I stop.
The mirror shows me exactly what I suspected: a bloke playing dress-up. The suit is perfect. Celeste has an eye, I’ll give her that—but the man inside it is still the same kid who grew up in a fibro house in Wollongong, who learned to shave from a YouTube video because his dad was already gone, who eats cereal for dinner three nights a week because groceries are a luxury after Mum’s prescriptions. The Rolex catches the light and I twist my wrist, watching the face glint. It’s beautiful. It’s also a lie strapped to my arm.
Celeste and I spent the whole drive up here talking like equals. She told me about Whitney—about their freshman year in adjoining dorm rooms, about the road trip where Whit’s car broke down in Delaware and they hitchhiked to a gas station singing Destiny’s Child’s “Survivor.” I told her about Mum’s garden, how she grows tomatoes on the fire escape because she misses having land, how she talks to them in the mornings like they’re pets.
For two and a half hours, the twelve-year age gap and the several-hundred-million-dollar net worth gap didn’t exist. We were just two people in a car, being honest.
But standing in this hallway, surrounded by paintings and polished marble, I can feel the gap opening back up like a fault line. This is her world. These are her people. Even if she hates them, she speaks their language. I’m a tourist with a borrowed watch and a borrowed suit and a return ticket to Alphabet City, where the trashcans fight back and nobody gives you champagne for showing up.
So stop it, mate.Stop replaying the way she tucked her hair behind her ear during the drive. Stop thinking about how she laughed—really laughed, open and startled—when I told her about the time Mum accidentally FaceTimed Forrest while wearing a mud mask and he nearly called an ambulance. Stop cataloging the exact shade of her eyes, which is a color I’m fairly certain doesn’t have a name but should, because the world is worse off without one.
She’s a client. She’s twelve years older. She’s grieving.
And she called you her little brother.
So act like one.
I push through the men’s room door and the marble-and-mahogany theme continues. Individual stalls with actual wooden doors, not the gapped aluminum slabs, and a countertop with rolled hand towels arranged in a basket. There’sa small dish of mints. A candle is burning. It smells like eucalyptus.
I approach the sink and run cold water over my wrists, a trick I use for calming down. The water hits the Rolex face and I pull back instinctively, shaking my hand.Right.Borrowed watch. Probably shouldn’t drown it.
Then I hear it.
Retching.
The sound is unmistakable—violent, full-bodied, the kind that comes from the gut. It’s coming from the last stall, and whoever’s in there is having a genuinely terrible time.
Another heave. A low, miserable groan then a soft, “fuck my life.”
I freeze, water still running. This is the men’s room. I’m certain of it—I checked the sign twice because the font was so ornate I thought it might be decorative Latin. But regardless of what the sign says, that was most certainly a woman’s voice.
“Oi,” I call out, shutting off the tap. “You all right in there?”
The groaning stops. Silence. Then the woman’s voice again, thin and hoarse: “Shit. This is the men’s room, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, it is.”
“Of course it is.” A pause. More groaning. “Can you just go…and pretend I’m not here?”
“Uh, I absolutely cannot do that. Are you sick? Do you need help?”
“I need a time machine to get me out of this mess.”
“Hangover?” I ask.
“Sort of. But it’s kind of a nine-month hangover from one risky afternoon.”
Despite the circumstances, I almost smile. I move toward the stall. The door is unlatched, hanging open a crack. I push it gently with two fingers. “I’m coming in, all right? Don’t throw anything at me.”
She’s on her knees in front of the toilet—a young woman, early twenties maybe, in a black dress that’s bunched up around her thighs. Her blond curls are swept to one side, pinned loosely with a clip that’s losing the war against gravity. Her skin is pale and flushed, and mascara tracks run down both cheeks. One hand grips the porcelain bowl while the other clutches a tiny beaded bag like it’s a life raft.
She peers up at me with watery blue eyes and lets out a short, defeated breath. “I look unhinged.”
“All great meet-cutes are generally unhinged.” Damn, I’ve already seen a lot of mascara running today and the funeral hasn’t even started.
She manages a weak laugh, which immediately triggers another wave of nausea. I drop to one knee beside her and gather her curls away from her face without thinking—muscle memory, years of holding Mum’s hair during her bad days, when the pain medication hit her stomach wrong and she’d spend an hour on the bathroom floor while I sat next to her reading aloud from whatever novel she was halfway through.
“Thanks,” she mutters between breaths. “Very chivalrous. Very weird that a stranger is holding my hair.”
