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It feels less like a band and more like an awful workplace chat nobody wants to be in.
boys. you alive.
Eli
all good. busy.
Luca
same. speak soon
I stare at the replies, waiting for one of them to add something else. An insult. A joke. Anything that sounds like us.
Nothing comes.
I lock my phone, put the smile back on, and return to the gala.
* * *
We spend the better part of an hour circling the fucking room after leaving the bar. We speak to Sandra again, then two men whose names disappear the moment they introduce themselves, all while hovering at the edge of my father’s orbit as he accepts congratulations like a newly crowned king.
I hate this world, but I know how to work a room. Smile at the right moment. Laugh when another surgeon calls Atlas Falling a fun little boy band. Ask one question and let important men talk about themselves until they decide I’m charming.
Halfway through a conversation with a thoracic surgeon named Paul, I glance at Bea and realize she’s done.
She’s still smiling. Still nodding at the correct intervals. But her attention is gone, and when her eyes meet mine over Paul’s shoulder, the message is unmistakable.
Get me out of here.
I give Paul ninety more seconds of charm, tell him it was fascinating meeting him and steer Bea toward the exit with my hand at the small of her back.
* * *
She stops just inside the room.
The room is nice. Of course, it’s nice—it’s the same building as the gala, which means it costs more per night than I’d like to think about, and everything in it is cream and tasteful. A desk nobody will use and a bathroom lit to convince wealthy people they’re more attractive than they are.
And two single beds pushed against opposite walls.
She looks at the beds.
Then at me.
“Two beds,” she says.
“Two,” I confirm, dropping my keycard on the desk.
She tilts her head. “I assumed—”
“What?” I shrug out of my jacket and drape it over the armchair. “That I’d book a double?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“What kind of man do you think I am, Doc?”
Her gaze slides over me before returning to the beds. “A considerate one, apparently.”
Considerate.
