Not as random as she had imagined

Just then, she heard the unmistakable ding of an incoming text message, and took another look at her phone.

Hey, babe. I can't stop thinking about last night. Call me when you get out of work, and we'll meet up.

Brian was probably the only person Olivia Blink knew who still used capitalization and punctuation in his text messages. She always thought it was cute and quaint, and even though Brian was only a year older than she was, she knew he was something of an old man at heart.

"But there's literally nothing cute about it right now because I'm freaked out," she said as she stared at the phone screen. "Sure, call him. Sure, like I can just go on another date, like we can just ... live our fucking lives ..."

She grabbed the phone and swiped into the Messages app, idly reading through the history of their chat.

"He doesn't even know. He doesn't fucking know. He's never touched social media in his life, he's even less into it than I am. He probably doesn't even know how to get TikTok on his goddamn phone, let alone see the story. And who, who, who, who, who in his own life is going to have found this? Probably no one. Probably no one that he knows is any more likely to find a random thing on TikTok."

She tossed her phone down on the passenger's seat and began driving again.

"Maybe I shouldn't even tell him. Maybe it'll just be some weird thing that I keep in my head. Ha, won't that be fun? We'll be at dinner, and he'll be like 'would you like some wine,' and I'll be thinking, 'tomorrow, on TikTok, barbaroni2727 will announce what kind of wine we were drinking.'" She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "And he'll be fucking right."

She drove a little further, staring mindlessly at the sky, the trees -- she had driven aimlessly into some outskirt of town that was predominantly farmland. Her mind shifted to curiosity over what kinds of farms they might be, what farm life was like, and for a minute, had lost sight of the whole TikTok debacle. But just as she had managed to let the ideas slip free of her mind -- they returned.

"Oh, oh, oh, and then what? Then after dinner, if Brian and I try to make out or ... do it ... or something ... the entire fucking time, I'll be wondering how many of the details are going to magically show up on some rando's social media the next day?"

She slammed on her car horn for a few seconds, frustrated, needing something to break the serenity of the drive.

"Traci's going to be looking for it. And Tyler. Fuck Tyler, you know? Fuck him. He was the first chapter of this whole thing." She thought about it for a minute. "No, not 'fuck Tyler.' I mean, if anything, you want to fuck Tyler." She remembered her fantasy from a few nights back -- the one that had turned into the first TikTok story. "Yeah, you're so messed up about all this, you'd probably still want to fuck Tyler even if he was behind the whole thing."

She felt a tingle run through her body as the idea of being intimate with Tyler flashed across her mind. "No, it doesn't matter if I have a boyfriend. I may not be single, but I'm not dead. Tyler's sexy and yes, I would absolutely fuck him if given the chance.

She squirmed a bit in place as visions of Tyler floated through her mind's eye. "Unless he was behind all this." She sighed. "And even then." She tried to keep fantasizing about Tyler Jones, but the images became more scattered and the script faltered.

"Maybe he is behind it? Would he do that?" She considered it. "No ... Come on, Liv, he's actually an authentically nice guy."

She turned left for no real reason.

"Evan, on the other hand, is a fucking asshole." She thought about her conversation with Traci. "But Evan really is too stupid."

She turned left again, one single synapse in her brain suggesting that it might be the way to get back home.

"But you know who's not too stupid?" She spoke more slowly, **** to reach the conclusion that she most feared. "You know who's actually really smart? Someone who you'd never suspect to do something like this. Someone who is so blissfully ignorant of social media. Someone whose idea of sexual adventure is lighting a second candle. Someone who has never fucking done it in any position other than basic missionary."

She slammed on the brakes, stopping mid-road.

"Or, more accurately ... someone who appears to be all of those things but is actually a manipulative, devious, perverted fucktard."

She grabbed her phone, opened to the Messages app, and typed furiously.

absolutely brian!!! i'm on my way home from work now, i got out early, lets meet up and make some plans for tonight, cant wait!!!!!!!

She tapped the 'send' button, not even thinking or worrying that the uncharacteristic abundance of exclamation marks should betray her sincerity. She gently put her phone back on the passenger's seat. She stepped on the gas pedal, and calmly resumed her drive back home again.