Chapter 1
Audrey
O’Hare hits me like a wall of recycled air, noise, and the uncomfortable weight of home.
I hate that it feels like home.
But I also love that I am home.
Does that even make sense?
I drag my carry-on suitcase through arrivals, weaving past reunions I don’t want to watch.
A little girl runs into her father’s arms. An older couple holds a sign for someone named Michael.
And then, of course, there’s that couple who’ve been desperately missing each other.
The ones where the girl runs and he catches her in his arms and spins her like a prom queen, right there by the currency exchange.
For a second, I’m sick with envy—for the audacity of being wanted like that.
I try to blink the feeling away, but it hangs on behind my eyes, an afterimage I can’t quite stare down.
I keep moving. That’s the rule. I dissect the clots of travelers the way an algorithm would.
I anticipate their vectors, predict their slowdowns, adjust accordingly.
My best self is hyperaware but a little robotic, weaving past the inefficiencies of humanity.
I pass a teenager FaceTiming, sobbing mid-terminal.
A group of startup bros in matching hoodies and Allbirds, shouting about microservices.
A woman with a neck pillow askew, reading a dog-eared copy of Sapiens.
After three months away, coming home feels…strange. Like I belong here. But also, like I don’t.
And I’m definitely not still heartbroken over someone who rejected me by planting his palm on my face.
Like I was an invasive species contaminating his petri dish.
Definitely not. I am a woman of science and reason, and my entire heart is now a rationally subdivided co-op.
Logan Whitman does not get a seat on the board.
I spot the sign from a hundred feet away.
Fluorescent pink. Letters three inches high.
AUDREY GREENE: NEUROBABE. There’s nothing subtle about it.
The only people who would do this are Layla and Serena, who are, of course, both standing below the sign waving like extremely well-dressed air traffic controllers.
Layla’s hair is its usual tumble of chocolate-brown waves, her pantsuit hugging her curves in a way that probably has TSA eyeing her for concealed weapons.
Serena’s wearing her signature red lipstick and a fuck-off trench coat, looking like she just stalked off the set of a noir film.
It’s all very them. And me? I’m not tall like Serena or voluptuous like Layla.
I’m short and essentially shaped like a potato.
But I’ve always consoled myself with being the brain of the group.
The one who figures things out. That was supposed to be enough.
“Oh my god.” I laugh. But the sound comes out rusty. “You did not.”
“Goddamn right we did,” Serena crows, stomping over in her runway-model boots and catching me up in a hug so tight it clicks my vertebrae.
She pulls back and blinks. “Whoa, what—Audrey? Is that—?” She reaches for my head like she might tug off a wig.
“You went BLONDE? I almost didn’t recognize you! ”
Layla tilts her head, doing that slow, feline blink of appraisal. “I love it,” she declares, sounding almost surprised. “But you didn’t even preview it over text. Did the Nordics radicalize you, or is this a post-breakup thing?”
“Post-breakup?” I scoff. “That’s severely overselling something that never made it past the starting gates.”
“You know what I mean.” Layla’s voice softens as she squeezes my arm.
Meanwhile, Serena is still staring, jaw half-dropped. “You look like an evil CEO,” she says, which is the highest praise coming from her.
I smooth a stray lock behind my ear. “I don’t know.” I shrug, but the gesture feels stiff. “I just wanted to try something that wasn’t me, you know? I got contacts too.” I touch the side of my glasses to adjust them. “I didn’t wear them on the plane, obviously. But I feel like a whole new me.”
Layla and Serena exchange a look. The kind of look that says we’re going to circle back to this later when she’s had wine.
“Well, I think you look fierce,” Layla says diplomatically. “Very Scandinavian ice queen.”
“That was the goal.”
It wasn’t. The goal was to become someone else entirely. Someone who doesn’t lie awake at 3 a.m. replaying the same humiliating moment on a loop. Someone who doesn’t flinch when she catches a tall guy with messy hair in her peripheral vision.
Someone who never stood in her apartment, heart in her hands, while a man blocked her kiss. My intellectual equal. The one person I thought would finally see me clearly. He confirmed the fear I’d never let myself name: that being smart was never going to be enough.
That I was never going to be enough.
But they don’t need to know that. Nobody needs to know that.
“Come on.” Serena grabs my suitcase before I can protest. “The car’s this way. We have plans.”
“Plans?” I raise an eyebrow. “I just got off a nine-hour flight.”
“Plans that involve your couch, delivery coffee and pastries, and us not leaving your side for the next three hours.” She’s already walking, my carry-on bumping along behind her. “Non-negotiable.”
Layla loops her arm through mine. “We missed you, Aud. Let us fuss.”
I let them lead me out of the terminal. It’s easier than arguing. And when I unlock the door to my apartment, the giant, hand-lettered and covered-in-glitter banner that’s strung across the living room tells me that my besties missed me more than a little bit.
“Welcome home!” they both shout, lifting their arms to the banner that says the same thing.
There are even fresh flowers on the kitchen counter.
Peonies, my favorite. The fridge, which I emptied before I left, is stocked with wine and cheese and the fancy olives I can never justify buying for myself.
“You guys.” My voice comes out weird. Thick. “You didn’t have to—”
“Shut up, yes we did.” Serena steers me toward the couch. “Sit. I’m opening wine.”
“It’s two in the afternoon. I thought we were getting coffee and pastries.”
“It’s eight p.m. in Stockholm. Your body doesn’t know the difference.”
I sit. I don’t have the energy to argue. And honestly? The sight of my apartment—clean, decorated, full of evidence that people missed me—does something to the knot in my chest. Loosens it, just a little.
Layla settles beside me, tucking her feet under herself. “So. Three months in Sweden. Tell us everything.”
“I already told you everything on our calls. I worked. I ate my weight in meatballs. I learned to appreciate the concept of hygge.”
“That’s Danish,” Serena calls from the kitchen.
“Whatever. Scandinavian coziness. Same vibe.”
Serena returns with three glasses and a bottle of something expensive looking.
She pours, hands one to each of us, and folds herself into the armchair across from the couch.
“To Audrey,” she says, raising her glass.
“Who survived three months of pickled fish and seasonal depression and came back hotter than ever.”
The old me would have snorted and said something self-deprecating. The old me would have made a joke about how ‘hotter’ is a relative term when your baseline is ‘short, round ball in a lab coat.’ But that Audrey got rejected. This Audrey just smiles and raises her glass.
“To Audrey,” Layla echoes.
I clink. I drink. The wine is good. The company is better.
And for a moment, I let myself believe that coming back was the right choice.
Over the next two hours, we talk about everything and nothing.
Layla’s wedding planning has reached ‘mildly unhinged’ status—"Bennett had Jenna make this," she says, scrolling through tabs labeled FLORALS (OPTIONS), FLORALS (BACKUP), and FLORALS (NUCLEAR OPTION). “He has opinions, Audrey. So many opinions. I didn’t even know he knew what a hydrangea was, and now he’s sending me Pinterest boards and rejecting shades of ivory. He said one of them had ‘chaotic energy.’”
“That’s... sweet?”
“It’s insane.” She takes a long sip of wine. “I love him, but if he sends me one more color combination to consider, I’m going to fold him into a napkin.”
Serena’s consulting firm is taking off. She’s landed three major clients in the last month, all crisis management cases that need her particular brand of strategic thinking.
And she’s moved in with Caleb, which means navigating the minefield of cohabitation with a man who genuinely believes there’s a ‘correct’ way to load a dishwasher.
“He reorganized my bookshelf,” she says, horror in her voice. “By genre, Audrey. And then sub-sorted by publication date.”
“That’s psychotic.”
“I know. I love him anyway. What does that say about me?”
I laugh—the kind I haven’t managed in months. These women know me. They knew me before the blonde hair and the new clothes and the Swedish escape. They’ll know me after.
Maybe that’s why I came back.
Layla starts to mention something about work, then stops herself.
“Later. Tonight’s about you.”
Serena tells me about Caleb’s niece, who sounds more like a college professor than a little girl.
I tell them about the very attractive Swedish postdoc who asked me to coffee.
How I panicked and told him I was ‘emotionally unavailable due to a recent interpersonal data corruption.’ He asked if I needed tech support.
I said the damage was irreparable and walked away.
“You did not say that.” Layla’s eyes go wide.
“I did. To his face. He looked at me like I was speaking in code.”
“You were speaking in code.”
“Engineer brain. Can’t turn it off.”
We’re laughing—real laughs, not performative ones—and the tension in my chest starts to ease. But underneath, something twists. That’s the version of me that got rejected, isn’t it? The one who can’t just say ‘I’m not over someone’ like a normal human being.
Then I yawn.
It sneaks up on me—a full-body, jaw-cracking yawn that I can’t stifle. Jet lag, finally catching up.
“OK.” Layla sets down her wineglass. “That’s our cue. You need to rest before tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“Dinner.” Serena’s already gathering her things. “Welcome home celebration, part two. Just us and the guys—”
I freeze.
The guys. The guys could mean—
“Just Bennett and Caleb,” Layla says quickly. Too quickly. She’s watching my face like she’s waiting for it to crack. “That’s it. Promise.”
I make myself breathe.
“But if you’re not up to it,” she continues, “it can just be us girls. Or we can skip dinner completely. You just got back. No one expects you to—”
“No.” The word comes out steadier than I feel. “No, I’d love to see Bennett and Caleb. It’ll be good to catch up.”
Serena and Layla exchange another look.
“Besides,” I add, defaulting to professional mode, “I want to hear how they’ve been handling NeuraTech in my absence. That project was my baby. I need a full debrief on whatever chaos I’m walking back into.”
It’s a reasonable excuse. A professional excuse. The kind of thing the old Audrey—the pre-Sweden, pre-blonde, pre-heartbreak Audrey—would absolutely say.
Layla nods slowly. “We’ll pick you up at seven.”
“Seven works.”
They hug me goodbye, longer than necessary. I can feel them wanting to say more. To ask if I’m really OK. To push past the armor and the deflection and the ‘I’m fine’ I’ve been performing all day.
They don’t.
I close the door behind them and lean against it.
The apartment is quiet now. The banner sags a little in the middle. The flowers are beautiful. I can’t stop staring at them, because if I look away, I might have to think about what tonight actually means.
Dinner with Bennett and Caleb.
Who are Logan’s best friends.
Who will definitely have seen him in the last three months.
Who might mention him, or worse, not mention him—that careful silence that’s somehow louder than words.
I push off the door and walk to my bedroom. Three hours to nap, shower, and rebuild myself into someone who can survive a dinner with people who know exactly why I ran.
For a second, I let myself remember what it felt like to sit next to him in the lab.
The way his voice dropped when he was working through a problem.
The way he smelled like coffee and something clean, like someone who took care of himself without thinking about it.
The way my whole body leaned toward him without permission.
I shut that door. Lock it.
I catch my reflection in the mirror. Blonde hair. Tired eyes. The same face I’ve been staring at for three months, trying to convince myself it belongs to someone stronger.
“You’re fine,” I tell her. “You’re completely fine. It’s just dinner. They won’t bring him up. And even if they do, you won’t care, because you’re over it. You’re over him.”
I set my alarm for six and lie down on the bed I haven’t slept in for three months.
The ceiling looks the same.
The ache in my chest feels the same too.