He pocketed the phone, checked his reflection one final time – an old habit, the kind you develop when your appearance is a tool and every detail matters – and left his room. He descended the stairs, walked through the foyer, and stepped outside where the black Ferrari waited by the curb like a loyal, impractical dog.
The drive took him across the city and through the gates of a university campus. He parked – badly, the Ferrari drawing stares from students who’d probably never seen one outside of Instagram – and walked toward the administrative building with the stride of a man who had somewhere to be and a world that generally got out of his way.
The Vice Chancellor’s office occupied the top floor of the administrative building, which Caelum supposed was appropriate – men who run universities and men who run empires share a fondness for being physically above everyone else. The elevator delivered him to a hallway that smelled of old carpet and institutional coffee, and he walked its length to a door that bore the nameplate: DR. HAROLD CALLOWAY, VICE CHANCELLOR.
He didn’t knock.
Calloway looked up from behind a desk that was either antique or simply neglected – it was hard to tell. He was a man who wore his age like an ill-fitting coat: white beard, reading glasses perched on his nose, the slightly startled expression of someone who’d been interrupted mid-thought and was trying to remember which century he was in.
“Mr. Caelum.” He half-rose, gestured to a chair. “Please. Sit.”
Caelum sat. He didn’t remove his jacket. He didn’t cross his legs. He sat the way a man sits when he intends to be in a chair for less than five minutes.
“I need a favor,” he said. No pleasantries. No preamble.
Calloway’s eyebrows lifted. “A favor.”
“My wife is a student. I need her transferred – not here. To New York. I’ll need the full paperwork processed: transfer authorization, academic records, a letter from your office. Seamless. Clean.”
He watched the words land on Calloway’s face and rearrange it. The Vice Chancellor leaned back in his chair, the leather creaking beneath him, and studied Caelum the way a man studies a chess board when he knows he’s already lost but hasn’t decided whether to concede gracefully or knock over the pieces.
“That’s not a small ask, Mr. Caelum.”
“I’m aware.”
“There are protocols. Committees. Academic standards that-“
“Dr. Calloway.” Caelum’s voice didn’t rise. It didn’t need to. “The new science wing that opens next semester. The research endowment your engineering department received last quarter. The scholarship fund that currently supports forty-three students who wouldn’t be here otherwise.” He let each item sit for a moment, solid and undeniable, like bricks being laid. “I don’t ask for much. When I do, I’d appreciate efficiency.”
Calloway’s jaw worked silently. The reading glasses caught the light as he tilted his head, and for a moment, he looked less like a university administrator and more like a man standing at the edge of a moral compromise and measuring the distance to the ground.
“Consider it done,” he said.
“Thank you, Dr. Calloway.” Caelum stood, buttoned his jacket – a gesture that was both concluding and dismissive – and walked out without looking back. In the hallway, his footsteps echoed off the linoleum with the precise rhythm of a man who had gotten what he came for and was already thinking about the next thing on his list.
I woke to a headache that felt personal.
Not the dull, diffuse kind you get from dehydration or too much screen time, but the sharp, targeted variety – the kind that takes up residence behind your left eye and builds a small, angry empire there. I sat up in bed and the room tilted sideways, like a ship in rough water. I grabbed the mattress edge and waited for the world to stop moving.
It took a while.
The headache was Rowan’s fault, or rather, the headache was my grief’s fault, and the grief was Rowan’s cancer’s fault, and the cancer was the cigarettes’ fault, and the cigarettes were – I didn’t know whose fault the cigarettes were. Life’s, maybe. The universe’s. The particular cruelty of a world that lets you lose your parents and then, as an encore, tries to take your brother too.
I sat on the edge of the bed and breathed. In. Out. In. Out. Like a person learning to do it for the first time. The dizziness receded in slow, grudging increments, like a tide that resented being pulled.
Eventually, I stood. Made it to the bathroom without the floor betraying me. Turned on the shower and stood under the water with my forehead pressed against the tile, letting the heat work on the knot at the base of my skull while my thoughts ran in circles I couldn’t stop.
Rowan has cancer. Rowan is dying. Rowan sold me to save himself, and I can’t even be angry about it because I would have done the same thing. I would have done worse.
I turned off the water. Toweled off. Went to the closet.
The red dress was there. Not the one from last night – a different one, older, softer, with a tiny imperfection in the stitching along the left seam that I could find with my eyes closed. Rowan had given it to me on my last birthday. He’d saved for it – I knew because I’d found the layaway receipt in his jacket pocket, the one that showed he’d paid in four installments over two months. He’d wrapped it in newspaper because we didn’t have wrapping paper, and he’d attached a note that said: For the most annoying person I know. Happy birthday.
I held the dress against my chest and breathed in. It didn’t smell like Rowan. It smelled like fabric and the faint chemical sweetness of whatever they use to dye things red. But holding it felt like holding a piece of him – a thread connecting me to the person who’d kept me alive when staying alive felt like too much work.
I put it on. The red fabric settled over my body like a second skin – fitted at the waist, flaring slightly at the hips, the hem hitting just above my knees. I pulled my hair back – the curls cooperating for once, as though they understood the occasion – and applied red lipstick with a steady hand and an unsteady heart.
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.