Sofie Takes Control (and Immediately Regrets It)

The doorbell rang again.

Sofie startled so badly she sucked in a sharp breath, hands flying instinctively to herself before she caught the motion halfway through and froze.

“I’ve got it,” she said quickly—too quickly—already moving. If she hesitated now, she knew she’d collapse into overthinking. “It’s fine. I’ll get it.”

Robin half-raised a hand. Viki opened her mouth.

Too late.

Sofie was already halfway to the door, heart racing, mind spiraling—not from the doorbell itself, but from the echo of the last ten minutes still ringing in her head.

The camera light.

The angle.

The silence before the laptop snapped shut.

"Who is there?" Sofie asked, hand on the doorknob.

“Hey! It’s Harvey,” came his muffled voice.

Head down, she opened the door, hugging her breasts instincively, stepping back shyly.

Harvey stepped in, “Before anyone freaks out—I might’ve caught a little bit of… whatever that was earlier on Skype. And then I... wow..." he whistled.

A few glances later and he continued, "I see youre still rocking that look! What an absolute... wow... just wow. Arent you just the cutest little nympho! Anyways, I figured I should come over before this turned into a full-on crisis or... before you, you know, totally fixed the, uhm, issue.”

Sofie barely had time to process any of his words, annoyed that he had left the door open still. But she had to know. Hugging her chest she blurted bluntly, "Can you see my clothes?!"

Harvey smiled automatically—and then his expression stuttered. Not a leer. Not shock. Just a careful recalibration, like his brain had tripped over something it wasn’t prepared to account for.

“Oh,” he said. "Uh, what clothes exactly??”

Her stomach dropped.

Behind them, Robin went rigid. Viki shifted closer to Sofie without even realizing she’d done it.

“I—” Sofie started, then stopped. Her throat felt tight. “You… can see... me?”

Harvey winced. As much as he was enjoying conversing with the now naked Sofie, he was kind enough to know something was wrong. He hesitated, wanted to resch out to give her a hug, but not knowing if she would punch him for it. He deflected, choosing to close the door to the public hallway instead. He glanced at her phone on the table, “You might want to check your phone. It keeps buzzing.”

Her phone buzzed like it had been waiting for permission.

She looked.

A missed call.

Two messages she hadn’t opened yet.

One from a classmate.

One from Professor Artz.

Her breath went shallow.

“Oh my god,” she whispered.

She didn’t open the message. She didn’t need to. Her mind had already filled in the blanks—professional concern, awkward phrasing, we need to discuss what happened on the call.

She laughed once, thin and brittle, and backed away from the door. Too fast. She nearly tripped, caught herself awkwardly, and immediately went still again as she felt the room notice.

“I was on camera,” she said quietly. “I smiled at professor Artz and said hello. I angled it like I always do.” She shook her head. “I didn’t even feel— I mean, I would have noticed if—”

Her voice cracked.

Viki stepped in gently. “Soph. It was only a moment.”

Sofie hugged herself, posture folding inward like she was trying to make herself smaller without actually knowing how. “A moment is all it takes.”

Robin swallowed. “The professor didn’t say anything on the call.”

“That’s worse,” Sofie said immediately. “That means he saw and didn’t know what to do.”

Her phone buzzed again in her hand. She flinched like it had bitten her.

“I don’t think I can ever open Zoom again,” she muttered. “Or email. Or exist professionally.”

Harvey rubbed her back, taking hisnchance to break the physical tension. Odd, he felt... fabric? “For what it’s worth… you dont look like you were being careless. Maybe you looked like you were confused.”

She laughed again, quieter this time. “Great. So now I’m the girl who accidentally confused her professor by—” She stopped herself, cheeks burning. “By not realizing I was… entirely topless... signing into class.”

She gestured vaguely at herself, then immediately regretted the motion when she noticed Robin look away a second too late and Viki’s jaw tighten in sympathetic horror.

“I keep trying to act normal,” Sofie said, voice dropping. “But every time I do, something slips. Literally or otherwise.”

She moved toward the couch, hesitated, then sat on the very edge, knees out further than necessary as she began to sit crosslegged. Her shoulders hunched. Her awareness spiked—not just of her body, but of how she was being perceived. A moment later she caught herself and pulled her knees together tightly.

“On the call,” she went on, quieter now, “I thought the problem was the camera filter. Or prank software. I was adjusting things, trying to fix it for a second without drawing attention.”

Her fingers tightened in her lap.

“And all I did was make it worse.”

No one argued.

Harvey shifted his weight. “Soph… when you move now, when you sat down just now, can you feel or see your clothes?”

“I did,” she said quickly, eyes flicking up to his and then away again. “But The second I panic, I lose track of what I’m doing. And it flickers in and out of my view. Im sorry, I think i just flashed everyone, but i realized too late that everyone else noticed before I did.”

Her phone buzzed again.

She didn’t look.

“I don’t trust my instincts anymore,” she admitted. “I don’t even trust my own body to tell me when something’s wrong.” she began to cry, shoulders slumped, breasts hanging freely as she wipes her eyes with her invisible sleeve.

The room felt smaller now. Warmer. Charged—not with anything intentional, but with the tension of too many eyes trying not to look and failing in small, human ways.

Robin spoke softly. “Then maybe the problem isn’t that you’re not paying attention.”

She looked at him.

“Maybe,” he said, “it’s that you’re trying to control everything at once.”

That landed harder than she expected.

Sofie hugged herself tighter, shoulders curling inward as she exhaled shakily. Viki moved in to hug her as well. “Because if I don’t,” she continued, “I end up like this.”

Seen.

Caught.

Remembered.

And this time, not just by the people in the room—but by a class full of names and black squares, and a professor who would never forget the moment she made his early online room become very, very explicit.

She swallowed.

“I don’t know how to make it stop,” she said quietly.

"But we will figure it out together." Said Harvey, sitting on her otherside, hugging her in between him and viki. "Lets learn what happened. Youre not alone."

And somehow, that made the embarrassment sharper—not duller.

Because learning meant remembering.

And remembering meant knowing just how exposed she’d been the whole time.