Chapter 2
Chapter
Two
Goldie began her trek home to Greymarket Towers, the thrill of Tamsin’s offer still fizzing at her fingertips as she cradled the folder in the crook of her arm.
She walked in silence, letting the city bloom softly around her. Bellwether was lovely in the evenings—always strange, yes, but always lovely.
She passed a building whose windows were open, the sound of a haunted waltz on loop drifting into the balmy air. Another building was illuminated by candles that gently orbited a white cat sleeping on the fire escape.
After less than a block, the performative Goldie—the public Goldie—began to thaw into something looser and more genuine. Her hips still swayed when she walked, but her shoulders dropped a fraction, her pace softened, and her boots struck the pavement in an easy, unhurried cadence.
She always had to be “on.” She didn’t quite know when it started. Maybe in high school, when charm had been her currency, her armor, her easiest ticket out of uncomfortable silences. By college, it had become a tic. By her twenties, a routine. By the time she hit thirty, it was an art form.
She laughed loud. Loved hard. Broke up harder.
She sparkled her way through life, and the more uncertain she felt, the brighter she shined.
But solitude offered a different kind of sparkle: time to spiral down rabbit holes of research, to lose herself in lousy movies, to bask in the quiet company of her thoughts.
She loved people, but she also craved the kind of stillness that let her heart settle and her curiosity roam.
But in that hush, a filament of worry always hummed beneath the calm.
Would anyone still continue to choose her if the glitter stayed packed away? Was the quieter, earnest Goldie, the one who sometimes ached for silence, truly enough on her own?
She wasn’t entirely sure which version of herself Greymarket Towers had chosen.
All she knew was that it happened months ago, after her best friend, Nell Townsend, and Nell’s impossibly devoted mothman mate, Sig Samora, moved upstairs to the seventeenth floor where the building had grown them a brand-new apartment.
Goldie had watched them fall in love through chaos and catastrophe, and if anyone had earned a happy ending, it was those two.
The day the last boxes were carried out, Goldie showed up with a smudge stick, a bundle of dried sage, and three backup lighters. Nell brought too much wine. Sig, in his cryptid wisdom, chose to remain upstairs.
Nell and Goldie had lit candles, chanted irreverently, and knocked on the walls with a bell.
At one point, between giggles, Nell had slipped while gesturing dramatically and fallen spread-eagle across the kitchen floor, squeaking, “This kitchen is clean!” in a very poor imitation of Zelda Rubinstein in Poltergeist.
Goldie had collapsed beside her friend, laughing and slurring half-finished spells through happy tears. It felt both silly and sacred: two friends weaving a welcome for whatever magic might wander in.
Eventually, Sig had come to collect Nell, who was mid-recitation of a protection spell she was definitely making up as she went.
He’d swooped her up in his clawed hands as Nell babbled something incoherent and curled into his shoulder.
Sig, ever polite, asked Goldie if she would get home safely.
Goldie had waved him off with dramatic flair and assured him she’d get a cab.
Sig had left with Nell cradled in his arms, and Goldie had stayed, sitting in the hush, the last candle flickering at her side. After a moment, she’d gently cleared her throat and glanced at the scuffed baseboards and an old water ring on the windowsill.
“Sorry if we were too much,” she murmured to the room. “You were very patient.”
She closed her eyes and pressed her palm to the wall. The words came without planning. “You’ve made Nell so happy. She deserves that so much. So…thank you for helping her find that.”
Then, quieter still, the rest had slipped free. “I wish I had something like this,” she confessed, unguarded and unperformed. “Something that didn’t make me feel like I had to earn my place by being the loudest, the brightest, the most… everything. Something that made me okay to be just me.”
She lingered there, the wall cool beneath her palm. Then, just barely, it warmed.
The next morning, Mr. Lyle called.
“Ms. Flynn,” he said in his peculiar, antique drawl. “Your application for residency at Greymarket Towers has been approved. Shall we say Wednesday for the paperwork?”
Goldie hadn’t filled out a residency application. She went anyway.
And, well… Greymarket Towers had made its choice.
Nell, practical as always, had convinced Goldie not to sell her house outright.
“Just rent it,” she’d chirped after screaming loud enough to startle the houseplants, swinging Goldie around in a giddy circle, and insisting they get the most expensive sushi takeout in town to celebrate.
“Worst case, you move back after a hiatus. Best case, you get good tenants and make a little money.”
A very nice couple had moved into Goldie’s small house. One gardened exclusively at night, while the other volunteered at the wellness center downtown. They paid ahead of time, kept the yard wild but not feral, and left offerings on the backyard altar.
Goldie paid her rent at Greymarket without stress, lit her windowsill candles every night, and whispered thank-yous into the baseboards.
During those brief, shining moments, it felt like both versions of herself had found the same address.