Amelia looked at Vincenzo’s perfect smile. She thought about the nightmare of her last move. Tyrone taped to the door, Wilson fighting the outlet, PhantaSea Land. Chase singing ‘It’s my Life’.
And then she thought about strangers from El Viento touching her things. Packing her books. Organizing her socks.
It was too much. The kindness felt heavy, like a lead blanket.
“I…” Amelia started. Her voice wavered.
Chase looked at her, his expression instantly shifting from Lawyer to lover. “Amelia?”
“I need a second,” she stood up, clutching her purse. “I just– the coffee. I need to use the restroom.”
Vincenzo gestured to the door. “Down the hall, second left. Take your time. We’re just haggling over insurance.”
“I trust you,” Amelia said to Chase, and she meant it. She trusted him with the contract. She just didn’t trust herself not to scream if she stayed in this glass box one second longer.
“Finish it,” she whispered to him. “I’ll… I’ll meet you after.”
She made it to the restroom before her breath hitched.
It was a luxurious space– marble sinks, flattering lighting, faint music that sounded like whales humming. Amelia gripped the edge of the counter and looked in the mirror.
She looked frantic.
Her hair was escaping its clip. Her cardigan was buttoned wrong at the bottom. Something she must have done nervously during the meeting. Her eyes were wide and glossy.
She looked exactly like what she was: a woman who had just sold her privacy.
Her pulse was hammering in her ears, a frantic, disorderly beat. She focused on it, trying to slow her breathing, and without meaning to, her mind began to impose order on the chaos, locking the rhythm into the familiar, complex cadence of a song that used to make her feel in control.
She started tapping the drum intro to “Overcompensate” on the counter. The beat she’d looped all through college, back when stability felt possible.
“Pull it together,” she whispered to her reflection, “This is what people mean when they say ‘terms and conditions.’ ”
But the silence of the room didn’t help. It just made the absence of her old support system feel louder.
In moments like this, back at Orangeside, she wouldn’t have been alone in a bathroom. Sharon would be here, pulling a “crisis cookie” out of a purse that defied the laws of physics. And Christina…
God, she missed Christina.
The memory hit her with a sudden, sharp warmth. She remembered the first day she met Christina at the Orangeside student union. Amelia had been spiraling, hyperventilating over a lost color-coded syllabus.
Christina had marched over, combat boots loud on the linoleum, looking terrifying in a leather jacket and thrift-store anarchy patches. She had slammed a boot onto the chair next to Amelia, looked her up and down with intense, heavily lined eyes, and said:
“Breathe. It’s a syllabus, not a death sentence. Here., I snatched an extra one from Dean Starmer’s office. Take it.”
It was aggressive kindness. It was snark used as a shield to protect someone else.
Amelia’s mind drifted to Tabitha. The barista with the sharp eyeliner and the even sharper tongue. The girl who wrote judgments on cups like “SMILES TOO MUCH” but secretly poured perfect hearts in the foam.
Tabitha had the same armor. The same “I don’t care” attitude that was clearly terrified of caring too much.
Amelia realized with a jolt why she kept going back to Summers Brew. It wasn’t just the coffee. It was because Tabitha felt like a friend she hadn’t made yet. She felt like a Christina waiting to be found.
Amelia checked her reflection one last time. She didn’t want to fix the cardigan. She didn’t want to be “ABeeWin” the content creator right now. She wanted to be the girl who listened to loud drums and understood that armor was just a fashion choice.
She pulled out her phone and texted Chase: I can’t stay at VIM right now. Too much glass. I’m going to Uber to Summers Brew to clear my head. I’ll e-sign whatever. Let him move the boxes. I just need to breathe.
Her hands shook so hard she nearly dropped the phone. She hurried out of the bathroom, bypassed the elevators, and took the stairs, needing to feel her feet on something solid.
She needed noise. She needed drums. She needed to go see the girl who wrote on cups.
She turned her collar up against the damp atmosphere, thumbed open a rideshare app, and started walking toward the corner.
Her phone buzzed as she reached the corner.A breath of confused relief excited Amelia’s lungs as she read the text from Chase: Signed my part. e-Sign when you’re ready.