Chapter 13 – Aurora
The first thing I register is the sound.
That thin-boned hum that old buildings make when the heat ticks through the pipes and the city breathes outside your window. The second thing is the dress. Silk doesn’t belong on a sofa, but it’s what I fell asleep in, and now the fabric bites at my ribs where a seam folded under me in the night. I move and the seam moves, and the rest of me catches up with stiff shoulders, heels kicked under a chair, hair pinned in a knot that’s given up and slid halfway down my neck.
I sit up too fast. The loft tilts and then levels. Morning has turned into whatever comes after it. Pale winter light fools the high ceiling into thinking it’s taller. Across the street the construction site is banging metal like it owes them money. It smells like dust and coffee I didn’t finish.
The dress whispers when I stand. There’s a cold coffee ring on the table, a perfect circle like a little bruise. My clutch lies open next to it, lip stick and mints half-spilled, the edge of the card tucked in the pocket like a tooth. I snap the clutch shut because I don’t want to see the number and because I don’t want to admit that I know the number even when I don’t see it.
“Fine,” I say to the room, because hearing my voice makes everything less heavy. “We’re fine.”
I’m not fine. My chest knows it. My hands know it. The minute I close my eyes, I see him in the corridor again. He didn’t block me or raise his voice. He walked me out without laying a hand on me, and I still felt held.
The phone face-down on the table buzzes against wood like a small animal. I flip it. It’s Lila, who doesn’t understand mornings except as rumors.
Lila:you alive, Splendor?
Before I can answer, another text arrives, then another, then a stream that reads like her mouth moving.
Lila:we made it.
Lila:zero falls.
Lila:minimal canapés.
Lila:public loved you. board feared you. delicious.
Lila:behold, evidence!!!
Three photos drop in, blurred from movement and too much light, all of them off a little bit because she believes in reality more than she believes in composition. In the first one it’s me and her and a chandelier, my mouth open mid-laugh because she said something wicked. In the second one I’m with a museum person whose name I’ll remember when she writes it in an email; I’m saying the words “consent” and “process” with my hands. In the third one she didn’t mean to take, she’s pointing her camera toward the auction floor to catch Jonah making a ridiculous face behind a donor’s back. On the mezzanine above, a man in a charcoal suit leans near the rail. The phone flash catches his eyes and washes them out to something that isn’t human. It hits the mouth right, though. I recognize the line even from that distance.
Lila:Mystery Daddy cameo?? Who is he and why does he stand like the room owes him taxes?
I stare for three seconds longer than the photo deserves. My thumb moves to type before I can talk myself out of it.
Me:Ward.
She thumbs back so fast it’s almost a reflex.
Lila:k. as in Ward, Ward. got it.
Lila:did you two exchange recipes for controlling other people’s evenings?
Lila:Do not answer that over text
Lila:soup later?
Lila:also rest.
Me:Soup later. Work first.
Lila:liar. sleep first. work second. soup third. flirting with the devil fourth.
Me:He’s not the devil.
Lila:he’s paperwork with bones
Lila:& you can take him. call me when your brain starts doing the thing where it tightens like a jar and I’ll open it for you
