2. Noah
NOAH
A special kind of existential dread set in when you realized everyone else had grabbed their bags, and you were still standing there like an abandoned puppy at the pound.
Patience wasn’t one of my virtues, I’d admit.
The baggage carousel hummed to life once again, and I surged forward, hoping mine would appear. I was afraid I’d missed it. After my flight from Los Angeles, I had to stop by the airport lounge to collect the credit card I had forgotten a few days earlier.
A familiar head of blonde hair also crept closer to the carousel. Of course Macey Monroe would be one of the few people still waiting for her luggage.
We’d attended a few of the same events in the past—restaurant openings, local festivals, holiday celebrations—and the way she looked at me each time was painfully familiar. It was the same way people look at someone they don’t respect.
Macey’s attitude represented all the assumptions the world made about me: that someone with good looks fell into being an influencer and never learned how to exercise their brain.
They were right about the first half .
I hated social media. Hated the anonymity it gave bullies, hated the insecurity issues it gave everyone, and hated the way it turned life into a game of competition.
But I had fallen into it, and it was challenging to claw your way out of a lucrative opportunity when someone in your life depended on you.
Macey lifted a blue-and-yellow suitcase off the carousel. Fuck. Not that this was a competition, but she had definitely just won.
Before I could berate myself for taking too long in the lounge, causing me to miss my luggage, I saw my black suitcase making its lap around the carousel. By the time I grabbed it, Macey had disappeared.
Outside, the sky had gone full Chicago February—gray, growling, and cold enough to slap. The wind sliced through my jacket like it had a personal vendetta. A few sunny days in LA had nearly tricked me into forgetting just how rude winter could be back home.
I stopped by the taxi stand and pulled out my phone, because apparently staring into the void is frowned upon in public.
Scrolling felt like the lesser evil. Yeah, I hated social media, but it still paid the bills.
I uploaded a story announcing my safe landing, then watched it struggle to post over the airport’s sad excuse for Wi-Fi.
Honestly, a small part of me missed airplane mode.
Something about being unreachable at 30,000 feet made it easier to imagine a version of my life where I didn’t chronicle every second of it for strangers online.
If I left this path behind, though, what was left?
Who would I even be? A college dropout with a skincare routine strong enough to carry a personality?
The ironic part was I had options. Too many.
My savings bought me freedom, sure, but also paralysis.
It was like being handed a menu with a hundred items, none of which looked appetizing.
Damned if you do, damned if you scroll through job listings at 2:00 a.m. wondering if goat yoga instructor could be a real career.
Only a few photos on my feed updated. A picture of my little sister, Daphne, studying at the library with her friends. A gym workout routine from another Chicago influencer I followed. And a shared post of a whale.
Wait, what?
I squinted. It wasn’t just a whale—it was Macey’s photo of a whale.
Shared by a lifestyle influencer I vaguely knew.
Of course it had the perfect golden-hour lighting, that moody travel-blogger filter, and just the right amount of poetic nonsense in the caption.
I had to give her credit: the girl knew how to take a photo.
Too bad she only posted them to her personal accounts instead of pairing them with the snooze-fest articles she wrote for Roamer’s Digest . Then again, maybe I was the only one who found them boring. Not that I read them often. Just sometimes. When I couldn’t sleep.
“I knew I should’ve taken Kira up on her offer,” a voice grumbled behind me. “Stupid Chicago taxis.”
I recognized that voice. My eyes shut as I sighed.
Macey. Of course.
She stood behind me in the taxi queue, her breath puffing out in annoyed little clouds.
“If you hate them so much, call an Uber,” I said, not bothering to turn around.
She made an exasperated sound. “I would, if there were any available.”
“Then walk.”
“Do you want me to get frostbite?”
I turned around to look at her. Macey’s long, icy blonde hair was tied into a braid down her back.
That was where the Elsa cosplay ended, considering she wore a pink sweater and black sweatpants.
Definitely not warm enough for a night like tonight.
Two notebooks stuck out of her purse, and she shoved them back in.
“I don’t not want you to get frostbite.” I shrugged.
Macey rolled her eyes and ignored me, scrolling through her phone instead. I should go back to minding my own business, but this was more entertaining. Instead of filtering through Instagram, she was favoriting photos in her album. Whales, whales, and—a whale-themed 5K?
A laugh bubbled out of me, and I reached for her phone. Ignoring her “Hey!” of protest, I zoomed in to the photo.
“So you really spent your weekend playing with whales?” I chuckled.
“It’s called Whale Fest.” She reached for her phone, but I held it above her head as I looked at the picture. “And it’s a beautiful celebration of whale migration.”
Oh my God. This wasn’t just any picture of a whale-themed 5K. As if the concept wasn’t ridiculous enough, Macey was pictured in the race dressed as a whale . She wore all gray and a giant hat that looked like the head of a whale, jaws open and all.
This didn’t align with the Macey I knew. She was supposed to be a corporate doll who wrote drab articles about events that were actually exciting. A driven woman with an unbeatable work ethic. Someone who succeeded at blending into the crowd, except for in this picture.
I hadn’t laughed this hard in what felt like years. Pretty sure tears were forming at the corners of my eyes. “Why are you the only person dressed like a whale?”
“Because at a turkey trot on Thanksgiving, everyone dresses like a turkey.” She pursed her lips and crossed her arms. “I thought everyone would dress as a whale for a whale 5k.”
I didn’t run on Thanksgiving. The holiday was for stuffing your face full of food, not working out. Never trust people who run on Thanksgiving.
“What a horrible thought that was.” I was still laughing, but guilt bit into me when she looked embarrassed. I handed her the phone back. “I’d like to stay far away from your mind, Monroe.”
“No problem,” she sniffed. “You’re not invited.”
Macey pocketed the phone and stretched, lifting her arms above her head and exposing a small strip of skin above her sweatpants. Goose bumps scattered across her skin. I blinked and looked away.
“Where’s your jacket?” I asked. Her sweater clearly didn’t provide much cover from the wind.
“Whales don’t get cold,” she answered. “They’re warm-blooded and can survive in frigid waters.”
I couldn’t believe I was doing this. If Mom could see me now, she’d call me a gentleman. That was far from reality, but still, I pulled off one of my jackets and handed it to her. “Unlike whales, you don’t have blubber.”
Hesitation flashed through her face, and she stood unmoving. I insisted, “Take the jacket.”
She did, zipped it up gently, and offered me her thanks. It would be funny how much she swam in the jacket, if it weren’t cute.
The silence stretched between us. I was never very good at quiet—I always had a playlist or podcast in the background—but Macey seemed comfortable in it.
The slow murmur of the crowd around the taxi stand was enough to keep me from going insane, and rationally, I knew I could put on my headphones and play music at full blast. But I didn’t want to.
I glanced frequently at Macey, trying to get a glimpse into her mind. Her face was impenetrable, like the security at concerts I tried and failed to sneak into as a kid .
When she started to put an earphone in one ear, I finally thought fuck it and asked, “So are we finally going to talk about it?”
Her hand, with fingernails painted light blue, froze halfway to her ear. “Talk about what?”
“Why do you think you’re better than me?”
Macey looked at me half-startled, a touch of pink creeping up underneath the collar of my jacket. “I don’t think that.”
I crossed my arms. “Your every action says otherwise.”
When I first met Macey at a world showcase held at the Bean, I was immediately captivated.
It had been a year, but I could still see her the way she was that day, standing in the middle of a crowd, completely unaware of the chaos around her and inside my chest. When she spoke, her voice carried a warmth that seemed to wrap itself around everyone.
Too bad she hadn’t directed that warmth in my direction since. It was like once she understood what being an influencer meant, she stopped caring.
“Between us, Hansley, you’re the one who thinks you’re better than me.” She shoved the earphones into her purse. “Considering you’re the one who disrespects me and my time.”
I frowned for a moment. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Really?” A sharp edge caught into the smooth current of her voice. “Has every interaction with me been so insignificant that you immediately forgot it?”
“Better to be forgotten than treated unfairly.”
Macey furrowed her brow. “I guess you’re just too important to spend time with a measly magazine writer such as myself. God forbid your fans witness you treating me better than trash.”
Memories barreled over me like splintered steel, sharp and painful. I was the one who treated her like trash? The audacity of her to say that to me when she was the one who wanted to feud with influencers because of some internalized prejudice.
“Maybe I would give you the time of day if you ever wanted it.”