Chapter 9:

🍙 🍙 🍙 🍙 🍙

My uncle had prepared my room while I was still in the air. He tried to be casual about it.

“Wren, take a look and see if you like it. To be honest, I don’t know what girls like, so I just bought things randomly.”

He said this while standing in a doorway framed by cream-white curtains that matched the bedspread that matched the rug, all in the exact shade I’d mentioned loving in a phone call two Christmases ago. The table lamp was blue. My favorite color since I was nine. He’d remembered that too.

“I love it, Uncle. Thank you.”

He scratched the back of his head, pleased and embarrassed in equal measure. “Good. Get settled in. Dinner’s in a bit.” He paused at the door. “Oh—a friend of yours from the old neighborhood asked about you the other day. I’ll tell you about it some other time.” He waved it off before I could ask, as if it were nothing.

He left, and I sat on the edge of the bed, running my hand across the comforter. The fabric was new. Stiff and slightly cool, the way things are when they haven’t been touched yet. Everything in this room had been chosen for me by someone who paid attention.

𝗦𝗍оr𝗂𝘦ѕ you 𝘸𝗈𝗇’t p𝗎t 𝘥𝘰𝘸𝗇 о𝘯 g𝘢𝗅ո𝗼v𝗲𝘭s.𝘤𝗼𝗺

I stayed there longer than I meant to.

The first week passed in a haze of sleep and meals and my grandmother insisting I looked too thin. By the second week, restlessness set in. I’d spent too many years running at full speed to know how to sit still. With Julian, I’d pushed myself constantly, chasing better numbers, bigger clients, later nights, all of it aimed at building a future that turned out to be his and not ours. Now I didn’t need to prove anything to anyone, and the freedom was disorienting.

I found a job as a barista at a small coffee shop six blocks from my uncle’s house. The owner was a retired schoolteacher named Marjorie who had opened the shop because she liked the smell of roasting beans and wanted somewhere to put her book collection. The shelves behind the counter held more novels than coffee cups.

I liked it. I liked measuring the grounds, heating the milk, watching the foam take shape. There was a satisfaction in the smallness of it, in tasks that began and ended within minutes and left no loose threads. No clients calling at midnight. No spreadsheets that refused to reconcile. Just coffee, and people who wanted it.

I was practicing latte art at home one evening, phone wedged between my shoulder and ear, when Sloane called.

Sloane had been my closest ally at the company. She sat two desks away, brought me aspirin when I got headaches, and had an instinct for gossip that bordered on professional.

“You’re not going to believe this,” she said, already laughing.

“Try me.”

“Julian traced the IP address of the anonymous post. The one that trashed Ivy.”

I poured milk in a slow spiral, trying to get the fern pattern right. “And?”

“It was Ivy. She posted it herself.”

My hand paused over the cup. “Seriously?”

“She exposed herself on purpose! Can you believe it? Mr. Ashford was livid. Stripped her of the assistant title that same day.”

I could believe it, actually. I’d never bought the act. Ivy knew exactly what she was doing when she posted that message. She’d wanted the confrontation. She’d wanted Julian to storm into that restaurant furious at me, wanted the final rupture she could step into. The fact that it blew up in her face was the only surprising part.

“Well,” I said. “At least he finally checked.”

Sloane wasn’t done. She had more, and she delivered it with the relish of someone who’d been saving the best course.

“That project you were handling? Since Ivy took over, it’s been a catastrophe. Data errors every other week. The client called three times demanding a new project lead or they’re pulling the contract.”

She paused for effect. “Everyone in the office knows she didn’t earn that project. They’re all talking about it.”

I listened, making the right sounds at the right moments. Sloane needed an audience, and I could give her that much. But the truth was that none of this touched me the way it would have a month ago. Julian’s company, Julian’s problems, Julian’s regret if he even felt any. It all belonged to a frequency I’d stopped tuning into.

“How are you, though?” Sloane asked, her voice shifting. “Are you okay out there?”

“I’m learning to make latte art.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It kind of is.”

She laughed. I laughed too. The fern on my practice cup looked more like a deflated balloon, but it was better than yesterday’s, which had looked like a smudge.

“I’m good, Sloane. Really.”

She seemed to hear something in my voice that convinced her, because she didn’t push. We talked for a few more minutes about nothing important, and when I hung up, the apartment was quiet and the evening light was coming through the kitchen window at a low, amber angle.

I poured the practice cup down the sink, cleaned the pitcher, and started again.

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