press the button. Masey looks up at the camera and mocks her usual greeting, grabs for the first items beside her, and starts describing. “This is the Matte Fabulous Flawless Foundation by…crap, I can’t remember.” She reads the bottle and rattles off the name of a company I’ve never heard of. “They’re a small indie brand based out of Denver and…”
After a few minutes and a few products, she signals me to cut off the camera.
“Now what?”
She looks at her phone, then her eyes pop wide. “Is it really almost five o’clock?”
“Yeah.”
“Damn it!” Then winces as she casts Ranger a glance. “Sorry.”
I shake my head. “That will start mattering around his birthday, I guess. It doesn’t yet.”
“Whew. I need to find some clothes to wear and”—she looks around at the stacks of boxes—“in one of these should be my hand mirror. If I’m going to put on a face in front of the camera, I need that.”
“I’ll find it. You grab some clothes.” I drop my voice. “But if it was up to me, you wouldn’t need any.”
“I wish, but I’d get banned for that.” She laughs as she races out the door.
I find the mirror in the second box, wrapped in tissue paper, and set it on her desk. Some of the boxes in the room are mine, paperwork and some high school shit I keep packed away. Those I stow in the closet.
She dashes back into the room then, wearing a bright T-shirt with a scooped neck and capped sleeves, along with pretty mother-of-pearl jewelry. She’s fluffed and sprayed her hair, too. From the waist up, she looks really put together. From the waist down, she’s wearing a pair of my basketball shorts rolled up around her waist. Her bare toes wiggle against the tile.
I laugh. “Nice outfit. Fetching.”
She shrugs. “Typical for filming. The magic of the camera is that they don’t see anything I don’t let them. Will you do me one more favor while I dig up the rest of the products I need for this video?”
“Name it.”
“Can you please take the camera out to the kitchen or living room—somewhere not in this lighting—and compare the brightness of the footage we just took and the brightness of the footage I’ve shot recently at home? I’m trying to get this right so I won’t have to refilm.”
“You got it.”
She hands me the camera, and I reach down to lift Ranger into my arms. Masey shakes her head. “You can leave him here. I like this guy.”
When she winks at him, my son giggles again.
Yeah, he’s as smitten as you are…
“Picking favorites already, huh?” I tease. “Fine. I’m out.”
As I head down the hall, I hear her riffling through more boxes. I sink into my recliner, rewind the footage we just shot, and study it critically. She’s a natural in front of the camera. She seems really comfortable running a one-sided dialogue, yet she makes viewers feel as if she’s engaging in a cozy chat for two. But she asked me to check out the lighting.
For comparison, I pull my phone from my pocket and launch YouTube. Her past videos now appear in my recommendations. The first one that pops up is entitled “We Broke Up.” The thumbnail image shows Masey sitting in a plush chair that doesn’t appear in her usual beauty studio. She’s pressed her hand over her mouth and looks as if she’s holding back tears. A cat is curled up beside her, seemingly without a care in the world.
The video has nearly thirty million views. Holy shit.
I tiptoe into my bedroom and search my nightstand for my earbuds. I feel a little guilty, as if I’m somehow spying on Masey, but she put this out there for the public to see. I’m the public, too.
Yeah, but the rest of the public isn’t sleeping with her.
I silence the voice, stick the buds in my ears, and launch the video, dated June twelfth of last year.
Instantly, I can tell she’s struggling to keep it together.
“What’s up, everyone? Welcome back.” The greeting that sounded chipper in her test shot now sounds just shy of mournful. “As you can probably tell from the title of this video, Thom and I decided to call it quits over the weekend.”
She pauses and draws in a shaky breath, seeming to grapple for control.
A fresh urge to beat the shit out of her ex for hurting her assails me. I know enough about Masey to know she isn’t dramatic. She doesn’t do