Mag-log inMy mother walks me down the aisle.Not Marcus. Not both of them. My mother. Because my father isn’t here and the person who raised me in his absence, who made pasta and gave love and got it wrong sometimes and got it right more often and drove to a hospital in the shirt she sleeps in, that person is the one whose arm belongs through mine.We walk. Bare feet on sand. The guests stand. The ocean sounds like what the ocean always sounds like, indifferent and eternal and perfect.I look at the chairs as I pass. Amelia, sobbing openly, waving a handkerchief. Ryan, eyes wet, arm around her. Faces from college, from the dance studio, from Cain’s gym. Cain’s coach with his arms crossed and his chin trembling.And in the last row, on the edge, Tyler.He’s sitting with his shoulders straight and his jaw squared and he looks different from the last time I saw him. Broader. Older. His hair is shorter and his face has lost the boyishness and what replaced it is something solid and still. He nods a
The dress is hanging on the back of the door and I’ve been staring at it for eleven minutes.White. Simple. A neckline that dips the way every neckline I’ve ever loved dips, low enough to show the pendant resting against my chest, the tiny red ballerina in her rose tutu that hasn’t left my body since the night Cain put it back on. The fabric is light enough that the ocean breeze will move through it and fitted enough that the bump shows. Just barely. Fourteen weeks. The smallest curve below my navel that only I can see when I turn sideways in the mirror, but I know it’s there and he knows it’s there and today every person sitting in a white chair on the beach behind this house will know it’s there.The Russo beach house. The house where everything that broke and burned, started again.The house where I fell asleep in his arms on a dock listening to the ocean. The house where I told myself the truth after to myself for three years about what I felt every time he walked into a room.We’
The arena is loud and bright and packed.Cain's name is on the banner above the entrance. RUSSO in block letters. The sight of it still does something to my chest every time, this boy from a pool house and a betting game and a kitchen where we circled each other for years, his name on a building, his fists carrying a career, his body doing the thing it was always meant to do.I have a seat ringside. I always have a seat ringside. The other fighters' wives and girlfriends sit further back. I sit where he can see me between rounds when his corner wipes the sweat from his face and squeezes water into his mouth and he looks past all of them and finds me.The fight starts. I press my bag against my side where the test is zipped into the inner pocket and I watch him.He fights the way he loves. Total commitment. No half measures. His body moving with the precision and violence that boxing demands, each punch delivered with the full weight of a man who decided years ago what he was fighting
LaylaThe girls are mid-plié when the room tilts.Not dramatically. Not a blackout. Just the floor shifting under my feet like someone nudged the building sideways, and I grip the barre with one hand and blink and wait for the studio to straighten itself out.It doesn't."One more set," I say. My voice steady because twelve little girls in pink leotards don't need to see their teacher wobble. "Heels together. Backs straight. Chin up, Maisie, you're looking at the floor again."Maisie lifts her chin. She's seven. Missing one front tooth. Takes every correction like a personal challenge and attacks it with the ferocity of a girl who has decided that ballet is war and she intends to win.I love her. I love all of them. Twelve girls between six and fourteen who show up three afternoons a week to my studio in their leotards and their buns and their hand-me-down slippers, and I teach them the thing my father watched me learn in a tutu that was too big because he wanted me to grow into it.I
Ryan is beside me now. Watching Amelia yell at Cain with the serene expression of a man who has seen this show many times. He nudges my shoulder with his."She cried for an hour when she saw the text," he says quietly. "Called her mom. Called his mom's grave. Planned three versions of your engagement party before I got her to eat dinner.""She called his mom's grave?""Left a voicemail on the cemetery's general line. Said Mrs. Russo, your son did good and I'm going to make sure the wedding is perfect. The groundskeeper called back very confused."I laugh so hard my ribs hurt. Ryan grins, that steady quiet grin, and bumps my shoulder again."Missed you, Reed.""Missed you too.""You good? Actually good? Not performing good?"I look at him. Ryan has always done this. Cut through the social layer with one clean question. No buildup. No circling. Just are you actually okay delivered like he genuinely wants the answer and has time to wait for it."Actually good," I say. "For real this time
Lain is sitting on the kitchen counter watching me water the plants and judging me with her entire body.She's not a kitten anymore. Five months old and she's long and sleek and her grey fur has darkened to charcoal along her spine and her green eyes have gone from wide and innocent to narrow and knowing and she looks at me the same way Cain looks at me, like she's cataloguing everything I do and has opinions about most of it."Stop staring," I say.She blinks. Slowly. The cat equivalent of I'll stare as long as I want.I water the pothos on the windowsill. Then the fern on the bookshelf. Then the spider plant hanging from the hook Cain installed above the reading nook after I came home with it from the farmers market and he said we don't need another plant and I said she's not a plant, she's a roommate and he drilled the hook without another word.The apartment has changed in five months. Not the bones of it. The bones are the same, the bookshelves and the green couch and the reading
“Ask me nicely.”He laughs. “I don’t ask for anything.” His hand tangles in my hair again and guides my head closer. “I take.”Then he’s pushing into my mouth and I gag immediately, try to pull back, it’s too much, too big—But he holds me there. “Relax your throat.”I can’t breathe—“Yes, you can.
I ignore him. Keep walking. But my heart does a skip.Footsteps pound behind me and then a hand closes around my arm and spins me around. Cain is soaked through, hair plastered to his forehead, water running down his face and neck. Even now, crying and humiliated and wanting nothing more than to di
LAYLAThe red lingerie cost me three shifts at the diner.I stand in front of the full-length mirror in Jace’s hallway and run my hands down my sides, feeling the lace catch against my palms. It’s delicate. Expensive. The kind of thing I’d never buy for myself except I did, because tonight is suppo
I am still holding the letter.Amelia is still looking at me.The room is quiet enough that I can hear the garden below. Laughter. Someone’s music. The warmth of a day that has nothing to do with what is happening up here.“The cabin,” she says.I go still.“That night.” Her eyes are red at the edg







