Chapter 1 #2
I lay back against the pillows. The fairy lights threw slow shadows across the ceiling, the same shadows they’d thrown the night I moved in.
Somewhere in the building, a pipe was groaning the way old buildings did when they remembered they were old.
My body was loose and spent. The thing under my ribs again.
The flutter. Restless. Directionless. The thing that wanted me to sit with it.
I didn’t sit with it.
I had a rule. Three seconds, then redirect, even inside my own head. I’d been running this protocol since approximately sophomore year, when I’d figured out it was the difference between functional and not. No complications. No expectations. Nobody to disappoint when I pulled away.
I got up, cracked the window, and drank a glass of water. Done.
Sunday brunch with The Inner Circle was sacred.
We rotated. Someone’s apartment, a café, or whatever one of us had stumbled across that week. Today it was a hole-in-the-wall diner in Clinton Hill. Best hangover food in Brooklyn, zero judgment for showing up half-drunk and wrecked.
I slid into the booth next to Raven, who was wearing sunglasses indoors and nursing a coffee like it was the only thing keeping her alive.
“Rough night?” I asked.
“You have no idea,” she muttered. “Never let me do shots again.”
Calliope blew in as if she hadn’t closed down Neon Pulse with the rest of us at 2 a.m. “Darlings! I have survived another week in this capitalist hellscape, and I demand waffles as tribute.”
Sierra was at the booth already, looking like the only one of us who’d slept. Camera on the table next to her water glass. She was probably half-plotting a shoot in her head, the way she did at Sunday brunch and on the subway and during her own cousin’s wedding the year before.
“You’re annoyingly chipper, babe. Stop.” I dropped my menu on the table.
“Some of us know how to pace ourselves. I had two drinks. I am a responsible adult now, apparently.”
“Boring,” Calliope rolled her eyes.
“What about you?” Sierra looked at me. “I saw you leave with that guy last night. Alex, right?”
“Alex,” I confirmed. “Adequate, darlings. Dictionary definition.”
“Adequate?” Raven finally lifted her sunglasses. “Jett, he didn’t look adequate.”
“Okay, better than adequate. He was good.” I shrugged. “But he’s gone now.”
“Did you even get his number?” Calliope asked.
“He got mine.”
“Which you won’t answer.” Sierra didn’t even pretend it was a question.
“Probably not,” I admitted.
Raven shook her head. “You’re going to die alone surrounded by leather harnesses and regret.”
“Bold of you, darling, to assume I’ll have regrets.”
The waitress came and took our orders: eggs, pancakes, bacon, enough carbs to soak up whatever was left of Friday night. When she left, Calliope leaned forward, resting her chin on her hands.
“Real talk.” Calliope set down her fork, which from her was a whole prologue. “Do you ever want more than this? Like… a relationship? Someone to wake up next to?”
The question caught me sideways. “Why would I want that?”
“Because it’s nice?” Sierra offered. “Having someone who knows you. Who stays.”
“Someone who stays is someone who gets bored, or you get bored with,” I countered. “Someone who leaves eventually, anyway. This way, I control when it ends.”
“That’s depressing,” Raven said.
“It’s practical.” I took a sip of water. “I’m happy. I have you weirdos. I have my work. I have fun. What else does a man need?”
“Depth?” Calliope suggested. “Connection? Someone to share your weird breakfast cereal preferences with?”
“I share them with you. You already know I’m a Cinnamon Toast Crunch purist.”
“Not the same.” Sierra’s voice dropped. “We love you, Jett. But romantic love… that’s different.”
“Different doesn’t mean better.” The words came out sharper than I meant. “Look at you three. None of us are exactly winning at relationships. Raven’s still figuring out what she wants. Calli, you went through like two breakups this year alone.”
“Three,” Calliope corrected sadly. “But who’s counting?”
“Exactly my point. Relationships are messy. They hurt. This way…” I gestured at myself, “nobody gets hurt.”
“Except you.” Raven kept her eyes on her coffee.
“I’m fine.”
The food came, and the conversation got easier.
Calliope told a story about a Tinder date who’d brought a book to dinner—not to read, just to set on the table, “as a vibe.” Raven was thinking about asking out a girl from her tarot class, the one who always refused to pull her own cards, and reminded us she had a booth at the Bushwick Flea Market next Saturday and we were morally obligated to attend.
Sierra talked about a shoot she had next week, light in Prospect Park, the specific hour she liked when the trees did the thing.
I listened. I laughed. I ate my pancakes. I steered around anything that looked like sitting still.
“Remember when we thought high school was the hard part?” Calliope swiped a piece of my bacon. “Like, if we just survived being teenagers, everything after would be easy?”
Raven nodded. “How did we even get here? Adults with jobs, rent, and feelings.”
“Speak for yourself on the feelings front.”
Sierra looked at me, and those eyes cut right through me, the way they always did. “We weren’t always like this, though. We weren’t always… whole.”
She was right. We’d been four scared kids trying to survive a world that didn’t have a space for us.
The kid in the cafeteria, sixteen and scrawny, trying to fold himself into a smaller shape so nobody noticed him, that kid had been so lonely the loneliness had its own weight. I could still find that weight if I went looking. Most days I didn’t go looking.
I thought about how far I’d come. The body, the confidence, the whole life. The trick had been not stopping long enough to look at it.
There was the other thing, too. The thing about waking up alone, no matter who’d been in the bed the night before.
It always showed up at the back end of these brunches, the way a guest you didn’t invite shows up after the food’s already cold, and I let it sit for the count I’d trained myself to.
One. Two. Then I was past it, swerving around it on muscle memory.
“We found each other. That’s how we got here.”
“True.” Sierra was quiet a beat. “I don’t know what I would’ve done without you guys.”
“Probably something boring and heteronormative.” Calliope waved her fork. “We saved you from a life of minivans and PTA meetings.”
We laughed, and the moment passed. But later, walking home through the Sunday quiet, I couldn’t quite let it go.
How did we get here?
It started in junior year. Back when I was a different person in a different body, before I’d figured out how to armor myself in muscle and charm.
It started with three girls who saw me when I was still learning how to be seen.