WAKE (Wattpad edition)

11. Reputation.

{Kadee}

It was a back-to-school tradition to spend the last day of summer at the mall with her girlfriends. They all assembled their wardrobes and then got their nails done. Kadee had been looking forward to it for a week—counting on her friends to emerge from their summer activities and make their girlfriend time a priority again, like they did every year.

Sarah didn't show. Madison was apologetic, but wouldn't quite meet Kadee's eyes. "She said she wants to go to the new outlet store? With Jeanette. That girl from camp."

Kadee checked her texts again. Sarah hadn't even responded to her the day before. "Well, whatever. We'll still have fun." She linked arms with Madison, heading for their favorite jeans boutique. "How was the villa in France?"

Madison lit up at that question, and for a couple hours it was like old times, with gushing over outfits and giggling at the other shoppers.

"So...what happened with Curtis?" They were drinking smoothies with bags of loot sitting around their feet in the mall food court. "Sarah said you guys broke up? Are you okay?"

"Sure." Kadee sipped her drink, idly scrolling through her social media feeds. "I think I'm actually taking a break from guys." She wrinkled her nose. "Who needs them when you've got girlfriends, right?"

Madison met her eyes and then looked away, playing with the diamond-studded cross on her necklace. "I thought maybe you...found someone else. And that's why he broke up with you."

Kadee snorted. "Oh my god, are you serious? I am not a cheater. We were together all the time." She squirmed a little, remembering how they had spent that time. Since they'd broken up, she'd discovered how much she liked going through an entire day without taking her clothes off. "I broke up with him. It was just too intense." She thought fleetingly about the whole messy truth, and her relief every day that she wasn't pregnant and wasn't going to shame her parents by being an unwed single mother. She wasn't going to let herself come close to that possibility again for a long, long time.

Madison poked her straw at the slush in the bottom of her cup, looking unhappy. "I thought you guys were really cute together..."

Kadee tapped a notification on her social media feed, and Madison's voice receded like she'd dropped down a mineshaft. Kadee stared at her phone screen, tapped the image, and thumbed it closer. 

It was her. She couldn't breathe. She'd taken it herself for Curtis' birthday months ago. She'd bought the black, lacy underthings especially for the selfie, and her body looked curvy and delicious squeezed into them. Her legs were open, her hand teasingly on the inside of her thigh. Her hair covered her nipples, but the lower curve of her breasts was plain through the sheer black top. She'd practiced that expression in the mirror and taken dozens of shots before she'd gotten this one right—and then she'd deleted them all off her phone.

And yet here she was, looking out from her newsfeed, almost naked in public. "Come, now is the time to worship" appeared in white letters just below her hand. Every friend she knew could access this photo from their phones.

"Oh my god," she gasped.

"What?" Madison said.

Kadee jerked her phone to her chest, away from her friend's curious look. She tapped the photo settings, then her page settings, trying anything to make it disappear.

"What happened?" Madison insisted, coming around the table. "You're freaking me out."

Face flaming, Kadee finally held the phone out to her. "Look what someone did—Madi, what am I going to do?"