Bought by My Childhood Crush

[Beck: Been with her over a year. Great voice, sweet, gives you all the emotional support you could want.

Serious offers only, DM me.] I lost eighty pounds for a boy I had never met. Oneninety down to oneten. It took me a year.

The day before we were finally supposed to meet in person, he put me up for auction. A public post. Open bidding.

Somebody asked why he'd sell off a girlfriend that good. [Beck: Looked her up online. She's huge. I only date hot girls.] The whole comment section. All of it. Tank. Tank. Tank.

One person replied. [DM me.] I scrolled back up to the poster's profile picture. It was the same picture my boyfriend used. Then I checked the date on the post. Three months old.

Chapter 1 I froze. Three months ago. That was the week he asked me for a fresh start. Something had shifted in Beckett right around then. He went cold on me almost overnight.

One night he brought up breaking up, said he was bored. I thought it was a mood. I begged for days. Eventually he said fine. We could keep going.

Right after that, he wanted a new Instagram. His old account had too much junk piled on it, he said. College was starting. He wanted a clean slate. So I followed the new one.

He stayed distant for a while after the switch. Even the way he typed was different. Then, little by little, he came back to me.

I told myself he'd gotten bored and changed his mind. That was all. My phone buzzed in my hand.

It was the account with our matching cartoon profile pics. [Babe, my tracker says your period's due. I had heat patches and a soup delivery sent to your dorm.

Eat something warm for me, okay?] [Cannot wait to meet you next month. Kind of nervous, honestly. Are you excited?] My thumb hovered over the screen and stopped.

So the person flying out to meet me next month. Who was he?

When my best friend finally came to find me, she couldn't get the words out. "Did you and Beckett break up?" "Why?" I asked.

She gave up and handed me her phone. "Just read it." Back when we all played together, she'd gotten close with one of the guys in Beckett's gaming crew.

He'd screenshotted the crew's group chat for her. [Beck, how come you don't bring your girl on anymore?] [Beck: Broke up.] That was Beckett. Beck to them.

The chat blew up. [You two were fine like a week ago???] [Beck: Her voice is hot so I assumed she was hot. She sent a pic once with a DoorDash label in the corner.

Got her name off it. I already knew her high school. Had somebody look her up.] [Beck: She's pushing two hundred pounds. I was shook. I only date hot girls.

Almost threw up right there. Cut it off same day.] [LMAOOO the voice is hot BECAUSE the fat's pressing on her vocal cords.

Hotter the voice, bigger the girl.] [Wasn't she obsessed with you though? She followed you around every single match. She let you go that easy?] [Beck: She didn't want to.

So I passed her off to somebody else. She doesn't even know my real name.] Then he dropped a link to his own post. The one selling me. [BRO.

You can DO that??] Chapter 2 [Beck's a legend. Now she can't cling to you either. She hid it on purpose, obviously. No way you last a year with someone like that in real life.

She had it coming.] [A hog's been slobbering on him for a year. Bro's traumatized. Heart sealed in cement now?] [Beck: Got a new target anyway. Girl in the freshman group chat.

Really pretty. Super wholesome.] Beckett's family had old money, and he spammed that chat with cash whenever he felt like it.

So everybody kept him fed. [Of course Beck bounces back with a solid ten.] [Only a ten deserves our boy Beck.] [Pics?? Need to see this.] He posted one.

White slip dress, some little jacket over it. Ashblonde hair in a low side ponytail down the front of her shoulder. Thin, glowing, eyes crinkled up from smiling. She was pretty.

I'll give her that. I knew the face right away. Blair Whitmore, from the incoming freshman group chat.

She'd dropped a selfie in there a while back, and the guys crowned her the hottest girl on campus before the photo finished loading.

My best friend's hands were shaking on the phone. "Over a year. He was with you for over a year, and he flips like that, and then he auctions you off?

He's trash, Laney." "And Blair isn't even prettier than you. She looks like a coat hanger. She's pale and skinny, that's the whole thing." "Post your picture in that group chat.

Just watch him choke." I kept my eyes on her screen. My own face was in it, over his messages. One person in that chat stood up for me. [That girl really loved you though.

Every time you got jumped, she went in first and died for you. Every time. This is cruel, man.] A minute passed.

Then Beckett, like he was talking about the weather: [Beck: I only date hot girls, what do you want from me? A year with a Tank.

I gag thinking about it.] [Beck: You want to blame somebody, blame her for being ugly.] My thumb went white where it pressed the edge of her phone case. He never told me his name.

Not once. Not in a year. But every stranger in that chat knew what I weighed. On the way home that night, a guy stopped me and asked for my Instagram.

I turned him down and kept walking, slow, alone. The sky had gone gray and the air was cool for late summer. Rain was coming. A shop window threw my face back at me as I passed.

Small face. Sharp features. The kind of pretty that makes people look twice.

My friend used to stare at me like it personally offended her. "I paid six figures for this nose at a top surgeon's office in Beverly Hills and it still doesn't beat yours.

Every time we go out, they're looking at you." "I get compliments on my own, okay! Is this what a seven on a good day feels like standing next to a ten?

I hate it here." I know I'm pretty now. Dinners get comped. Guys ask for my number more often than I can keep track of.

A scout came up to me once and asked if I'd ever thought about modeling. Before Beckett, none of that happened. I was fat my whole childhood.

By high school I was almost two hundred pounds and my eyes had disappeared into my cheeks. Short, fat, and busted. Tank. Hog. I lost count of the names a long time ago. So I shrank.

The bigger I got, the less I tried with my clothes and my hair. The less I tried, the worse I looked. I had crushes like anybody else.

Every time one of them found out, he acted like I'd insulted him to his face. Then he screamed at me for it.

Every time I said I wanted to lose weight, my parents told me not to bother. You're cute like this, they said. They were heavy too. To them it was never a thing worth fixing.

Chapter 3 My whole teenage life happened inside other people's laughter. Then I met Beckett in a game. He liked my voice, and he wouldn't quit until I accepted his friend request.

A few more matches after that, and we were talking every night. A while later, he asked me out. I sat with it until morning. A boy who'd never seen me wanted me.

That was the best offer I'd ever had. He had money. He'd already bought me more skins than I could use, and he kept trying to send real gifts. I turned every one of them down.

There were no photos of his face anywhere on his feed. What he had was vacations. Every corner of the world, and in half the shots, the back of him. Good build.

Hotels with the kind of price tag you don't ask about. He liked my voice. That much I believed. At the size I was, there was no version of this where he liked the rest of me.

But I liked him. That was the problem. Back then he was warm about everything. Anything that hurt, I could hand to him at midnight, and he'd talk me down from it.

One night he dropped cash in the global chat so a server full of strangers would tell me it was going to be okay. I said yes to him. Then I buried my weight.

My school, my last name, every photo of me. All of it, in case he ever went looking. I tested him once. "What if I'm not pretty?" He answered in seconds. [With a voice like that?

Come on, babe. Don't mess with me.] [Babe, when do I get to see you. I miss you.] [Babe, let's go to the same college.

Then it's every day.] I stared at that last one for a long time. Then I started losing weight. Hunger kept me up all night, and that was fine.

Acid burned up my throat at two in the morning, and that was fine. Workouts until my legs quit underneath me, fine.

My parents pushed food at me every single night and I didn't take one bite of it. I wanted to be smaller. That was the whole plan. It went on for almost a year. Nothing greasy.

Nothing salty. Not once in twelve months. Some nights the hunger woke me up and I lay there crying about it. Then I'd think about him, and that got me to morning. It worked.

From 190, to 170, to 130, and finally 110. Then came the rest of it. Skincare. Makeup. Learning what my own hair was supposed to do.

Beckett offered to come see me a few times that year, and every time I had a reason it couldn't happen. Nothing about me felt finished yet.

Then the boys in my class started looking at me differently. Love letters started showing up.

Strangers stopped me on the sidewalk to ask for my number, red in the face, telling me I was beautiful. That's when it landed. Somewhere in that year, I'd turned pretty.

So I got brave. I matched his school on my application, and we agreed to meet on movein day. Except. It was a game to him. It had always been a game.

Every sweet thing he ever said, I'd banked. All of it. He never told me his name. Not once, in over a year.

Even Beckett Ashford came to me secondhand, from the guy my best friend had been talking to. He was never in it. Not for a single day of it.

In the class group chat, Blair dropped another selfie. Disney World. Mouse ears, pleated skirt, knee socks, young and untouchable.

There was a guy standing next to her with his face blurred out. Chapter 4 One look was all it took. The watch on his wrist was the watch from Beckett's old photos.

The chat went feral. [The campus queen is blessing us!] [A ten is a ten. Who's the guy though?] [That's our boy Beck. BECK. Legend.] My best friend had filled me in the day before.

Beckett started chasing Blair the same week she posted her first selfie. Word was he flew straight to Miami, bought her a pile of gifts, and paid for fireworks.

So they were together. Of course they were. Beckett spammed the chat with cash. [Say hey to the future Mrs.] [BECK. Generous king.] [Power couple.

Happily ever after, you two.] [They match so hard. I believe in love again.] [Only the campus queen deserves our boy Beck.] Then somebody brought me up. [Y'all don't even know.

Beck got catfished for over a year by a Tank. Nearly ruined him. Now look at him. Congrats bro.] [Blair: What Tank?] He told the whole story, start to finish.

Then all of them, one after another. [A TANK thought she had a shot at Beck??

Don't make him sick.] [Girls like that get nothing in real life so they go online and do the fake baby voice.] [Heard the hog applied to the same school. Might even be in our year.

We'll get to see exactly how bad it is.] Blair laughed along with them. [She's probably just insecure. Being ugly isn't her fault. Lying about it is, though.] [Beck: Can we not.

Makes me sick thinking about it. At least I've got you now.] What Beckett didn't know was that I was in that chat on a burner account.

His entire love story arrived in front of me, message by message. Then somebody asked. [Beck what's the Tank's name anyway?

Might run into her on campus.] [Beck: Delaney Vaughn.] [Sounds as plain as she looks LOL.] My hands were steady. That's the part I remember.

I opened my main account and walked in the front door of that group chat. Then I changed my display name to: Delaney Vaughn. The chat went dead silent.

Every single one of them was still sitting there, waiting for the show