Chapter 14
fourteen
SOPHIE
The bar has become a pressure cooker, and I’m the lobster slowly realizing the water’s getting hot.
The place started busy, continued filling, and has now transformed into a standing-room-only situation. With all the tables full, people are now pressed against worn walls, drinks sweating in their hands, their attention focused on the stage.
My knee presses against Mike’s under the table. It started accidentally—the table’s barely big enough for our drinks, let alone our bodies—but forty minutes later, neither of us has moved. The denim of his jeans burns against mine through the thin fabric of my own.
And my phone sits heavy in my pocket. Usually, its weight means tethered anxiety—one text from disaster, one call from crisis—but tonight, it carries different ammunition, the poem I wrote while waiting for Mike. It’s raw, unfiltered… everything I swore I’d never say out loud.
“This guy’s really committing to the metaphor,” Mike murmurs.
The current performer—Frond Guy, I’ve mentally dubbed him—caresses the microphone while describing his fern’s ‘sensuous fronds’ and generally making everyone in the bar simultaneously laugh and squirm.
“Pretty sure he wants to fuck the fern,” I whisper.
Mike’s beer goes down wrong. His shoulders shake with suppressed laughter, the movement vibrating through our connected legs. The tremor travels straight to my core, and I have to look away before I do something catastrophic.
Like straddle him.
In public.
When Frond Guy is done, Purple Hair reclaims the mic, her geometric earrings catching the stage lights. “Next up, we have Sophie P!”
My intestines rearrange themselves into creative knots. “Common name. Could be any Sophie.”
Mike’s eyebrow arches. “Sophie P?”
“Porcupine. Sophie Porcupine. Totally different person.”
“You don’t have to go up.” His voice softens. “No one’s keeping score.”
“Except Purple Hair. She seems very invested in the artistic process.”
“Purple Hair’s probably too stoned to remember who’s taken their turn on stage.” He glances at the host, who’s currently explaining to someone why cryptocurrency is a metaphor for late-stage capitalism. Or possibly the other way around. “See?”
“Point taken…”
“So? Backing out?”
The challenge sits gentle in his voice, wrapped in understanding, but it’s there. My spine straightens on instinct. “No. I’ll go.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” My phone feels like plutonium as I pull it out, checking the poem one more time. The words blur together, too honest, too much?—
“That’s my girl.” Mike’s hand finds mine under the table. His thumb brushes my knuckles, and suddenly I can’t remember why boundaries seemed so important.
My girl.
Two words that shouldn’t make my chest crack open like this.
Two words that suggest belonging, possession, care—everything I swore I didn’t want after Jimmy proved love was just another word for abandonment.
But God help me, I want to be his girl, want it with a fervor that terrifies me more than any poem.
The walk to the platform stretches like taffy. My legs have apparently decided bones are optional. The microphone, when I grab it, slides against my palm. I scan the crowd, caught up in their conversations and their drinks, and hope that, as one, they lose the ability to see, hear, and move.
Then there’s Mike.
He watches me with total focus, those dark eyes locked on me like I’m performing surgery and he’s studying my technique. Like I matter. Like my words matter. Like I matter beyond my ability to drive Hazel to gymnastics or count my mother’s pills.
Fuck it.
The first words scratch out of my throat:
“My mother runs marathons,
With a disease that steals mobility.”
The bar quiets.
Not the polite quiet of earlier performances, but something attentive.
“She plants gardens, trees that will stand forever,
While her hands shake and fumble.
She works twelve-hour shifts,
When fatigue is a constant companion.”
My voice cracks. Tears build behind my eyes, hot and unwelcome.
I should stop. Should make a joke, deflect, protect myself?—
But then Mike nods. Just once.
“She adapts, she says.
She doesn’t let it define her, she says.
She lives fully, she says.”
The words taste like confession. Like the secret I’ve carried since that Tuesday when Dad called me at school. Since I raced home to learn that she’d collapsed at Hazel’s soccer game, and saw Hazel frozen in the lounge with her soccer cleats still on, shock on her face.
“But I sleep with my phone on loud,
Jumping at every late-night ring.
I memorize symptoms of relapse,
Count her good days like a miser with coins.”
My throat closes around the next line.
The truest line.
The one that reveals me for the selfish daughter I am.
“I wrap love in bubble wrap and call it care,
When really it’s fear dressed in a daughter’s clothes.”
Someone in the crowd makes a soft sound. Understanding, maybe.
Or pity.
But I can’t look away from Mike to check.
“She runs toward life.
I run from the possibility of loss.
She adapts.
I suffocate.
And I wonder which one of us
The disease has truly trapped.”
Silence.
Then applause starts—not raucous or performative, but thoughtful and real. My face burns as I hand the mic back to Purple Hair and navigate the suddenly treacherous platform steps. Then I see Mike stand before I reach our table.
And the look on his face…
Christ .
He sees me. Not Coach’s daughter. Not the girl who schedules her life around potential medical emergencies. Not even the girl he spent one incredible night with before she panicked and ran.
He sees me.
Before my brain can mount its usual defense, I walk straight into him. My arms wrap around his waist, my face presses against his chest. For one suspended second, he freezes—probably calculating which boundary I’ve just demolished.
And then his arms come around me.
He fits.
That’s the thought that threatens to undo me completely. My chin finds the perfect spot on his shoulder. The warmth of him makes something unknot in my chest, something that’s been twisted since Mom’s diagnosis. Since Jimmy’s exit.
Since I decided needing people was just asking for heartbreak.
Safe.
I feel safe.
Which is exactly why I need to?—
I lift my head. Fatal mistake. He’s right there, looking down at me with barely-controlled hunger. His pupils have blown wide, and I can see myself reflected in them—flushed, vulnerable, wanting.
Our faces hover inches apart. His breath ghosts across my lips. All I’d have to do is rise up on my toes, close that insignificant distance, and take what every cell in my body screams for.
Instead, I jerk back hard enough to give us both whiplash.
Disappointment flashes across his features before he smooths it into understanding. That easy acceptance of my boundaries—even when I’m clearly struggling with them—is amazing and touching and infuriating and sad.
“I’ll get us another round.” His voice carries no reproach, just that same steady warmth.
As he disappears toward the bar, I collapse into my chair, heart trying to escape through my throat. What am I doing? The boundaries exist for a reason. One night only. No complications. No hockey players.
My dad doesn’t need the complication.
Mike doesn’t need the distraction.
I definitely don’t need another person to worry about losing.
Yet I’d almost?—
“I need two volunteers!” The performer onstage calls out. “Two people who don’t really know each other well.”
Mike materializes beside me, fresh drinks in hand. Before I can process the danger, he shoots both our hands skyward. “We’ll do it!”
“What—”
“New experience.” That grin should be illegal. “Never been part of performance art before.”
“This is a terrible idea,” I say, but I don’t resist as he tugs me toward the stage, because apparently my self-preservation instincts took the night off.
“All my best stories start that way.”
The performer positions us facing each other center stage, quietly thanking us for taking part as she does. The crowd perks up, scenting either entertainment or disaster or possibly both.
“This piece explores human connection through movement.” The performer’s voice carries the particular confidence of someone who’s never experienced social anxiety. “Because five minutes of dancing with a stranger teaches you more about them and yourself than hours of conversation.”
“We’re not strangers,” I mutter.
“No.” Mike’s lips twitch. “But we’re definitely something.”
The woman launches into her spoken-word piece—all about boundaries and bodies and the language of touch. Then some music starts. Slow. Rhythmic. The kind of beat that belongs in a bedroom, not on a stage surrounded by drunk college kids.
“Dance,” she commands.
I stare at Mike. He stares back. Someone in the crowd snickers.
“I don’t dance.”
“Neither do I. Remember the moonwalk?”
“That wasn’t dancing. That was physical comedy.”
He extends his hand. “Come on, Sophie. What’s the worst that could happen?”
“Someone films this and it goes viral and?—”
His fingers close around mine, tugging me closer. “You’re overthinking.”
“It’s my superpower.”
“I know.” His other hand finds my waist. “That’s why you need this.”
The performer continues her piece, but her words dissolve into background noise. Mike starts swaying—barely more than shifting weight—and I follow because the alternative involves standing rigid while everyone watches. The entire bar feels like it’s leaning in, waiting for us to fall apart.
“See?” His voice drops low enough that only I can hear. “Not so bad.”
“This is mortifying.”
“You just read a poem about your deepest fears to a room full of strangers.”
“Which was also mortifying.”
“But you did it.”
“Temporary insanity.”
“The best kind.”
“ Dance, ” the performer interrupts, apparently unsatisfied with our sway.