9 — Grave

**JASMINE POV**

I closed my laptop before I let myself cry, because some habits don't die even when the person who taught them to you has been gone six months.

*Don't let them see it land. Compose yourself first. You can fall apart at home.*

Except home wasn't where I went. I went to Oli.

I felt insignificant sitting in my own office with the door shut, and I hated how easily that word came back to me the same one I'd spent nine years trying to outrun, ever since Richard sat me down at our kitchen table with an acceptance letter I'd worked two years to earn and told me, without raising his voice, that art didn't pay anyone back. I'd thought I'd buried that feeling under a business degree and a scholarship and a decade of proving myself. Turned out it had just been waiting for someone else's disappointment to wake it back up.

I worked hard to be a part of that company. I put in the hours, took the internship no one else wanted, learned to love numbers I'd never cared about, and none of it seemed to matter the second Japheth looked at me across his desk and decided my own promotion was a problem to be managed.

If I'd only followed my passion  architecture, sketching buildings instead of budgets I wouldn't be sitting here now, hurt over a job I never even really wanted, in a company that only ever loved me conditionally.

I left before anyone could see my face. I told Kate I had errands. I didn't tell her where.

---

My heels sank into the soft grass as I made my way toward him, the way I always did when the world got too loud to carry alone. There was something about this place quiet, green, indifferent to whatever was happening back in the city  that let me finally exhale.

The flowers I'd left last week were wilting on the granite marker. I gathered them gently, replaced them with a fresh bundle of white calla lilies and stargazers, and traced my fingers over his name the way I always did, like I could still reach him through the stone if I pressed hard enough.

"Hey, Oli." I sat down in the grass, tucking my legs beneath me, leaning my palm into the earth to steady myself. "Missed me?"

The wind picked up, and I pulled my coat tighter.

"Remember I told you about my best friend? He's back. Still mean, if you can believe it still calls me things that should annoy me more than they do." I laughed a little, in spite of everything, thinking of *goldfish*, of how something that used to sting now just felt like being known. "He's different, though. Older. Careful in ways he never used to be. But some things about him never change."

I picked at a blade of grass, turning it over in my fingers.

"They offered me a real position today. Financial analyst. The thing I worked toward this whole time." My throat tightened. "And he didn't want me to take it. Not because he thinks I can't do it because he's scared of what people will say about him if I do." I wiped at my eyes with the back of my wrist. "I know that's not really about me not being enough. I know that, logically. But it still felt like it, Oli. It still felt exactly like every other time someone decided what I deserved instead of asking me."

I let myself sit with the ache of it for a long moment, watching a bird land on a nearby headstone and take off again just as quickly.

"I miss you. I miss being loved by someone who never needed a reason to be careful with me." My voice cracked on the last word, and I let it. There was no one here to perform strength for. "I don't know how to be brave the way I used to think I was. I thought losing you taught me that. Maybe it just taught me how good I am at pretending."

I stayed until the cold really settled into my hands, until the ache in my chest eased just enough to breathe around it, the way it always eventually did here. I kissed my fingers and pressed them to the stone before I stood, brushing the grass from my skirt.

"I love you, Oli. I'll come back soon."

***

I let myself into my apartment expecting silence. What I got instead was Luke's voice, breathless and completely unconvincing, saying, "We're not doing anything weird, K, I promise," from somewhere in the living room I very much did not want to look at directly.

"Jesus Christ." I covered my eyes with my bag.

"Poor innocent eyes." Ryker sounded far too amused for someone who had clearly just been caught doing something on our shared couch.

"Are you two ever going to use your actual bedroom?" I asked, peeking through my fingers just long enough to confirm they were both, mercifully, dressed enough for company.

"We were on our way there," Luke said, entirely unbothered, straightening his shirt.

"Sure you were." I dropped my bag on the counter, and for the first time since I'd walked out of the office, I felt something in my chest loosen  the particular relief of being somewhere ridiculous and safe at the same time. "I resigned, by the way. Well. Almost. I don't actually know what I did today."

That got both their attention.

"Back up," Ryker said, sitting up properly. "What happened?"

I told them the short version  the promotion, Japheth's hesitation, the walk-out that wasn't quite a resignation but felt like one. Luke made outraged noises at all the right moments. Ryker, more practical, asked exactly the question I didn't want to answer.

"Do you actually think he doesn't want you to succeed, or do you think he's an idiot who's bad at saying what he means?"

I didn't answer right away, because the honest answer was somewhere I didn't want to look too closely at yet.

"I need to shower," I said instead, which both of them recognized immediately as the deflection it was, and mercifully let me have.

I changed into an old t-shirt and shorts, scrubbed the day off my face, and sat on my bed for a long time afterward, staring at nothing, replaying his voice  *I'm worried what they'll do to you, Peaches, there's a difference*  and hating that some small, traitorous part of me believed him.

My phone buzzed. Kate.

**KATE:** He told me what happened. He feels like absolute garbage, for what it's worth.

**JASMINE:** Good.

**KATE:** You don't mean that.

**JASMINE:** No. I don't. That's the problem.

I set the phone face-down and pulled my knees to my chest, and let myself feel, for just a little while longer, like the version of myself who still needed someone else's approval before she could believe her own worth was real.