Page 175 of Suite 7

The thing I can’t say out loud, even to him: I’m not afraid of saying the wrong thing. I’m afraid of her face when she looks at me. The specific look from the elevator — not rage, not screaming, just Sloane with mascara on her cheeks saying I don’t know who you are right now. I’ve been carrying that look for six weeks and tomorrow I have to walk into a room and find out whether it’s still there.

“What if I say the wrong thing?”

“Then you say the wrong thing and you apologize and you keep going.” His chin rests against my temple. “You’re not going in there to perform. You’re going in there to show up. Those are different things.”

“You’re wise for an architect.”

“Don’t tell anyone. It’ll ruin my reputation.”

I almost smile.

Sunday, ten fifty-eight AM

* * *

The coffee shop is three blocks from Sloane’s apartment. I’ve walked this stretch a hundred times — wine nights, emergency phone calls, Sundays with no particular destination. I know every crack in the pavement.

Today it feels like streets I’ve never been on before.

I push open the door. The bell chimes, too cheerful for what this is.

The café is half-full. Sunday morning ordinary, couples sharing pastries, someone with a laptop in the corner. Everything indifferent to my heart hammering in my throat.

I scan the room and find her.

Sloane at a corner table, two cups already in front of her. Jeans and a sweater, hair down, minimal makeup. She looks tired. Guarded. Her eyes find mine across the room, and for a moment neither of us moves.

I make my feet carry me to her.

I reach the table and stand there, not sure if sitting is something I’m allowed to do yet.

“Hi,” I manage.

“Sit,” she says, not unkind. Not warm either, neutral, careful, a tone I recognize from the early days of our friendship before she decided to trust me. That recognition lands, precise and painful.

I sit.

She pushes one of the cups toward me. Lavender latte, oat milk, extra hot, light foam, my order, the one she’s gotten me a thousand times. I wrap both hands around the cup.

Still warm, the steam carrying the faint sweetness of lavender, and for a moment I’m somewhere else entirely, Kane at my door that Friday night, a cup in each hand, the same order.

Sloane and Kane, in all the ways they are different, both know this one small thing about me.

Both of them. The same cup.

“Thank you.”

She doesn’t respond. Just wraps her hands around her own cup and stares at it like it holds answers neither of us has yet.

The silence between us is heavy enough that I can’t find where to start. Every word I’ve rehearsed in the last six weeks feels too small for the room.

Sloane breaks it.

“Kane told me everything.” Her voice is steady but tight. “I’m not here to go through all that again.”

Relief and terror mix. “Okay.”

“I’m here because you’re my best friend. Or you were.” She looks at me then, really looks at me. “And I need to understand the one thing Kane couldn’t tell me.”