"Isn't it?" Delphine leaned forward, her dark eyes warm but direct. The candlelight caught the gold hoops in her ears, the geometric print of her headwrap. She always looked put-together in a way I envied—confident in her own skin, comfortable taking up space. "Tell me the actual objection. Not the anxiety spiral. The real thing."
I twisted my grandmother's ring. The thin gold band turned easily now, worn smooth by thirteen years of nervous fidgeting.
"I don't know anything about him," I said. "His online presence is practically nonexistent. His company website says nothing. He's tracking money launderers through the art world, which means organized crime, which means danger. And he looked at me like—"
I stopped. Couldn't finish the sentence.
"Like what?" Delphine's voice had softened.
"Like I was a puzzle he wanted to solve." I stared at the wine I wasn't drinking. "Like I mattered. I don't trust that. People don't look at me like that without wanting something."
The words hung between us. The truth I'd been circling for an hour, finally landed.
Delphine set down her glass. "Lia."
That was her name for me. No one else used it.
"You're allowed to want things," she said. "You're allowed to take interesting jobs and be attracted to handsome men and have a life that isn't just you and Ghost in that studio forever."
"I like my studio."
"I know you do. And your studio is a beautiful sanctuary you built to protect yourself from a world that's been shitty to you. It's a fortress. But fortresses can become prisons if you're not careful." She reached across the table and touched my hand—brief, careful, aware of my limits. "Stop looking for the trap. Sometimes good things are just good things."
My throat tightened. "You don't know that."
"Neither do you. That's the point." She sat back, picked up her wine again. "You've already decided to take the job. I can see it in your face. You're just looking for permission."
I opened my mouth to deny it. Closed it again.
She was right. She was always right about me, which was infuriating and comforting in equal measure.
"What if he disappoints me?" The question came out smaller than I'd intended. "What if I let myself want this and it turns out to be nothing? Or worse—what if it's something, and I ruin it anyway because I'm too much?"
Delphine's expression softened. "Then you survive it. Like you've survived everything else. But at least you'll know."
The wine bar hummed around us—soft music, muted conversations, the clink of glasses. I could handle it here. Delphine had found this place years ago, had tested it, had declared it Auralia-safe. She'd done that without being asked. Without making a big deal of it.
That was love, I thought. The quiet accommodations. The patience with someone whose brain worked differently.
Lis did that too. Every night, asking his careful questions. Adjusting without being asked.
The guilt stirred again, but quieter now. More confused than sharp.
"You're thinking about something else," Delphine observed. "Something you're not telling me."
I met her eyes. "I'm not ready to talk about it yet."
She nodded, accepting this the way she accepted everything about me—without judgment, without pushing. "When you are, I'm here."
Something in my chest loosened. Not all the way. The knot was still there, tangled with guilt and wanting and the fear that I was about to make a terrible mistake.
But Delphine was right about one thing. I'd already decided.
The only question was whether I was brave enough to admit it.
Isenttheemailat10:47pm.
Three hours. That's how long I'd spent drafting and deleting and drafting again. Three hours of staring at my laptop in the green velvet armchair, Ghost curled at my feet, while I tried to compose four sentences that didn't make me sound desperate or terrified or both.
