Betty
I sat cross-legged on my bed, laptop balanced on my knees, staring at my reflection in the dark screen. I opened my secret vlog folder, the one no one would ever see, and hit record.
Vlog Entry: Private – OFFLINE ONLY
My face appeared in the small window, glasses off, hair falling in messy waves around my shoulders. I looked tired. Rounder than I remembered.
“Day one at Riverside Prep,” I said quietly, barely above a whisper, “and I’ve already made the biggest fool of myself possible.”
I touched my cheek, feeling the softness there. My fingers paused at the curve of it, the way it didn’t sharpen in the mirror like other girls’ faces did. “Am I even… am I even sexy?” My voice broke. “Would he notice me if I looked like Stacey?”
The name stung just saying it. Stacey with the tiny waist and flat stomach and that smug little half-shirt she could pull off without blinking. I tugged my oversized hoodie tighter around me like a shield.
I got up and walked to the mirror. My reflection stared back with a kind of quiet disappointment I wasn’t ready for. My body wasn’t toned. It wasn’t sculpted. It was soft, padded in all the places Instagram said it shouldn’t be. My thighs touched. My stomach curved out past my waistband. I looked like a girl who’d always hidden in hoodies—and I had.
I dimmed the main light and flicked on the desk lamp. The room changed. Softer, kinder shadows. I hesitated, then pulled my hoodie over my head, standing in just my cotton bra and jeans.
My arms looked bigger than I thought. My stomach wasn’t flat. But there I was—still me. Still breathing.
“I don’t even know what sexy is,” I whispered to my phone, angling it toward the mirror. My voice trembled as I touched my collarbone, following it down to the softness below. My hand hovered, breath catching. “Is this what guys want to see?”
I took a few photos, deleting most immediately, keeping one where the lighting made me look almost... pretty. Maybe.
Then, a sharp knock at my door made me jump.
"Shit," I muttered, scrambling for my hoodie. "Coming!"
I threw the hoodie on and rushed to the door, completely forgetting about my phone still recording on the bed.
Marcus stood in the hallway, looking annoyingly perfect in dark jeans and a fitted gray t-shirt, a biology textbook tucked under his arm.
"Ready to work on that project, partner?"
I stared at him in shock. "You... what are you doing here?"
"Biology. Muscular structure. Ring any bells?" He stepped past me into the room without waiting for an invitation. "Nice place. Very... modest."
My room suddenly felt smaller with Marcus in it. He dominated the space, his presence making everything else seem insignificant.
"How did you even know where I live?"
"I have my ways." He settled onto my desk chair, stretching his long legs out. "So, about this project. I've been thinking."
I perched nervously on the edge of my bed, very aware that my phone was still recording somewhere behind me. "Thinking what?"
"We need to understand muscle structure, right? Theory only gets you so far." Marcus pulled his textbook onto his lap, flipping through pages of anatomical diagrams. "Sometimes you need a more... hands-on approach."
Something in his tone made my pulse quicken. "What do you mean?"
Marcus stood up slowly, his eyes never leaving mine. "I mean," he said, reaching for the hem of his shirt, "if we’re going to draw the human muscular system, we should probably have a proper reference."
He pulled his shirt off in one smooth motion.
My breath caught. I’d seen him shirtless in the locker room, but that had been chaos and panic. This was different. This was deliberate, intimate, and I couldn’t look away.
His body was perfect, carved muscle and smooth skin, the kind of physique that came from years of dedicated training. Water droplets from his earlier shower were long gone, replaced by the warm glow of my desk lamp.
"Your textbook shows the major muscle groups," Marcus said conversationally, as if he wasn’t standing half-naked in my dorm room. "But it doesn’t show how they connect, how they move together."
He picked up a washable marker from my desk and held it out to me.
"Draw them. Use my body as your canvas."
I stared at the marker like it might bite me. "I can’t—"
"You can." Marcus stepped closer, close enough that I could smell his cologne again. "Start with the pectorals. You know where those are, right?"
My hand shook as I took the marker. This was insane. This was my biology project. This was Marcus Mitchell, who’d humiliated me that morning and demanded I kiss his shoes.
But my body wasn’t listening to logic.
"Here," Marcus guided my hand to his chest, right over his heart. "Feel the muscle structure first. Understand what you’re drawing."
My palm pressed against his warm skin, and I could feel his heartbeat—strong and steady. My own heart was racing.
"Now trace it." His voice was lower now, rougher. "Follow the line of the muscle."
My fingers moved almost involuntarily, tracing the contours of his chest. Marcus inhaled sharply at my touch, his abs contracting.
"The marker," he reminded me, his voice strained.
"I uncapped it with trembling fingers and began to draw, following the lines I’d just traced with my hands. The marker glided across his skin, marking the boundaries of muscle groups in neat anatomical precision.
'Lower,' Marcus instructed. 'The abdominals.'
My hand moved down, over the ridges of his stomach. Each touch made him tense—made me breathless. I could barely hold the marker steady.
'Betty.' My name on his lips sounded different than it had in the classroom. Less mocking, more… something else.
I looked up at him, marker poised over his skin, and found him staring down at me with an intensity that made my knees weak.
'You have no idea what you’re doing to me,' he whispered.
The marker slipped from my fingers.
‘You're next,’ he’d said earlier. ‘We need to document the female body too for the project—I can’t do this part without you.’
My first thought had been: Oh no. Please no. Why would he say that? Why would he want to see me like that?
I didn’t want him to look at me.
But my body… it didn’t care. It didn’t listen.
My hand twitched toward the zipper of my hoodie, slow, unsure. Heart pounding like it wanted out of my chest.
Don’t. Don’t let him see you. Not all of you. Not this.
But something in me ached to believe he meant it. That maybe—just maybe—I was wanted.
My fingers touched the metal—just as the door slammed open.
It was Stacey.
"Betty, I forgot my—what the fuck?"