Gage
My phone buzzes on the kitchen counter while the kettle is waiting backstage for its singing debut.
I glance at it without thinking—muscle memory, CEO conditioning, the reflex of someone who has spent years responding to urgency like it’s a personality trait.
The name on the screen isn’t an investor. It isn’t a property manager. It isn’t a contractor calling about a broken boiler.
It’s Rosie Palmer.
Reece’s best friend, our mutual friend from growing up, and Manhattan’s successful matchmaker.
I stare at it for half a beat longer than a normal person would, because Rosie does not text for no reason. Rosie texts when she needs something.
The kettle clicks off with a satisfied little chirp.
My phone buzzes again.
Rosie: You’re coming Thursday.
I exhale through my nose.
That’s not a question. That’s not even a request. That’s Rosie writing plans in my calendar with sheer confidence.
I type back with the same calm I use when someone tells me a building “might” have a leak.
Me: Hello Rosie.
Rosie: Hi. Thursday. 7pm. Wear something that doesn’t scream “board meeting.”
I set my mug down and lean my hip against the counter, considering my options like they’re strategic business decisions.
Option one: ignore her.
Option two: tell her no.
Option three: remind her that I am a grown man who runs a company and therefore cannot be summoned like a golden retriever.
Option four: accept that Rosie Palmer has never been deterred by logic, boundaries, or the concept of personal autonomy.
I choose option two anyway, because I enjoy losing.
Me: I’m not coming.
The reply is immediate.
Rosie: You are.
I almost smile. Almost.
Rosie is relentless in the way only someone who loves you can be. It’s part of why she’s good at what she does. It’s also part of why I’ve learned that when Rosie decides something, resistance is mostly ceremonial.
I type slowly, like that will make the message more persuasive.
Me: What is it?
There’s a pause long enough that I know she’s smiling at her screen.
Rosie: A singles event. For normal people. Not for you to turn into a spreadsheet.
I rub my thumb along the edge of my mug. “Singles event” is one of those phrases that should mean nothing to me. It’s not my world. It’s not my lane. It’s certainly not my problem.
Except Rosie is involved, which means Reece will be asked too.
And my brain—traitorous, automatic—hands me pictures of Reece.
The way she looked this morning when she stepped off the train—hair escaping, cheeks pink from cold, eyes bright with the kind of annoyance that always makes her more alive.
The way she laughed, briefly, after she nearly went down on the platform and called it “testing gravity.” The way she said she was thriving when I asked if she was okay, and the word sounded like armor.
I set my jaw.
I don’t do this. I don’t insert myself into Reece’s love life. I don’t push. I don’t meddle.
That’s Rosie’s department.
I don’t even know if Reece is going.
I take a sip of tea that tastes like it’s trying to be helpful and isn’t.
Me: You know I’m not a “singles event” person.
Rosie: That’s why you’re coming. It’ll be good for you.
Me: What does that mean?
Rosie: It means it’s time you stop pretending your life is just work and commuting and being everyone’s calm emergency contact.
I stare at that line until my phone screen dims.
Everyone’s calm emergency contact.
It’s funny because it’s true. It’s also… not entirely fair.
I don’t type the rest of the truth. I don’t type that calm is the easiest way to keep chaos from spreading. I don’t type that being steady is the only way I’ve survived wanting Reece Callahan in a way that looks like friendship from the outside.
I type:
Me: You’re dramatic.
Rosie: I’m right. Thursday. No excuses.
She sends one more message before I can respond.
Rosie: Also. Don’t be a statue.
I stare at my phone again, brow furrowing.
Don’t be a statue?
As if my default setting is “emotionally unavailable marble.”
As if I’m not the guy who carries extra hand warmers in his coat pocket because winter in New York is basically an ongoing threat.
I type back with restraint.
Me: I’m always polite.
Rosie: That’s not the same thing, and you know it. You’re only warm with people you like.
I stop.
The kettle is cooling. The house is quiet. The kitchen light hums softly overhead.
My next thought arrives before I can block it.
Who, exactly, does Rosie think I like?
I don’t ask.
Because I already know Rosie’s favorite sport is watching people catch feelings they’ve been stepping around for years.
I lock my phone and set it face-down on the counter like I’m filing it under not dealing with this right now.
My house is still my parents’ old place—just like Reece’s next door.
Same street, same neighborhood that raised us, same two driveways we’ve been crossing since we were kids.
The only difference now is that both our parents, who are also best friends, live in Georgia, and now we’re the ones paying the bills, fixing what breaks, and calling it home.
Her porch light is off across the yard, but mine is on, casting warm light onto the snow along the driveway.
I rinse my mug and set it in the sink. I check the lock even though I always check the lock. I turn off the lights.
And in the quiet before I head upstairs, I think about Rosie’s text again, and the way my first instinct wasn’t annoyance.
It was… alertness.
As if Thursday means something.
As if Thursday could matter.
Which is ridiculous.
It’s a Thursday.
I’ve survived hundreds of Thursdays.
I head upstairs and tell myself I’m going to sleep.
I force my brain to agree.
Tuesday morning arrives like it always does—early, cold, and determined to keep everyone honest.
By six-thirty, I’m dressed, coat on, travel mug filled. I step out onto my porch, and the air bites at my cheeks.
Across the driveway line, Reece’s porch light flicks on.
I’m already halfway down my front steps, travel mug in hand, keys hooked around my finger. The cold hits like a slap. The street is quiet in that early-morning way where the world feels paused—snow crusted along the curb, everything holding its breath.
Across the invisible border between our driveways, Reece’s front door opens.
She steps out with the exact same energy she brought to the train yesterday: determined, mildly offended by the laws of physics, and pretending she isn’t.
Her eyes flick to the thin glaze of ice on her walkway. She slows, tests it with the toe of her boot, then looks up at me like the sidewalk personally betrayed her.
“Don’t,” she warns.
I stop at the edge of my driveway, biting back the automatic, Watch your step.
“Don’t what?” I ask, neutral.
“Don’t say anything about safety,” she says, pointing her coffee cup at me like it’s a weapon. “Or traction. Or how you ‘told me so.’”
“I wasn’t going to,” I lie.
Her eyebrow lifts. Reece has always been able to tell when I’m lying. It’s one of the many inconvenient consequences of growing up twelve feet apart.
She makes it down her steps without slipping, like she’s proving a point to the universe, and cuts across the snow-dusted strip of lawn between our houses like it’s the most normal thing in the world.
It is normal.
It’s been normal since we were kids, and she’d climb over the same line to steal cookies from my kitchen because my mother always baked, and her mother always said she didn’t know how.
Reece reaches my passenger door and pauses with her hand on the handle.
“Coffee too hot?” she asks, eyes flicking to my travel mug.
I take a sip on purpose, then wince just enough to satisfy her.
Her smile is quick and pleased, like she won something she didn’t even try for.
“Thought so,” she says, and climbs in.
We ride to the station together in my car like we do most mornings. It’s a routine old enough to feel stitched into our bones—me pulling out of the driveway, her adjusting the heat vent toward her hands, both of us knowing how easy it is.
I back out of the driveway, and she immediately reaches over to turn my radio down before it even finishes loading.
“Hey,” I say.
“It’s too loud,” she replies.
“It’s at a three.”
“It’s still… emotionally aggressive,” she says, and clicks it lower.
I glance at her. “You can’t keep describing things like they’re people.”
“I can and I will,” she says, and adjusts the temperature up one more notch, like my car doesn’t already run like a furnace.
We drive in the quiet we’ve always shared—comfortable, practiced. The kind of quiet that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to say, just that we don’t need to fill every space to prove we belong in it.
At the first stop sign, she taps her fingers against her coffee cup and hums a few notes under her breath.
Not loud. Just enough to make the silence feel lived-in.
She looks steady, composed—like she has it all handled.
But I’ve known her too long to be fooled by the surface.
Reece has always been the kind of person who looks fine even when she isn’t. Competence is her armor. Control is her comfort. If she can keep the world predictable, she can keep herself safe inside it.
She’s been wearing that armor tighter since Jesse.
She won’t talk about it. She doesn’t have to. I’ve seen it in small shifts—the way she over-explains anything emotional like she’s filing it under “not a big deal,” the way she laughs too quickly when something hits close, the way she goes quiet if a room feels even slightly unsafe.
Jesse wasn’t a monster. If he had been, Reece would’ve ended it sooner. Reece doesn’t tolerate cruelty.
But Jesse was… not enough.
Not steady enough. Not attentive enough. Not someone who knew what to do with a woman like Reece—someone who can hold an entire life together with caffeine, stubbornness, and sheer force of will, but still deserves to be held back.
Jesse liked her when she was easy. When she was efficient. When she was the girlfriend who didn’t need anything from him.