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Dress for the Job You Want

Everything is ready.

The bag is packed—the blazer Liv chose, the navy henley, the dark jeans, the underwear I’ve been told is non-negotiable. Gemma’s backstory is memorized so thoroughly I could deliver it backward. I know Ruby’s cousin’s name, the groom’s name, the venue, the schedule. I know that the rehearsal dinner is Friday, the ceremony is Saturday at four, and the reception runs until midnight. I know that Ruby’s mother will ask about my family, my job, and my intentions, possibly in that order. I know that her brother Ben will shake my hand and hold it too long and watch my face while he does it.

I know all of this. I’m ready for all of this.

But something is wrong tonight, and it isn’t about the wedding.

Ruby came upstairs after closing at her usual time. She went through her usual routine—bag on the counter, shoes kicked off by the door, straight to the kitchen to pour wine. But the wine sat untouched. She opened her laptop, stared at it for eleven minutes, and closed it. She picked up her phone, looked at it, set it down. She moved around the apartment doing things that didn’t need doing—folding a towel that was already folded, wiping a counter I’d already cleaned.

Then her phone rings. She answers. Listens. Says “okay” and “I understand” and “no, it’s fine” in a voice that is flat and careful and nothing like her real voice. When she hangs up, she sets the phone on the counter very gently, the way you set something down when what you really want to do is throw it.

“The oven,” she says to no one. To the apartment. To me, maybe. “The repair guy says it’s not the motor this time. It’s the control board. Fifteen hundred dollars. Minimum.”

She stands there for a long moment, hands flat on the counter, head bowed. I can see her doing the calculation of what she has versus what she owes versus what the bakery needs to survive another month. I’ve seen the spreadsheets. I know the numbers. The numbers are not good.

I want to say something useful. I want to offer a solution, a workaround, a plan. I open my mouth.

Ruby starts crying.

Her shoulders curve in and her hands come up to her face and the sound that comes out of her is raw and jagged and I hate it immediately.

This isn’t about the oven. I know that. The oven is just the weight that tipped the scale. Underneath it is the bakery and the money and the wedding and Josh and her mother and the food festival and the feeling she carries like a second skeleton—that she’s doing everything alone and it’s not enough and she’s not enough and everything is slowly falling apart.

I know all of this. I can see it as clearly as I’ve ever seen anything.

I have no idea what to do.

My brain runs through options. Verbal comfort—but I don’t know the right words, and the wrong ones would make it worse. Problem-solving—but she doesn’t want solutions right now, I’ve learned that about humans, sometimes the problem isn’t the point. Physical comfort—but I’ve never initiated contact with her, it’s always been her hand on my arm, her foot against my leg, her fingers on my ribs opening the panel. I’ve never been the one to reach for her first.

I don’t have a protocol for this. There’s no tutorial. No Reddit thread. No list.

So I do what Ruby taught me.

I stop thinking.

I walk to the couch where she’s curled into the corner with her face in her hands, and I sit down next to her. Right next to her, close enough that my leg presses against hers, close enough that my warmth reaches her.

I don’t say anything. I don’t try to fix the oven or the money or the fear. I just sit there, steady and warm, and I wait.

She leans into me.

Her head drops. Finds my shoulder. Settles there, her forehead warm against the curve of my neck, her hair brushing my jaw.

Her hair carries the scent of her shampoo. Something floral that I can’t name but that I’ve been cataloging since the first night because it’s everywhere in her apartment—on her pillow, on the couch cushions.

My arm goes around her.

I don’t decide to do it. There’s no calculation, no assessment, no processing delay. My arm just moves—lifts, curves around her shoulders, pulls her closer. My body does it before my brain catches up, and for a fraction of a second I feel something close to panic because this has never happened before. My body has never led. My body has always followed instructions. But this time my arm moved on its own, toward her, because she was hurting and holding her seemed like the right response.

Ruby exhales against my neck. Long, and slightly shaky. Her body releases tension I don’t think she knew she was carrying. Her hand finds my chest—not reaching, just landing there, palm flat over the place where a heartbeat should be and isn’t, where instead there’s just warmth and the low steady hum.

I hold her. Time passes.

Her crying slows. Evens out. Becomes breathing. Becomes silence. Becomes the slow, heavy rhythm of someone who fought sleep for as long as she could and finally lost.

She’s asleep.