The week passes in a strange, suspended silence. I don’t see Sebastian. Not really. I hear the soft click of his door closing at dawn, and the quieter click of it locking long after I’ve returned from whatever cheap, loud bar Lacey has dragged me to, my sequins feeling more and more like chainmail. The pool house becomes a museum of a single, steam-filled night, and I am just a ghost haunting the periphery, careful not to disturb the exhibit.
Which is why I’m here, at three-thirty on a Tuesday afternoon, in the fluorescent purgatory of the local grocery store, staring at a pyramid of avocados as if they hold the meaning of life. I need guacamole ingredients. Or maybe I just need a task that doesn’t involve my own thoughts. The chill of the produce section seeps through my thin vintage cardigan.
“Imogen?”
The voice comes from my left, near the lemons. I turn, and my stomach does a neat, unpleasant little flip. It’s Mark. Dr. Mark. He’s holding a basket containing a single, sad-looking microwave dinner and a six-pack of craft beer. He looks exactly as he did in his apartment: pleasantly handsome, utterly normal, and now, monumentally awkward.
“Hey,” I say, my voice coming out weirdly bright. “Fancy meeting you in the… electrolyte water aisle.”
“Yeah. Small town.” He shifts his weight, his eyes doing a quick, uncomfortable dance from my face to my avocados and back. “Listen, about the other night—”
“Don’t!” I cut him off, a laugh that’s too sharp bouncing off the refrigerated cases. “Really, don’t. It was me. I had a… family thing. Emergent. Very emergent and familial.” I’m babbling. I sound unhinged. I can feel the ghost of Sebastian’s judgment from a mile away, and it makes me want to crawl into the misting broccoli display.
“Yeah, about that,” Mark says, scratching the back of his neck. He looks genuinely pained, which is somehow worse. “I was hoping we could… try again? Dinner, maybe? With a strict moratorium on family emergencies.” He offers a tentative, lopsided smile. “I make a decent coq au vin. And my French toast game, as you know, is unimpeachable.”
I stare at him. The fluorescent lights hum like distant bees. He’s cute. Objectively, textbook cute. Square jaw, kind brown eyes, a body that suggests he uses the hospital gym religiously. He’s a resident. He has a life made of sensible, admirable blocks. For a dizzying second, I see the alternate timeline: dinners that don’t end in flight, a boyfriend my sister wouldn’t sigh over, a story with no British-shaped complications. A part of me, the part that’s tired of haunting my own life, gives a feeble, hopeful flutter.
“You’re not… committed to anything right now, are you?” he asks, filling my silence, and the question is so jarringly innocent it almost makes me laugh. Committed. To anything. The ghost of a blue-eyed stare burns the back of my neck.
“No,” I say, and the word feels like stepping off a ledge. “No, I am spectacularly uncommitted.”
“Tonight then?” He shifts the sad microwave dinner in his basket. “It’s my only day off for a week. I’d hate to let the coq au vin ingredients go to waste.”
“Seven,” I hear myself say. “Pick me up at seven.” I recite Amelia’s address, my voice weirdly steady, and we fumble with our phones to exchange numbers. His contact flashes on my screen: Mark 🏥. Normal. Simple. A little emoji of stability.
He walks away with a wave, and I am left clutching my single, perfectly ripe avocado. A strange, fizzy excitement bubbles up, entirely separate from the cold knot of dread in my stomach. I’m going on a date. A real one, with a man who doesn’t speak in riddles or retreat behind teacups. For the first time in a week, I feel like I’ve chosen something, instead of just being chosen by chaos. I head for the checkout, a plan forming, a character stepping into a new scene. The thought is a glittering shield. I just have to make sure a certain professor isn’t in the wings to see me raise it.
I don't go back to the pool house. I go straight to the semi-mansion, letting myself in through the garage mudroom, beelining for the stairs and the holy grail of Amelia’s walk-in closet. The air in here is different—conditioned, scent-diffused, a curated calm that makes my chaotic energy feel like a vandal. I’m elbow-deep in a rack of pristine blouses when I hear the front door click open downstairs, followed by the efficient tap of low heels on hardwood.
“Imogen?” Amelia’s voice floats up, a mix of curiosity and impending annoyance. “Why is there a single avocado on my kitchen island?”
“It’s a placeholder!” I call back, holding a silk slip dress against my body. Too try-hard. “I need your closet! It’s an emergency of a non-familial variety!”
Her footsteps ascend. She appears in the doorway of the closet, still in her tailored work trousers and a cream shell top, her sleek bob perfect, her arms crossed. She looks like a very chic prison warden. “Explain. And that is dry clean only, so if you’re sweating existential dread, put it back.”
“I have a date,” I say, the words tumbling out. “Tonight. With a doctor. A resident. His name is Mark, he makes coq au vin and unimpeachable French toast, and I need to look like a person who has her life together. Or at least like a person who owns an outfit that didn’t come from a vintage bin or a nightclub floor.”
Her crossed arms drop. Her hazel eyes, so often sharp with exasperation, light up with a terrifying, tactical gleam. “A doctor,” she repeats, moving into the closet with new purpose. “Tell me everything. Age? Speciality? Educational pedigree?”
“Thirty-two, internal medicine, and I didn’t ask for his transcripts, Amelia, he’s not a thoroughbred.”
“He might as well be,” she mutters, flicking through her racks with military precision. “This is perfect. This is exactly what you need. Stable, employed, age-appropriate. No drama, no baggage, no… brooding British literature.” The last bit is pointed, a dagger wrapped in silk. She pulls out a hanger. “Here. Professional, but with a whisper of sex. Not a scream. A whisper.”
It’s a black silk lace camisole that looks like a teddy, sophisticated and devastatingly simple. She pairs it with a pair of charcoal grey, high-waisted trousers that she swears will “hug your ass like a grateful prayer,” and a matching tailored blazer. “The jacket stays on until you’re inside his apartment,” she instructs, thrusting the ensemble at me. “Then, strategic removal. It’s about the reveal.”
An hour later, I’m perched on her bathroom stool while she does my face with the focus of a neurosurgeon. “No makeup makeup,” she declares, blending something expensive under my eyes. “The goal is ‘I woke up like this, flawless and vaguely intellectual.’ Nude lips. No wing liner. We are projecting calm competence, not cabaret.”
Finally, she produces the weapons: a pair of Christian Louboutin pumps in a nude so pale it’s basically skin, with those infamous scarlet soles. “These,” she says, kneeling to help me into them, her voice dropping to a deadly serious whisper. “Don’t ruin these. Scuff them, and I will revoke your sisterly privileges. Your life depends on their pristine condition.”
I stand, and the woman in Amelia’s full-length mirror is a stranger. Sleek, polished, contained. The trousers do indeed hug like a prayer, the silk cami a secret against my skin. The shoes add three inches of lethal grace. I look expensive. I look like I belong to the world of microwave-free dinners and coq au vin. The fizzy excitement from the store solidifies into a hard, glittering knot in my chest. This is the costume for the woman Mark thinks I could be. The ghost in the pool house wouldn’t recognize her.
“Well?” Amelia asks, coming to stand beside me, a rare smile of satisfaction on her face. “You clean up good, kid.”
“I look like you,” I say, and it’s not an accusation. It’s a quiet observation of the alien creature in the glass.
“You look,” she corrects softly, squeezing my shoulder, “like you could have any future you want. Now go get it.” The kindness in her voice is almost worse than her annoyance. It makes the glittering shield feel like glass, and I have to force myself not to flinch at the thought of it shattering.