Chapter 33 #2
The office floor is busy for a Tuesday. Designers move between workstations with material samples tucked under their arms, project managers cluster around glass boards marked with timelines and permit notes, and someone from accounting is standing near the printer with the defeated expression.
Mya is at Dre’s desk when we pass, one hip perched against the edge, her hair swept back in a glossy ponytail and a tablet tucked under her arm. She says something that makes Dre laugh, then glances up as we approach.
Her eyes move from Worth to Henson to me. Then back to Worth.
“What did he do?”
I stop walking to give her an exasperated glare.
Worth sighs, but there’s softness in his expression when he looks at her. “Nothing we can discuss in the hallway.”
Mya’s gaze sharpens with interest. “That means it’s bad.”
“It means it’s private,” I say.
She looks at me then, and whatever teasing response she had ready fades. “You okay?”
The question lands strangely, because Mya is Tiana’s sister before she is anything else in this office, and I have no right to receive comfort from her when I’m the reason Tiana is walking around hurt enough to dodge me in my own house.
“I’m fine,” I say.
Mya studies me. “Sure you are.”
Worth’s mouth twitches, and I move past them before this can become a group discussion with the whole floor.
Henson enters my office behind me without permission, drops into the chair across from my desk, and immediately puts his feet up. Worth closes the door and stays near the window, arms crossed, gaze on me.
I set my folio on the desk. “Both of you need hobbies.”
“This is my hobby,” Henson says.
Worth ignores him. “What happened?”
I move behind my desk. “Nothing.”
Worth whistles. “Oh, nothing happened. That’s why Tiana looked like she wanted to throw forks at you when I went by to pick up Sylas this weekend.”
“It’s fine.”
Worth crosses his arms. “It’s not fine, Griff. You care about her and you’re punishing her for it.”
I look down at my desk, at the polished wood surface, at the faint impression of a pencil mark near the edge from a late night I spent revising plans a few years ago because I didn’t want to go home to an empty house.
Except my house isn’t empty anymore, and that’s the problem.
It’s full of everything I told myself I would never want again.
“I’m trying not to make it worse,” I say.
Henson leans forward, elbows on his knees. “How’s that going?”
I don’t answer. My phone buzzes on the desk.
Henson asks, “Is that her?”
“Leave him, brother,” Worth says.
Henson points at me. “But he might do something stupid.”
“He’s already done something stupid,” Worth responds, opening the door. “Now he’s going to sit with it.” He looks at me. “But if you hurt Tiana badly enough that Mya gets involved, I’m not protecting you. I fear that woman more than God.”
Then they’re gone, and my office door clicks shut behind them.
I pick up my phone, and my pulse kicks, hard and stupid.
It’s an Instagram notification from @tianawithlove. She’s posted a reel.
I have work to do, drawings to review, a project budget to revise, a staff meeting in forty minutes, two site reports waiting in my inbox, and a life that would be significantly easier if I stopped letting one woman take up every available inch of my mind.
But I watch the reel anyway.
Tiana fills the screen, and the impact of seeing her, bright and grinning, moving without the guarded stiffness she wears around me now, hits me directly under the ribs.
She’s in her closet.
The video starts with her holding the camera out, face bare except for gloss, hair loose around her shoulders, smiling in a way she has not smiled at me in days.
“Okay, so I have reached the part of my life where I have a closet system,” she says, turning the camera toward a wall of shelves half-filled with clothes, bags, and several pairs of heels lined up. “Do I know who I am anymore? No. Am I emotionally attached to these drawers? Yes.”
The camera pans across a rail of dresses, then to a stack of folded sweaters.
“Before anyone gets too impressed, please know this is already almost full, because I have the spatial awareness of a raccoon and no ability to make practical choices when clothes are on sale.”
A laugh catches in my chest before I can stop it. Tiana steps back into frame, holding up a blazer.
“Also, I was very smug for about twelve minutes because I thought: wow, Tiana, look at you, adult woman with storage solutions. Then I realized I’m already almost out of space, so naturally, I will need a new closet immediately.”
She winks at the camera.
My hand tightens around the phone.
The reel loops automatically, and I watch it again. This version of her is easier to miss because it is untouched by me.
By the third loop, my mind starts doing what it always does.