The room erupts.
I close my eyes.
Just for a second.
Not because it hurts.
Because I need to make sure I heard that right.
The girls are shrieking now.
“Stop.”
“She did not say that.”
“She absolutely said that,” Isa says, laughing harder now. “I almost choked.”
My mouth goes dry.
I tell myself it’s a joke.
This is how girls talk. Exaggerated. Dumb. Performative.
I should leave.
I should absolutely leave.
But then one of them says, “I mean… she wasn’t wrong.”
And something inside me sinks.
Not fast.
Not dramatic.
Like a slow stone lowering through black water.
Because now they’re not joking.
Now they’resharing the joke. I open my phone to voice notes and hot record.
I hear a zipper.
The rustle of paper.
“He was already in your lane,” one girl says. “Tall, old money, Harvard before Stanford? Your mom probably saw wedding china.”
Isa makes a sound—not denial, not exactly.
More like embarrassment softened by agreement.
“She definitely saw grandchildren with cheekbones,” she says.
I stare at the floor.
At the white tile scuffed gray in places.
At the little crack near the baseboard.
