This is better. For her.
The energy shifts. Celebration without the weight of unpaid debt hanging over it.
Merritt stands. "We should go. We have to meet Natalie in forty-five minutes."
Sloane stands too. Barbie. Katelyn.
The reality settles over all of them. What comes next.
Barbie looks at Jane. "Wish us luck."
Jane's voice is steady. "You don't need luck. You have the truth."
Katelyn hugs Jane first. Then Merritt. Then Sloane. Then Barbie.
"If you're ever in Connecticut—"
Jane grins. "We’ll feast on real lobsters!”
Laughter. Warm goodbyes. Genuine affection.
And then they're gone.
Sandals clicking down the path, heading toward Natalie's villa and the conversation that will detonate everything.
The terrace falls quiet.
Jane's still holding her phone. Screen still lit with the bank notification.
"You okay?" I ask.
She looks up. Nods. But her eyes are wet.
"This is real," she says.
"Yeah."
"The money. The job. It's done."
"It's done."
She exhales. Long and shaky.
And I realize: now comes the hard part.
We're cleaning up in silence.
Not the comfortable kind. The heavy kind. The kind that says we both know what conversation is coming and neither of us wants to go first.
Jane stacks plates. I collect glasses. We orbit each other carefully, maintaining a precise distance—close enough to hand things back and forth, far enough that our fingers don't brush.
Like we're afraid contact will either start the conversation too fast or make us abandon it entirely.
"West?" she says finally.
I look up.
"We should probably talk."
