“Margie—”
“No. You don’t get toMargieme right now.” Her voice is shaking the way it does when she’s angry. “I watched you die inside when Rachael left. I know it’s your life, but it hurts that you’re alone. You deserve to have a special woman in your life.”
“I know.”
“But this? She’s not Rachael. She’s sitting alone right now, crying on camera, because you ghosted her.”
I want to tell her about the job, the protocol, the phone locked in a Faraday bag for seven days. But the moment I say, "I got called away on a protection detail and couldn’t reach her," Margie will ask the obvious question: "Why didn’t she know that?" Why didn’t your girlfriend know what your job involves?
And then the whole thing unravels. The fake relationship. The arrangement. The fact that Tessa doesn’t know the first real thing about what I do, because we never got that far before I walked out of the Conservatory and into a helicopter.
I can’t explain the job without exposing the lie. So I swallow it.
“You’re the example she’s going to use in her next video about men who can’t show up. You became the villain in her story, and she doesn’t even know why.”
“I know.”
“Do you? Because I bet you’re sitting in your apartment right now feeling sorry for yourself instead of fixing it.”
“I’m at her door. She’s not home. Her car’s gone. And she’s blocked my number—I’ve tried calling, texting, all of it.”
The silence on the other end stretches thin.
“Then figure it out,” Margie says quietly. The fury has burned down to disappointment. “You find her. Tell her the truth—all of it—and let her decide.”
“I promise.”
She hangs up.
I sit on the cold concrete and look at the quiet street. The blue door behind me is the same one she opened the night of the gala, wearing that pink dress that made me forget how to form sentences.
Margie’s right. Whittaker’s right. Tessa’s right. The job is a reason, not an excuse. The real failure happened in the Conservatory, in the five seconds between the phone call and the door, when I could have explained what was happening and that my job is sometimes “drop everything and gonow.”
And even before that, I should have told her what I do. When I find her, I have to fix that. Tell her everything. No more locked boxes.
For now, I’m going to go to my favorite spot so I can think through things and clear my mind.
The line from her video surfaces again. Her favorite spot. She’s gone somewhere specific.
I pull out my phone and open her Substack. Start scrolling back through the posts—past the advice columns, past the Q&As—looking for something I half-remember. A personal essay in which Curvy Cupid drops the performance and Tessa talks about her life.
There it is.The Comfort of Solitude.
I scan the paragraphs until I find it:
But when I really need to think—when the noise gets too loud, and I can’t hear myself anymore—I go to the Lock & Key Bridge. I leave my phone in the car because the whole point is silence. I stand at the railing, look out at the water, and let the city be big enough to hold whatever I’m carrying. It’s the onlyplace where I don’t feel like I have to perform. Where I can just be a person with a heavy heart, watching the river move.
The Lock & Key Bridge. She leaves her phone behind. That’s why she’s not answering. Or at least it’s one reason. I still suspect she blocked me.
I’m down the steps and running toward the bridge before I’ve finished the thought. I don’t have flowers or a speech. I have the truth and the hope that she’s standing on a bridge, willing to talk to me.
When I finally get to the bridge, I’m out of breath. And at the far end, leaning against the railing with her back to me, is Tessa.
CHAPTER 10
TESSA
Tessa.”
