Fake it with me
He sat on his bed with his phone in his hand and the muffled sound of the television coming through the floor, the same four yards of tape playing on repeat, and he thought about the conversation he'd had with Noah on Tuesday night, the one where he had told him about the Elite Prospects recommendation and the unknown number and the photograph he still hadn't fully decoded, and Noah had listened with the focused patience he brought to everything and then said, very quietly, *you need to be careful.
He opened his messages.
The thread with Ava was at the top, the way it had been at the top for two weeks, and he looked at their last exchange, the six words she had sent him an hour ago and his f