behavior.

"She literally got her ass handed back to her, like, six weeks ago when she said her family was poor growing up and they found the photo of her dad dropping her off in fifth grade in a Maserati."

"Move your dumb fucking head, Jasper. I'm wallowing."

I lift a hand to cover my eyes, perfectly content with things going dark for minute or two. Sweat is beginning to pool in the small of my back, where my body comes slightly off the lounge chair I'm lying in.

"I called Mia."

A pause. Another bird scream. Then I'm sitting up, hands in my hair, facing Jasper's wispy figure behind me.

"What?"

He's digging through the mini fridge by the sliding door where I keep sodas and alcoholic seltzers and mini waters. He finds a seltzer and weighs it in his hand before tossing it to me, then grabbing one for himself. I set it by my feet, unopened.

"I don't know, bro. I've been here for two hours and you've just been pathetic the whole time. I know she's been working on managing this since Avalon's video dropped but I figured you could use her pick-me-up. Or maybe she'll give you a tongue lashing and you'll liven up. You're into that, or whatever."

I cringe. The seltzer touches the outermost part of my ankle, cool and wet, and I channel my focus to that sensation. "Jasper, I don't want Mia here right now."

"She's already here. She's on a call in the guest room."

Jasper shoots me a lopsided grin, ignorant and oblivious, then chugs the seltzer in his hand. He crushes it when he's done and releases a burp that shifts the tectonic plates beneath us. He drops the empty can on the stone paving. I cringe again.

He plops himself onto the lounge chair across from me, a fresh seltzer in hand, and slaps his hand onto my knee with just a tad too much force. "You've been in this house for two days now. It's driving you crazy."

"Two days is literally a weekend," I say bluntly. "That's a completely normal amount of time to stay indoors."

"Not when you're a lion, dude!"

He doesn't seem to recognize that that sentence has to be the worst thing ever said; he's beaming at me proudly, his dyed platinum blonde hair messy and greasy. 

I've been friends with Jasper for a handful of years now, since I moved to LA. When we met, we were just barely able to afford rent in a 5-bedroom place with three other aspiring influencers. It became a squad of sorts, in the way that conventionally attractive men who live together and have internet presences do. We were linked; we rose together, we fell together.

But Jasper and I had some kind of edge, him looking like an elvish prince and me a fantastical villain. We were opposites - Ying and Yang - and our content together soared.

We rode that high for a while, until we could buy separate houses and the drip stopped. The longer we spend apart, the more I realize that we're not just opposites in appearance. The guy sucks, just a little bit. Or a lot.

"Maybe Mia wants a safari tour," he says, cheeky, nudging me.

I'm confused until I remember the lion comment that I'd tried to erase from reality, and then I'm disgusted.

"Don't say gross shit like that, Jas. She works for me. What blatant disrespect of her as a professional."

There's a gentle cough from behind us, the sliding glass door pulled open a few inches. Mia is standing in the entry, tan and dewy and wearing wide-legged jeans with sharp, dangerous heels. She's slight enough to slip through the opening, hesitant, like she's stepping onto ice.

"Hi guys," she says with a small wave. "Jasper, if I could speak with Brett for a minute."

He raises his drink to her. "You got it, shoogs!"

When he doesn't move, I realize that he is expecting us both to have our conversation indoors.

Whatever, I think, huffing while I stand from the lounge chair. My reputation may be ruined, but at least I'm not a fucking idiot.

Mia pushes the door wider so we can both head through it. The air conditioning is an assault on my warm skin, the difference too aggressive. She's weaving through my house before I can so much as mutter a complaint about it, then stops at the dining table.

Her laptop is open on the table, charger plugged into the wall. Various notebooks are scattered beside it, her loopy scrawl strewn across the paper. I'm not sure how long she's been here and I'm mortified at the thought of asking.

She takes a seat behind the laptop and lowers her glasses to her nose. "Alright," she starts. "It's not great."

I lean against the wall, too antsy to sit. "Superb assessment of the situation, darling."

Mia's eyebrows shoot up. "Call me darling again and I'll flay you alive and sell your body for parts."

I nod once. "Noted."

"Okay, Brett, here are the details. Reception to this video is relatively supportive - because, you know, women supporting women."

She says this like she understands, like she also supports Avalon in this confessional.

"That being said, a lot of people are coming after her for how... shady it is. No details, no photos, no evidence. Very conveniently timed."

I'd watched the video once, when I first woke up and saw how many times I'd been tagged in it. Avalon, naturally, has me blocked, but enough people were reposting it for me to find it immediately.

It opens with her taking a deep breath, eyes fixated somewhere above the camera, above her head. She exhales slowly, shakily, really selling it. "Okay," she says. "I've seen the clip of Brett Archer punching the stranger at the club. I didn't know if I'd ever be ready to tell this story, but I've experience his violence firsthand."

She stays like this, sitting lamely in front of her camera. Her makeup is to the nines, her hair perfectly placed. A neon light is bleeding red behind her. It reads Whore House.

Avalon continues on to detail how I punched walls, broke glasses, screamed often and loudly. She claims I pushed her, once, in a drunken stupor when I thought she was disrespecting me.

Oh, the irony in that statement.

Mia snaps. "Brett, focus."

I blink. "Sorry, I'm here."

"The comments on your page are still overwhelmingly positive. People are waiting for Avalon to cough up something, anything, to support this claim. Some people are drawing reference back to her previous scandals, like queerbaiting and lying about being poor. She's got a bit of a history of lying for attention. For personal gain."

I make of point of staying quiet here, pulling my lips into a thin line.

Mia waves her hand dismissively. "Aside from the comments, a few sites have picked up the story."

"How many?"

"A dozen? Maybe less."

I groan.

She holds up a finger. "Don't start the 'tude with me now, I've not finished explaining. They're running the story for what it is - speculation, hearsay - and they're calling out her tendency to fabricate and embellish. No one has cancelled you. Or, at least, the masses haven't."

She slides a paper to me, handwritten in hot pink ink. It's covered in scribbles and scratched out words. I pick it up, glancing over a few words. "What is this?"

"The counterstatement."

"Hell no, Mia. What happened to radio silence?"

Mia's face falls into what is almost a disappointed surprise. "What happened, Brett, is your ex with -" She checks her phone. "With eight and a half million followers has accused you of being violent towards and around her. What happened is she's using your image as a rung to stand on while she climbs social ranks. If you didn't do this, we're going to set it straight."

I go rigid. "If?"

"I don't mean it like that," Mia says, exhausting setting over her face. "Please, Brett. I wasn't there."

I shake my head in disbelief. "What are you saying to me right now? That you think there's any truth to this?"

"What I'm saying is that you need to tell me now what the truth is."

The paper drops from my hand, flutters like a dead leaf in the wind before settling on the far side of the table. We both don't look at it, our eyes locked on each other's.

"The truth is that I punched a guy because he was aggressive towards a woman. I think those type of men are the scum of the earth. The truth is that I'd drown myself before doing something so deplorable."

She holds up both hands in surrender. "Then let's share that. You deserve a voice too."

The conversation is getting heavy in the room, thickening the air until I can barely pull in a breath. I'm tired and frustrated; I'm annoyed that I have to justify myself to Mia - Mia, who has worked with me for the last six months.

She's upright in the dining chair, waiting for a response or reaction from me. Her posture is impeccable. Her deep brown hair is slicked back into a bun sitting at the nape of her neck. She taps a manicured finger on the wood, a satisfying metronomic clicking. I realize I've barely seen her in anything other than her work attire, her business casual outfits, her full makeup, her picture-perfection, aside from her coming over in the middle of the night when I'd been arrested, and I was drunk then. I wonder briefly, weakly, if she's got freckles under her concealer.

"Brett, goodness. Stay with me."

"Fine. We can do a counterstatement."

Mia dives into the minute details - which platforms it'll get posted to, how we'll phrase it, if it should be typed or handwritten - handwritten, she says, unconventional but well-received. I think about the joke of all this, that I could shut off my phone and it would cease existing. I think about how a well-timed solar storm could wipe out my entire career, that I wouldn't have any tangible evidence of my successes or skills. I think that none of this is real, and none of it matters. And yet here we are, composing the perfect draft of my counterstatement to unfounded claims of violent behavior.

A career built on stilts, a life built on popularity.

I don't have to be likeable, or even particularly good at anything. No promotions, no layoffs, no teamwork or schmoozing or raises. 

And yet I want to be likeable. I want to be good at things.

I turn to Mia, who is heads down on her fourth iteration of the multi-paragraph announcement. "Do you wonder if it's true?"

"Hmm?"

She doesn't look up, doesn't even acknowledge that she heard me other than the small hum. Her hand scribbles furiously - left, I notice, how endearing - and doesn't stop for another minute.

"Sorry, Brett," she says, lifting her eyes to meet mine. They're dark, her pupils drowned in the tar of her irises. I see my reflection even behind her glasses, staring dumbly, a sour child. "What were you saying?"

"Avalon's statement. Do you believe her?"

Mia's lips fall open, a delicate O forming. It's as if she's sad that I asked, but not surprised. Not offended. "Oh, Brett. I don't think you're an aggressive guy."

"But?"

"There doesn't have to be a 'but'."

"But there is."

Mia pulls her glasses to rest on the crown of her head, folding her arms across her chest while she finally takes me into account. I can feel her soaking in my image, cross-referencing every fact about me she knows with every interaction with me she's ever had. I can sense the way she's hesitant to answer, to hurt my feelings. She chews on her lip for a brief minute, her gaze falling to the corner of the room.

"I think we can have personal experiences that differ from the truth. I don't believe or disbelieve Avalon. I don't know Avalon. And frankly, I don't know you that well, either. You are my coworker, my contractual overhead."

"Then get to know me. I don't want to be your boss."

"Well, you're not my boss --"

"I don't want to be any of it, Mia. Your coworker, your contracted whatever. I want to be people who know each other like people, not playing cards. Not through work."

Mia squints at me before folding a leg up onto the chair. She drums her thumb on her knee. "Brett, let me paint this picture for you real quick. I'm a young woman working for you, a young man, as your publicist. Your management team hired me, and I work for them to manage your business. That's what I'm paid to do. If I fail to deliver on that, I'm fired. Now, fraternizing is strictly prohibited. We're not here to braid hair and paint nails. If that's suspected, I'm fired. If anyone has reason to believe we're flirting with each other, I'm fired. 

"And what do you lose, Brett? You continue on unaffected. You'd keep sipping your fancy homemade espressos from a machine I could never afford, you'd keep posting to your fanbase of lusting women, you'd keep your income.

"So it's real noble of you to decide you want to get to know me. Real sweet that you sound so resentful of the concept of a strictly-work engagement. I'm sure you would be so much fun to go mini golfing with, or whatever bonding activity you had in mind. But you've got no skin in this game. And my whole world is in it."

I nod. "Understood."

"Is it?"

"It is."

"Great. Can we get this done now?"

I take the seat across from her. "One question first. You like mini golfing?"

Mia rolls her eyes so hard they become tiny white slivers. "I didn't say that."

A beat of silence. Then she adds: "Sure, mini golfing is fun."

I clap my hands together in celebration. "Here we are, getting to know each other!"

"That's not what this is."

"So what is it?"

A dry, staccato laugh erupts from her. "It's actually us grasping at your reputation as it stands before it's swept down the shitter."

"Can we have fun while we're doing it?"

She tucks her lips into her mouth, hiding a grin. "We really can't."

"What if I'm having fun?"

"It might make you a masochist."

A smile at this, a real one, my first all day. "We're getting somewhere."