CHAPTER 13
Angela’s POV:
The kitchen was thick with the rich, heavy scent of seasoned flour, hot vegetable oil, and the unmistakable, sharp aroma of yellowtail snapper hitting the cast-iron skillet.
I stood over the stove, a wooden spatula in one hand, watching the skin of the fish blister into a perfect, golden-brown crunch.
On the burner right next to it, a wok filled with leftover jasmine rice, scallions, minced garlic, and scrambled egg was sizzling violently under a generous drizzle of dark soy and sesame oil.
"Alexa, volume eight!" I shouted over the aggressive crackle of the oil.
Instantly, Chris Brown’s voice flooded the small kitchen, the heavy bass bouncing off the linoleum floors and vibrating through the cabinets.
I needed the music loud. I needed it to drown out the lingering static in my own head, the quiet creeping anxiety that always settled in whenever the sun started to dip beneath the Brooklyn horizon.
Cooking was my therapy, my sanctuary, the only time my mind wasn’t racing a million miles an hour trying to decipher the emotional frequencies of the rest of the world.
My momma, Monica, was due back any minute from her grueling twelve-hour Uber shift.
I knew exactly how she’d walk through that door—shoulders slumped, rubbing the lower small of her back, smelling faintly of cheap car air fresheners and the collective fatigue of fifty different strangers she’d driven across the boroughs.
But despite how exhausted she always was, her mind had been completely fixated on one specific topic for the past week.
Or rather, one specific person.
“Angie, I’m telling you, this girl is something else,” momma had told me over the phone during her lunch break yesterday, her voice competing with the chaotic honking of midtown traffic.
“She got in as an intern over at E-Tech. You know, that big-money tech firm on the forty-second floor? The one that looked right past your resume last month without so much as a rejection email? Yeah, that place. They rarely ever take interns, Angie. This chick must be something truly special.”
The reminder of E-Tech still stung like an unhealed scrape.
I had spent weeks polishing my application, building my portfolio, praying that a position there would finally be my ticket out of this cramped apartment and into a real career.
Instead, absolute silence. And now, some new girl had just glided right through the front doors like she owned the place.
I flipped the snapper over, letting out a slow, defensive breath as I reached into my back pocket and pulled out my phone. I gave in to the temptation I’d been fighting all morning. I opened Instagram, my thumbs navigating with practiced precision to the search bar.
Miley Palmer.
I leaned against the counter, tapping through her profile.
Deadass, the girl was pretty hot. In her photos, she possessed this effortless, high-fashion aura—long, flawless box braids swinging past her shoulders, dark skin that looked like pure velvet under the city lights, and an hourglass silhouette that looked almost mathematical in its perfection.
In her latest post, she was standing outside a high-rise office building, wearing a high-waisted black pencil skirt and a silk blouse, looking like she drew the blueprints for Manhattan herself.
"Please," I muttered to the empty kitchen, rolling my eyes as I aggressively scrolled through her grid. "She must be using a hundred different filters. Nobody’s skin looks that smooth in the middle of a New York humidity wave. She couldn’t possibly look this good in real life."
I tossed the phone onto the kitchen cart, turning my attention back to the fried rice. I grabbed the wok by the handle, tossing the grains with a sharp, practiced flick of my wrist. I was cooking for two, and that was exactly how I liked it. Just me and my momma.
I didn't do friends. I didn't do acquaintances, and I damn sure didn't do modern socializing. I tried to avoid people entirely because, quite frankly, human beings were exhausting, self-centered, and dripping with toxicity these days.
I was an empath—a real one, not the kind of fake title people put in their social media bios for attention.
I could walk into a crowded room and instantly pick up on the heavy, stagnant energy shifting through the atmosphere.
I could feel a stranger's hidden resentment, their lingering malice, or their superficial masks within five seconds of standing near them.
It was an exhausting, heavy curse. Caring too much meant getting hurt too deeply, so over the years, I had built an absolute fortress around my peace of mind. I kept my circle down to zero.
But lately, momma had been on my absolute line about it. She wanted me out of the crib. She kept nagging me to mix and mingle, to find a crew, to go out to lounges, and put myself out there into the world, even though she knew damn well that social gatherings made my skin crawl.
The heat from the stove was starting to make the edges of my hair frizz.
I reached up, pulling my thick weave back, gathering the heavy bundles of tracks and tying them securely into a high, tight ponytail at the crown of my head.
Once my face was clear, I picked my phone back up, my eyes drawn right back to Miley Palmer’s profile like a magnet.
How did she really make it into E-Tech? My mind kept spinning on the question. That corporate structure was notorious for its gatekeeping. They didn't care about charm; they cared about raw, undeniable leverage. Momma’s words echoed back into my head: “This chick must be special.”
A bitter taste rose in my throat. Special or just incredibly well-connected. In this world, the chameleons always found a way to the top, while people who kept it real were left holding the bill in the kitchen.
An hour later, the kitchen was quiet, the burners turned off, and the yellowtail snapper was resting under a layer of aluminum foil on the counter. The heavy bass of Chris Brown had been replaced by the low, ambient drone of a dark fantasy series on Netflix.
I was stretched out across our worn velvet couch, my legs tucked beneath a plush throw blanket.
Positioned right next to my hip was Max, my massive, pristine white cat.
Max was an absolute terror to ninety-nine percent of the population; he possessed an attitude that rivaled my own, and he rarely let anyone besides me touch his fur without issuing a warning hiss.
Right now, though, he was fast asleep, his heavy chin resting on my kneecap as I absentmindedly rubbed the soft, warm space behind his ears.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
The sudden, heavy pounding on the front door made Max’s ears twitch violently. I sat up slightly, frowning at the door. Momma had her own keys; she never knocked unless her hands were completely full of groceries.
"Hold on!" I called out, tossing the blanket aside as I slid my feet into my slippers.
Before I could even reach the lock, the latch turned from the outside, and the heavy wooden door swung open.
In walked my momma, Monica, her face flushed from the humid evening air, her keys dangling from her fingers.
But she wasn't alone. She was gesturing warmly into the hallway, ushering another person across our threshold.
"Come on in, sweetie, don't be shy. The apartment isn't huge, but it's got good air conditioning," momma was saying, her voice carrying that overly hospitable, cheerful tone she used whenever she was trying to impress someone.
I stopped dead in my tracks right in the middle of the linoleum living room.
The stranger stepped inside, dropping her Telfar bag onto the small entryway table, and my breath instantly caught in my throat.
She looked oddly, terrifyingly familiar.
As she stepped deeper into the warm glow of our living room lamps, tilting her head to look around the space, the realization hit me like a physical blow to the sternum.
The high-waisted black pencil skirt. The ivory silk blouse. The long, heavy box braids swinging over her shoulders.
It was the exact same chick from the Instagram feed. Miley Palmer.
And deadass, my entire internal monologue from an hour ago was completely proven wrong.
The filters hadn't done her justice. In person, her skin looked like liquid bronze under the lamps, and the sheer, magnetic energy radiating off her body was heavy, suffocatingly intense, and completely unbothered.
"Miley, this is my daughter, Angela Long, the one I was telling you about in the car," my mother announced, her face beaming with an insufferable, matchmaking kind of pride as she gestured between us. "Angela, meet Miley Palmer. She was one of my riders today, and we just got to talking so well!"
Miley turned her dark eyes onto me, a warm, polite smile breaking across her lips. She stepped forward, extending a manicured hand toward me.
"Nice to finally meet you, Angela," Miley said, her voice carrying that smooth, low Harlem cadence I had imagined while reading her captions.
Before I could even raise my hand to meet hers, her eyes dropped down to the couch, her expression lighting up with a sudden, genuine excitement. "Wow... that is a beautiful cat."
I stood there for a fraction of a second, my empathic radar flaring up like a siren.
I was trying to read her, trying to find the hidden angle, the superficial corporate mask she must be wearing.
But to my utter confusion, the energy coming off her wasn't toxic; it was just...
tired. Heavy, guarded, but remarkably clean.
I slowly reached out, shaking her hand briefly. Her skin was warm. "His name is Max," I said, my voice sounding more defensive than I intended as I stepped back, immediately reaching down to rub the cat’s head as if using him as a shield. "Nice to meet you too."