Below the text, a photo. Not of me. Of the ballroom from last night, taken from the mezzanine. The dance floor glows under the lights; you can’t pick out faces. In the lower right corner, a sliver of blue and the edge of a navy tie. It could be anyone. It’s us.
A second message follows.
Unknown:If you need me to sit at the end of the table and be good, I will. If you want me on your right, touch your wrist before dessert.
I stare at the screen until the words stop swimming. Then I text back two things because two things can be true.
Me → Dad:At the rink by ten. I’ll bring the updated seating chart.
Me → Unknown:On my right.
Three dots blink. Then:
Unknown:Copy. Captain obeys.
I sag back against the counter and let the smallest, least strategic smile live on my face. It’s not defiance. It’s not victory. It’s the expression of a woman who chose the weather and is ready to stand under it, soaked and shining and unafraid to be seen.
I shower. I dress in navy, because I’m not done with honesty. I loop the ribbon under my cuff, the knot loose, the tails soft against my skin. I don’t hide it. I don’t flaunt it. I just wear it the way you wear a thing that taught you your body is yours.
Before I leave, I write the catering note I forgot in the scramble of last night and this morning:Hot cocoa bar after speeches—add cinnamon sticks.I tape it to the fridge like a normal person doing normalthings, then grab my bag and my keys and step into the cold that knows my name.
At the rink, the Zamboni hum tells me the day has started without me, which is a relief and a dare. The lobby still smells like pine and popcorn, December pretending to be a warm hug. I find Dad in his office with the whiteboard and the schedule and more love than he knows how to spend. I hand him the chart. He scans it. Grunts approval. We talk logistics like two professionals who don’t have a war tucked into their ribs.
When I leave his office, my phone buzzes.
Unknown:North corridor. Don’t come. Just look down the line and breathe.
I step to the mouth of the hallway and do what I’m told: I do not go. I breathe, like he asked. Far down, a shadow shifts and becomes a man leaning against cinderblock, tie straight, posture relaxed, eyes all gravity. He doesn’t wave. He just stands there being near, and somehow the day is less sharp-edged for it.
I turn back toward the lobby, the seating chart under my arm and three days of good work ahead. I can feel my father at my back and Triston down the hall, and for once the war inside me looks less like a battlefield and more like a map—routes in every direction, some deadly, some kind, all mine to choose.
“Let’s work,” I tell myself, and the woman who stopped running smiles without apology and gets to it.
Chapter Seven
Sammie
Morning learns my name and says it too gently, like it’s trying not to scare me back into last night.
I wake in my own bed and for a disorienting heartbeat I’m angry at my ceiling for being my ceiling—flat white, the tiny crack I’ve been promising myself I’ll fix, the shadow from the streetlamp cutting the room on a diagonal. It should be hotel wallpaper and a blackout curtain breathing city glow; it should be the hush of a place built for secrets. Instead it’s my room, my radiator, my life arranged exactly as I left it before I walked into a night I can’t return.
I stretch and the memory in my muscles stretches with me: his weight braced at my side, the careful pressure of his hand saying I’m here, the way my body finally answered back with something other than a double-locked door. My chest pulls tight, not with regret, not with fear—though both are alive and pacing—but with that uncovered tenderness I’m still learning how to carry in daylight.
Coffee first. Movement. Make the animal of morning obey.
The kitchen is winter-quiet; the mug I reach for is the one with the tiny chip on the rim, my mother’s old favorite. I press my thumb tothe chip without thinking, the way you worry a scab to check if you’re healed. The smell of dark roast and cinnamon lifts into the air, and for a second I see the gala like a movie playing across my cupboard doors: glittering donors, the check-in line curving like a river, the lighting I fought for making faces look softer than consciences. Three days. That’s the line on the calendar. Three days until I stand in a dress I chose with eyes open and a name on my wrist no one can read unless I let them.
The phone buzzes against the counter. I do not jump. I do not act like a woman whose entire circulatory system has moved into her messages. I sip. I make myself walk over like the text is from a vendor with a normal question.
Unknown:North corridor. Two minutes. If no, type any word that isn’t my name.
I stare at the letters long enough to map each one onto a part of my body that still remembers his mouth. The instruction is not an instruction; it’s permission wearing a jacket that looks like control to people who don’t own that word. He knows I’m not a morning corridor kind of girl; he knows I’m a calendar and a clipboard and a woman who likes plans written down in ink. He still asks. That’s the part that makes me ache.
Me:No.
Me:Later.
Two messages, clean as a boundary. The three dots appear. Disappear. The absence of complaint feels like a hand on the back of my neck sayinggood girlwithout making me want to run through a wall.
