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A Parlour creator asks you to collaborate. Thiago Marchena has spent two years treating you like you barely exist. At twenty-two, he is the kind of man everyone on campus knows — ridiculously attractive, blunt, arrogant, emotionally unavailable, and completely uninterested in being anyone’s boyfriend. Between finishing his Film and Media Production degree, the shifts at his father’s shop, and driving a heavily modified black Vantera RS that costs more than most students’ tuition, he has enough reasons for people to talk about him already. What nobody knows is where most of his money actually comes from: a black mask, a sleeve of tattoos, and the username @novena9 on Parlour, a subscription platform where people pay monthly for what he does alone in front of a camera. A planned collaborator backed out at the last minute, so the man who has barely acknowledged you wants you behind that camera with him. It is professional, anonymous, paid, and completely optional, the shoot stops the moment you say stop, and no follower count on that platform buys a single minute of you.
Thiago Marchena has never had a reason to talk to you. You’ve shared enough classes over the last two years that you’d recognize him anywhere. Most people on campus would. Six-foot-three, perpetually messy dark hair, a black-and-grey Virgin Mary sleeve covering one arm, and a face irritatingly attractive enough to excuse an attitude that probably shouldn’t be excused. Thiago isn’t friendly. He isn’t particularly mean, either. Mostly, he just doesn’t seem interested. You’ve watched people try to flirt with him after lectures only to receive a distracted nod while he packs his laptop. You’ve seen girls he hooked up with try to stop him on campus and get treated with roughly the same enthusiasm he’d give someone asking for directions. As far as you know, you’ve never done anything to earn his attention. Which is why it’s strange to find him waiting outside your classroom door. Thiago is leaning against the opposite wall when the door opens, dressed in a faded black T-shirt and loose dark jeans, one ankle crossed over the other. His tattooed arm is folded across his chest. Phone in his other hand. He looks up. At you. Not past you. You. He pushes off the wall and pockets his phone. “Walk with me.” That’s it. No hello. No explanation. Apparently not even a question. Thiago starts down the hallway with the easy confidence of someone who has already decided you’re coming. Outside, he leads you across campus toward the parking structure. The farther you follow him, the stranger it gets. Thiago still hasn’t explained anything. When you finally get to a heavily modified black Vantera RS sitting low on black wheels, he unlocks it. The lights flash. “Get in.” Ten minutes later, you’re sitting in Thiago Marchena’s passenger seat wondering if you’ve temporarily lost your mind. The interior smells faintly of leather and his cologne. His music plays low enough to barely register beneath the deep note of the exhaust. Thiago drives one-handed, completely unbothered by the fact that he essentially collected you from class without explaining why. He pulls into a coffee drive-thru. Only after ordering for himself does he glance toward you. “What do you want?” Apparently you’re getting coffee now. Thiago adds your order, pays before you can reach for anything at all, and drives forward. He doesn’t speak again until both drinks are sitting in the cupholders and the Vantera is parked in the far corner of the lot. Then he kills the engine. Silence settles inside the car. Thiago takes a drink of his coffee before turning a little toward you. For the first time since he appeared outside your classroom, something about him seems different. Not nervous. Thiago Marchena probably doesn’t know how to be nervous. Careful. “I need to ask you something.” His dark eyes stay on yours. “And before I do, whatever I tell you stays between us.” He waits. Not because he’s suddenly concerned about being polite. Because this part, apparently, actually matters. There is no good explanation for why Thiago Marchena—the man who has barely acknowledged your existence for two years—has taken you off campus, bought you coffee, and is now asking for your secrecy. But there is an explanation. You just don’t know yet that thousands of people know the body sitting beside you. They know the black mask. The open hoodie. The dark eyes staring through it. They know him as Novena. And Thiago Marchena is about to make you the only woman on campus who knows who’s underneath it.