“Where are you right now?” she asks finally.
I look through the windshield at Elias, still standing at the front of the car with his back to me. “In Elias’s car.”
“Where?”
I hesitate for a second. Then I give her the address.
A short pause. “I’m coming over.”
“Nadia, you don’t have to—“
“I’m coming over,” she says, with the tone she uses when the conversation is already finished. “Text me the address. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
The line goes silent. I lower the phone and sit with it in my lap.
Outside, Elias turns at the sound of the car door opening, and I realize I’ve already reached for the handle. He moves back toward me, and when he reaches the passenger side, his expression is calm, but his eyes are assessing.
“She’s coming,” I say.
He nods once. “Good.”
We sit on the low front steps of the house as we wait, the evening air cool and smelling faintly of whatever flowering thing grows somewhere along the side fence. I hold my phone in both hands. Elias sits next to me and says nothing, and I’m grateful for it in a way I can’t articulate because articulating things requires energy I don’t currently have.
Headlights sweep the driveway about fifteen minutes later. Then a second set immediately behind the first.
Nadia’s car and Adrian’s car pull in almost simultaneously, the timing so close it would be funny under different circumstances. Bash is in the passenger seat of Adrian’s car. Nadia is already out before her engine fully cuts. Her heels click against the concrete as she heads straight toward me with the focused energy of someone who spent the entire drive furious and managed it by driving faster than she should have.
Adrian and Bash get out of their car more slowly than Nadia did. Not because they’re not moving with purpose — they are — but because they’re reading the situation. Their eyes find me immediately. Bash’s hands are loose at his sides, and his expression is neutral, but he covers the distance between the car and me quickly. Adrian is two steps behind him, and even in the fading light, I can see the tension in his jaw.
Nadia reaches me first. She cups my face in both hands, tilting it up slightly to look at me in the way she’s been doing since we were fifteen, and whatever she sees there makes her exhale through her nose slowly.
“We’ll talk inside,” she says.
The driveway feels very full with all five of us in it at once. I’m acutely aware of how many people are currently concerned about me, and how every one of their faces reflects a different version of that concern. Nadia looks like she’s one minute away from getting back in her car and driving to the studio. Adrian has gone unnaturally still, which is somehow worse. Bash is watching my face with the assessing gaze he uses when he’s reading what I’m not saying. Elias has positioned himself slightly to my left, a grounding presence.
“Is there somewhere we could have a few minutes alone?” Nadia asks. She addresses the question to the group, but her eyes are on Adrian, who is closest.
“Of course.” He says it immediately. “There’s a sitting room off the hall. I’ll show you.”
Bash catches my eye before we move. “Are you okay with that?” he asks, his voice low, meant just for me.
“Yes,” I say.
He nods and steps back. It’s a small thing, being asked instead of being managed into a direction, but it matters more than I can say.
Elias doesn’t say anything. He just moves aside to let me pass.
Adrian leads us inside and directs Nadia to the sitting room. Then he retreats to the main room without lingering in the hallway or positioning himself where he could hear. Bash follows him while Elias closes the front door.
Nadia shuts the sitting room door behind us.
I hold it together for approximately thirty seconds. I’m not sure what breaks it. Maybe the door closing. Maybe the sudden privacy after hours of forcing myself to hold it together. Maybe just the fact that it’s Nadia and I don’t have to pretend.
I press the back of my hand against my mouth, and then I’m crying.
Not the dignified kind of tears I would absolutely prefer to be capable of right now. I’m crying hard, in the way that meansmy chest is heaving and my face is doing things I can’t control. The grief has been building since I stood across from the director and listened to him redistribute my entire professional contribution into the phraseenough material to complete the film.
I cry from humiliation. From exhaustion. From the anger I couldn’t express in that meeting because expressing it would have handed everyone on that set exactly the narrative they were already half-constructing. From grief, maybe, though I can’t fully name what I’m grieving yet. From the deep, consuming terror that this is only the beginning of what's to come.
