“But isn’t your version of ‘optimized’ just… working all the time?” Layla asks. “I’ve seen your calendar. It’s terrifying.”
“My calendar is aspirational chaos. Maximum yield, minimum effort. Everything else is decoration.” He points at me. “Logan gets it.”
I raise my glass. “The problem with optimization is the endpoint keeps moving. You can’t help but iterate.”
“Exactly.”
Caleb grins. “But even Whitman knows when to stop iterating and enjoy the results.”
“That, I do,” I say, looking at Audrey, who’s sipping her wine with undisguised pleasure. My chest feels light. I don’t have to over analyze it, or her, or the fact that everyone is watching us now—not with envy or judgment, but with a smug, familial satisfaction. I never realized how much I wanted that.
Dominic, of course, sees the opening and lunges for it. “Speaking of enjoying results, can I just say—this?” He gestures between Audrey and me, waving his hand in little circles. “This here is the feel-good story of the quarter. I’m so happy I could cry. I won’t, but I could.”
Serena laughs. “You’re allowed feelings, you know.”
“Only the pre-approved ones,” Dominic counters, but he’s grinning at me, his face all genuine warmth for once. “Seriously, it’s been a long time since you let yourself relax like this. I like seeing it.”
“Me too,” Caleb adds, pressing a kiss to Serena’s shoulder. “I’m happy for you both. And I’ve missed this. We haven’t all been together outside the office in weeks.”
Jenna makes a sound that’s almost a laugh and raises her glass to the middle of the table. “To the prototype. May all your clinical trials go as planned.”
There’s a chorus of ‘Cheers’ and we all clink, minor chaos as glasses and arms tangle across the narrow table. Audrey hooks her ankle over mine under the table, a tiny secret in the middle of so much noise, and I grip her hand on top of the bench, my thumb tracing the bones and veins beneath her skin. Grounding, maybe. Or showing off. Or both.
The DJ is playing something slow now, a low thump and haze, which means half of them will rotate back to the dance floor in a minute. Or, more likely, Caleb will drag Serena back out there before anyone else can finish a sentence.
I lean into the corner of the booth and let myself watch them. My friends. My whole chaotic little orbit, stitched together from people who used to feel like satellites to me, now—somehow—a proper constellation. At some point, we became a family. Not the blood kind—the chosen kind. The kind that takes your broken parts and insists they’re beautiful. I wonder when that happened. And if I deserve it.
The old voice whispers that I don’t. That this is borrowed time. That eventually they’ll grow tired of dealing with me and the constellation will scatter.
I tell that voice to shut up. I’m trying to enjoy a night out with my people.
Audrey nudges my knee under the table. “You look like you’re thinking yourself into a spiral.”
“Not a spiral,” I tell her, but my tone says otherwise. “Just recalculating the odds.”
She gives me a long, steady look, then turns my hand over in hers and draws a slow circle on my palm with her fingertip. “Try not to go supernova. Some of us like you exactly as you are.”
I can’t answer that, not without my throat locking up, so I just bring her hand up and kiss the back of it, and she laughs, tucking herself against my side, her curls fanning out over my shoulder.
We hover there for a while, auditory chaos flattening into white noise around the booth, bodies in motion all across the floor, glasses sweating onto lacquered wood. Dominic is regaling the table with a story about a karaoke night gone wrong in Hong Kong. Layla keeps making little faces at Bennett, who seems happy to just watch her in love-drunk silence. For once, everyone’s content, and so am I. I didn’t think I’d ever get used to nights like this—the ones where it’s enough just to show up and belong.
Time gets slippery in the low light, and I lose track of it for a while. Audrey and Serena vanish for a bathroom summit, Layla and Bennett drift off to the quieter mezzanine, Jenna ghosts to the bar for a refill, and Dominic follows, likely to talk her into a tequila shot or a close-quarters dance. Caleb trails after Serena, probably to stand guard outside the bathroom, and for a minute, the booth is just me and David.
He sips his whiskey, then sets it down and turns to face me. “You’re happy,” he says quietly. Not a question, more like an empirical observation.
The word feels strange applied to me. Like a shirt I’m still not sure fits.
I nod. “Yeah. I think I am.”
He looks down into his glass, rolling it between his palms. “It’s good to see. You know, there was a while there when I didn’t think you’d ever get out of your own head long enough to let someone in.”
I almost laugh, but the weight in his words catches me off guard. “Me neither.”
“Audrey’s good for you. You’re good for her, too.” He looks up, meets my gaze. “Don’t second-guess it. Just let yourself have it.”
It doesn’t sound like a toast or a benediction, more an order from someone who’s lived through the aftermath of not allowing himself to want what he wanted.
“I wanted to thank you,” I say finally. “For the advice. That day in your office.”
