Page 14 of Faking the Heat

I swallow. That night had been a haze of champagne flutes and echoing footsteps. He noticed a dress I almost forgot I’d worn. I take the sweater. Its wool is buttery against my palms, and for a second the fluorescent hum fades until it’s just us.

“I didn’t think you cared about fashion,” I admit, voice low.

He shrugs, a grin tugging at his lips. “My job is noticing details. It’s how I save lives.”

We detour to the jewelry rack next, an assault of plastic feathers, gaudy crystals, and metallic confetti, and I feel a sudden rush of normalcy. Sterling lifts a pair of studs the size of Coca-Cola caps. “Statement earrings?”

I weigh them in my hand. “These say, ‘I’m hosting a DIY glitter workshop.’”

He laughs and points at another set. Three dangling vines of tiny acrylic strawberries with glossy leaves. “These?”

I hold them up to my ear. “They scream, ‘I’m applying for an unpaid internship at the farmer’s market, but I moonlight as a crime boss.’”

I try both on in the little mirror. The chips of plastic catch the overhead lights and ricochet pinpricks of red across my cheeks. I add them to my pile.

Sterling grins at me wiggling a set of dangling banana charms, bright yellow plastic, absurdly long. “What about these?”

He dangles them like a moth to a bulb. “You’re violating Rule Seven,” I say, snatching them and dropping them in my basket. “But I’m taking them.”

“Obviously.” He beams.

We wheel our cart to the register, where the clerk double-bags everything with the solemnity of a sacrament. Sterling pulls out his wallet and waves off my protests. “I’ll just expense it to your GoFundMe” he says and chalks the total up to hero duties.

Outside, the day sun is softer, sloping toward afternoon. Sterling hoists the bags into the bed of his truck. The latch clinks like a promise.

At the loft, exposed brick and sun-bleached hardwood greet us. Sterling deposits frozen pizzas and a gallon of milk on the counter, then pushes open the guest-room door so I can crash in privacy. I peel off the too-big sweats, fold them into a neat rectangle, and drop them next to his door with a scribbled note: “Laundry not included. Thanks for the rescue.” I almost add a smiley face. Almost.

Moments later, I emerge in the green sweater and my own jeans. Sterling is rifling through a drawer of takeout menus. The folded clothes I left outside his door are stacked on the counter. “Keep them,” he says, sleeves rolled to his elbows. “I’ve got a million.”

His tone is breezy, but somehow it lands heavy in the quiet loft. I open my mouth to joke, but swallow it down, thumbs doubling the crease in the tile backsplash.

“Chinese?” he asks, phone already in hand. “I know a place.”

I exhale and let the shift happen. “Lo mein or bust.”

“Attagirl.” He dials.

I collapse on the couch, toes digging into the plush throw. Bowie launches himself after a rogue pillow feather. I want to text my parents a photo, proof I’m alive, but I stay still, letting the hum of the city seep in through the windowpanes.

My laptop is on the coffee table, the one thing I own that came out of the fire with any real value, and I open it to see whether the insurance portal has done anything useful in the last six hours. It has not. But there is a new email sitting at the top of the stack, and the subject line is two words and a number.

Following up (3).

It is the studio in New York. They have been emailing me for weeks. I have been reading them in the preview pane, where they cannot mark themselves as read, and then not opening them, which I have decided counts as a form of decision-making.

This one has a date in it.

I close the laptop. Not the lid-half-down thing. All the way, and then face down on the table, as though that settles anything.

In the kitchen, the sound of Sterling rearranging the condiments stops for exactly one second, and then starts again.

In the kitchen, Sterling re-arranges condiments in the fridge like he’s defusing a bomb. I close my eyes, count out breaths.

The next hour moves in slow motion. The door buzzer sounds, and Sterling intercepts the delivery with the efficiency of a designer meeting a deadline. He sets down a brown bag bulging with Styrofoam cartons. Steam coiling, soy-sweet and vinegar-tangy.

We unpack at the coffee table: two large lo mein, spicy beef stir-fry, orange chicken glistening with sauce, sesame balls dusted in sugar. No plates. Chopsticks tap against cardboard. Bowie hovers at the edge, whiskers twitching.

First bite inventory, salt, sugar, the faint bite of scallions. Second bite, sweeter somehow, because I’m here. We butcher every chopstick-etiquette rule but eat until our eyes water. Sterling leans back, licks sauce from his lips.