It buzzed again.
And again.
Emmy pressed her palms against her eyes until she saw stars. She'd turned off notifications hours ago, but the phantom vibrations persisted—her nervous system convinced that somewhere, someone was watching her fail on loop and typing something clever about it.
The lock on her front door clicked.
Emmy sat bolt upright. She'd ignored three knocks from Mrs. Jasinski today, a text from Callie that had started with fourteen laughing-crying emojis and ended with that tennis dude is giving me the ICK, and a voice note from Jaciel she couldn't bring herself to play. She'd been sure the building had given up on her.
Burglar. Murderer. Someone who'd seen the video and tracked her down to finish the job.
She grabbed the first weapon she could find—a decorative bookend shaped like a fox—and crept toward the bedroom door, heart hammering.
Harper appeared in the hallway, holding a paper bag and looking triumphant.
"How did you get in here?" Emmy demanded, clutching the fox like a very ineffective sword.
"Bobby pin." Harper dropped onto the couch like she owned the place. "My brother taught me before he went to prison. Don't worry, it wasn't for breaking and entering. Different thing entirely."
"Harper—"
"You're hiding in your apartment at 2 PM on a Friday with the curtains closed and your phone probably somewhere you can't see it." Harper surveyed the scene with the clinical detachment of a crime scene investigator—noting Emmy's silk robe, the shadows under her eyes, the way she was holding a brass fox like it was a loaded weapon. "That's crisis mode. I had to intervene."
"I'm fine."
"You're catatonic." Harper opened the paper bag and pulled out a croissant the size of Emmy's fist. "Eat this."
"I'm not hungry."
"I don't care. Carbs are medicine. Your brain needs glucose to spiral properly, and right now you're just lying here like a broken GPS.Recalculating, recalculating, recalculating." She thrust the croissant at Emmy's face. "Eat. Then we can discuss."
Emmy set down the fox. Took the croissant. She wasn't hungry, but Harper was giving her that look—the one that said she'd sit here all day if necessary, cheerfully dismantling Emmy's defenses until she complied.
"I watched the video," Emmy said.
"I know. Everyone watched the video." Harper kicked off her shoes and settled cross-legged on the couch. "It's bad. I'm not going to lie to you. I don't even know anything about golf, and watching you square up to that ball is like one of those car crash compilations where you know what's coming but you can't look away."
"The champagne cart?—"
"The champagne cart guy is fine. I looked him up. He posted his own video about it. He's thriving. He has a GoFundMe now."
Emmy let out something between a laugh and a sob. "Great. I'm launching influencer careers."
"Silver lining." Harper reached over and physically guided the croissant toward Emmy's mouth. "Eat. Chew. Swallow. Be a human person who ingests food."
Emmy bit into the croissant. It was good—buttery and flaky, delivering a bitch slap of French pastry directly to her nervous system—and her stomach, which had been clenched like a fist for the past eighteen hours, unclenched slightly.
"There we go." Harper nodded approvingly. "Now. Sitting up, going to the couch. We're relocating to a room with natural light because vitamin D prevents murder."
Emmy let Harper steer her toward the living room, still clutching the croissant. The afternoon sun streaming through the windows felt aggressive after hours in darkness.
Twenty minutes later, Emmy was wrapped in her silk robe on the sage green armchair, working on her second croissant while Harper made coffee in her kitchen with aggressive competence.
"The thing is," Harper called over the hiss of the espresso machine, "everyone will forget about this in, like, three days. As soon as the guy who's trying to sell the NFT of your shocked face gets bored?—"
"There's anNFT?"
"—you'll be old news. The internet has the attention span of a goldfish on cocaine. By next week they'll be obsessing over some senator's weird vacation photos or whatever."
