He stood up. The grin was still there, stubborn as a stain on silk.
In my room, the air was still charged with the aftermath of… everything. The slap. The rose. The knee. The cheek kiss. The promise. The whole impossible, whiplash-inducing sequence of events that had turned this day from catastrophe to something I didn’t have a word for yet.
Sable was perched on the edge of the bed, hugging a pillow to her chest, looking at me with the expression of someone watching their favorite drama reach its season finale.
“Stop smiling,” I said.
“I’m not smiling.”
“Your entire face is smiling, Sable. Your eyebrows are smiling.”
She pressed the pillow harder against her chest and beamed at me with enough wattage to power a small city. “I just think it’s beautiful, that’s all. The way you told him how you felt. And after the slap – and then the rose – and then he came back-“
“Yes, we were both there. I remember.”
“The cheek kiss, Marlowe. The same cheek. Do you understand how cinematic that was?”
I sat down at the vanity and stared at my own reflection, trying to locate the version of myself who had done all those things. She looked the same – same brown-gold hair, same tired eyes, same red lipstick wearing thin at the edges. But something underneath had shifted, like tectonic plates moving in the dark.
“Can I ask you something?” Sable said, and her voice had gone quieter now, the teasing drained out of it.
“You’re going to anyway.”
“When you said what you said to Caelum – about something happening, something you didn’t plan for – did you mean it? Or was it…”
“Was it what?”
“Was it just because you felt guilty about the slap? Or because of your brother? Or because you thought it was what he needed to hear?”
The question was precise. Surgical. It found the exact spot I’d been avoiding.
I looked at my hands. The right one, the slapping hand, the one that had also reached for his shoulder. The left one, which had been trembling the entire time and I’d hoped he hadn’t noticed.
“All of it,” I said honestly. “And none of it. I felt guilty – yes. I thought about Rowan – yes. But when I said something was happening…” I paused, searching for words that matched the feeling, which was like trying to describe a color you’d never seen before. “I wasn’t performing, Sable. Something is happening. Something I can’t control and don’t fully understand and am absolutely terrified of. Whether it’s love or proximity or trauma bonding or some chemical reaction caused by expensive bedsheets – I don’t know. But it’s real.”
Sable studied me for a long time. Then she nodded, once, with the gravity of a judge accepting a testimony.
“Okay,” she said. “So we agree: you have feelings for Caelum. Real feelings. Complicated, messy, possibly ill-advised feelings, but real.”
“I didn’t say-“
“You just said it, Marlowe. With different words, but you said it.” She set the pillow aside and leaned forward. “And here’s the part you’re not going to like: that’s okay. It’s okay to feel something for someone even when the circumstances are terrible. It’s okay to fall for someone you didn’t choose. It doesn’t make you weak or stupid or a traitor to yourself. It makes you human.”
My throat felt tight. I swallowed.
“But I still don’t fully trust him,” I said.
“That’s okay too. Trust is slower than feelings. Feelings are the earthquake; trust is the rebuilding. One comes first, the other follows. If it’s earned.”
I looked at her – this girl I’d met forty-eight hours ago who was somehow dispensing wisdom that would put my college therapist out of business – and thought: how did I get this lucky?
“Right now,” I said, standing and squaring my shoulders with a decisiveness I didn’t entirely feel, “I need your help with something more immediate.”
Sable’s eyes lit up like searchlights. She already knew what was coming.
“I need a dress,” I said. “For a date. With my husband.”
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.