Busy Hands

My name is Rosalie. You can call me Rose, but that’s not the point.

I have a rule. If I keep my hands busy, nobody notices I am about to cry.

It has worked for twenty-two years. Fold something. Refill a glass. Pretend to search for your phone in a bag you know is empty. Grief looks a lot less suspicious when your fingers are doing something practical, and today, standing at the edge of my own graduation crowd, folding a gown I already knew I would never wear again, my hands had a lot of work to do.

Everyone else was doing the normal thing. Screaming. Hugging strangers like they’d known them all their lives. A girl two rows over was sobbing so hard her friend had to hold her cap in place, and I remember thinking, from my place outside all that joy, that some people cry beautifully and some people just look like they are having an allergic reaction. I should have been the second kind, but I don’t cry.

My mother’s seat was empty. I had checked four times, which was three more times than I should have. Each time, the empty seat had the audacity to still be empty. She said she would try. In our house, trying was a word my mother used the way other people used maybe, a polite little lie dressed up as effort. I used to think if I did well enough, got good enough grades, made myself easy enough to be proud of, the trying would eventually turn into showing up. I stopped believing that somewhere around sixteen, but old habits do not care what you believe. I still checked one more time. Then again, and again.

I was mid-fold, with my gown half tucked into my bag, when the entire auditorium changed temperature.

You could feel it before you saw it. A ripple, a hush, then a spike of noise louder than the rest, the kind that announces something worth looking at has walked in. I did not need to look up. I have had six years of built-in radar for this exact frequency, tuned so precisely I could probably pick it out from another building.

Roman.

He came through the side doors, looking all dapper: black suit, beautiful composure, an unreadable face, which somehow made it worse, because trying would have made him human, and not trying made him something closer to a rumor everyone wanted to confirm in person. A professor actually adjusted his own tie. I watched it happen. I am never telling anyone that detail because nobody would believe me, and also because it is deeply embarrassing on his behalf.

I already knew what was about to happen, the way I always did. I had six years of practice watching rooms rearrange themselves the second he walked into them, watching women who would have sworn off men entirely suddenly remember they had simply not met the right one yet. It was not new. It was just never something I got used to.

Somewhere behind me, a knot of girls dissolved into whispers, and I caught fragments without even trying. That’s Roman. The one who dated three of the Sterling twins’ friend group in one semester and never called any of them back. Didn’t he get some ambassador’s daughter to skip her own engagement party for him. None of these was even a new rumor, and the annoying thing about all of them was that none had ever actually been denied, not by him, not by anyone who claimed to know him. He had built that reputation carefully back when he still walked these same halls as a student, three years running as the one everybody wanted and nobody kept, and even years removed from actually attending, the legend of him had simply never been given permission to fade. He still sat on the alumni board. He still funded scholarships this campus handed out. It gave him a standing excuse to keep showing up to things like this, and a standing audience that never stopped watching him do it.

“Although,” one of them added, lower, like it was the good part, “I heard this Vivian Cross girl has actually stuck around. About three months now. That’s basically a marriage by his standards.”

I filed that away. I had gotten good at pretending not to hear things that were not mine to react to, but something about that particular sentence sat differently than the rest, a small, unfamiliar weight I did not have a name for yet.

I kept folding. My heartbeat did not get the memo.

Stepbrother. That word, once people learn it, becomes a door they think they now have a key to. Do you know him personally? Can you introduce us? What’s he actually like at home? I have rehearsed scripts for this by now, and they’re all boring and crafted to disappoint. The real answer, the one I have never said out loud to a single living person, is that he is the only human being who has ever looked at me like I was worth the trouble of defending, and admitting that would hand people a much bigger door than the one they already think they have. I have kept that door locked for six years. It has never once occurred to me to check whether he has a key of his own that he is choosing not to use.

He found me. He always does.

“There you are.” His voice dropped the second he was close enough that it was only for me, low, easy, absolutely nothing like the frequency that had just made an entire room forget its own name. “You vanished before I could even watch you walk.”

“I walked fine. Very... normal. There’s nothing to see.” I kept my eyes on the gown, giving my hands a job so they would not do anything humiliating, like shake.

“You’ve spent four years refusing to let me witness you succeed at something. I’ve made peace with it.” A little edge slid under the lightness of it, the same edge that had lived there since we were teenagers, since the first time he peeled some boy off me in the school hallway and then never once brought it up again, like it had cost him nothing, when I had never once believed it did.

Don’t look up. Don’t look up. Don’t fucking look up.

I looked up. Mistake. It is always a mistake. Up close he did not look like the version of him that everyone sees. He looked like the Roman I grew up with, the one who used to sit outside my bedroom door on the nights my father called drunk and furious, saying nothing, just staying with me so I was not alone in the house.

I remember that night, when I was maybe sixteen and the shouting on the phone got loud enough that I finally cracked and cried. Roman did not knock, did not ask if I was okay, did not do any of the things people do in movies. He just slid a folded note under my door that said, “He is not allowed near you again. I made sure of it,” and then sat outside until I stopped crying. I still have that note. That version of him had, somewhere along the way, without asking permission from either of us, become the only safe thing I had. And then, further along that same road, he had also become the thing I wanted so badly it embarrassed me.

Not that I would ever say that, either.

“You look tired,” he said, tilting his head, doing the thing where he studies me like a puzzle he already suspects the answer to.

“Didn’t sleep much.” True. I had spent the night doing the exact mental math I always do, running every version of a life where he looks at me the way I look at him, and landing on the same answer every single time. None of them are real. I have gotten disgustingly efficient at that particular math. I could probably teach a class.

Two girls in matching gowns drifted over before I could escape, phones still up, clearly waiting for an opening the size of a doorway.

“You are so lucky,” one of them said, eyes flicking between us like she was watching a movie she had personally cast. “Having him as your brother. If I had that at home, I would literally never leave.”

The other girl leaned in, lowering her voice like it was a secret worth stealing. “I heard he doesn’t keep anyone longer than a season. My cousin dated him for like six weeks two summers ago and swears it ruined her for every guy after him.”

Get the fuck out of my face. Of course I wouldn’t say that.

I gave her a smile. That small, safe smile, the one I have perfected for this exact sentence. “He’s not really like that at home.”

A lie. The kindest one I know how to tell. He is exactly like that at home. He just saves the good parts for me in ways neither of us has ever agreed to name, and keeps the rest of himself locked up so tightly that even Dad calls him difficult at dinner parties.

Roman did not correct me. He never does, in public. Instead he reached into his jacket and pulled out a small box wrapped in plain black paper, no bow, nothing loud, which was somehow the most him thing about the entire gift.

“Happy graduation,” he said, holding it out.

I took it carefully, aware of how many eyes were on us, aware of exactly how long our fingers touched, which was a beat longer than the gift required, long enough that my whole hand felt warm for several seconds after he let go. “You didn’t have to.”

“I wanted to.” His eyes did not move off mine. “There’s a party tonight. Mom and Dad planned it together.”

That honestly might be the first thing those two have ever agreed on. “A party.” I said it slowly, like the word might rearrange itself into something less terrifying if I gave it a second. “Like... for me?” Knowing Dad, it would not be a small one either. Nathaniel Grimwood did not know how to throw anything that did not eventually require a guest list.

“For you.” Something close to a real smile ghosted across his face. “Wear something you actually like tonight. Not the thing you think will help you disappear.”

Then he walked off, folding back into the crowd that had never once stopped waiting for him, and I stood there holding a small black box that suddenly felt heavier than it should.

It did not take long for it to turn from whispers into actual questions aimed at me. A girl I’ve probably never saw all my life asked if I could get her an invite to whatever Roman was doing this weekend. Someone else wanted to know if it was true he was still with Vivian, like she doesn’t know. Beneath my composure , I was obviously starting to get painful heart ache. I smiled through all of it the way I always did. But I know if another question comes, that could quickly change.

So when Roman started moving toward the side exit near the auditorium doors, I did not wait to be invited. I slipped out after him before anyone could get the chance to piss me off.