Chapter 9
ARCHIE
Whittaker drives.
I’m in the passenger seat of the company SUV, grinding my molars and watching Cupid City slide past in the blue-gold light of early evening.
My phone sits in my hand like a dead thing.
One text sent, unread. Three calls, straight to voicemail.
She blocked me, and I can’t even be angry about it because it’s exactly what I would have told her to do.
“Where am I taking you?” Whittaker asks.
“Her place. Millbrook Street—the townhouse with the blue door.”
He signals left. I stare at the phone, then open Tessa’s page out of habit. Her page loads, and the first thing I notice is the silence. No new posts since the day after the gala. Five days of nothing from a woman who posts three times a week like clockwork.
The comments are worse. Tessa, are you okay?
Missing your stories!
Girl, where are youuuu? We need our Thursday live!!
There are dozens of messages from her fans. She’s disappeared, and her fans are looking for her.
“You’re doing that thing,” Whittaker says. “The clenching thing. You’re going to crack a molar.”
I don’t answer. I’m staring at the new video Tessa posted forty-seven minutes ago. The thumbnail shows her face bare of makeup, eyes red-rimmed. The title: An Honest Moment.
“Pull over,” I tell Whittaker.
“We’re three blocks from her—”
“Pull over. Now.”
He pulls to the curb. I tap the play button.
Tessa’s face fills the frame, and the breath locks in my throat. She’s wearing the pink comfort sweater, and I wanted to gather her in my arms and never let go. There’s no ring light and no backdrop. It’s just her in a way I’ve never seen on her channel.
“Hey, loves,” she says, her voice rough. “I wasn’t going to film today. I’ve been... going through something. And I didn’t know how to show up for you when I’m struggling to show up for myself.”
The air leaves my lungs.
“You know I don’t talk about my personal life much—mostly because what personal life, right?
” A weak laugh. “But something happened at the Valentine’s gala.
I met someone. And for a little while, it all felt magical.
Like a real-life fairy tale—the kind I’d stopped believing in.
I felt the kind of connection I helped you all find, and that I wasn’t sure I’d ever find. ”
She’s talking about us. About me. On camera, for thousands of people.
“I let myself believe it was real. I let myself imagine a future. And now I’m sitting here and wondering if I made the whole thing up.
” She swipes at her eyes, and her voice drops to something barely held together.
“I was reminded that fairy tales aren’t real.
You can’t blame a girl for hoping, though. Right?”
The guilt in my gut ruptures. Not the guilt of a coward—the guilt of a man who had reasons but no excuse. I couldn’t reach her. But I could have said more before I left. Thirty seconds of honesty instead of five words and a closing door.
“You know what I always tell you.” She looks directly into the camera. “If he wanted to, he would. So what does it mean when he doesn’t?”
The question hangs in the dead air of the SUV.
She finishes with something about struggling, about not having answers, about being gentle with herself. And then she says the thing that lodges in my memory like a fishhook:
“For now, I’m going to go to my favorite spot so I can think through things and clear my mind.”
The screen goes dark.
I can’t move. She thinks I used her. Took what I wanted at the Conservatory and left. She’s teaching thousands of women to recognize men like the one she thinks I am. And she’s right to—because from where she’s standing, that’s exactly what happened.
“Get me to her place,” I tell Whittaker. “Now.”
No one answers.
I knock three times on the blue door. The windows are dark. Her car isn’t in the driveway. She posted that video and then left—went to her favorite spot, wherever that is.
I sit on her front step. Call her. One ring. Voicemail. Text: I’m at your door. I can explain everything. Please.
Delivered. But "delivered" doesn’t mean "received" when you’ve been blocked.
My phone rings. Margie.
I answer before I can talk myself out of it.
“Did you see her post?” No greeting. Her voice could cut glass. “What the hell did you do?”
“I made a mistake,” I say, because there’s nothing else.
The sound she makes is somewhere between a sob and a scream. “I saw you at that gala. I saw the way you looked at her. That wasn’t fake—I know you, Archie, I know when you’re pretending, and that wasn’t pretending.”
“Margie—”
“No. You don’t get to Margie me right now.” Her voice is shaking the way it does when she’s angry. “I watched you die inside when Rachael left. I know it’s your life, but it hurts that you’re alone. You deserve to have a special woman in your life.”
“I know.”
“But this? She’s not Rachael. She’s sitting alone right now, crying on camera, because you ghosted her.”
I want to tell her about the job, the protocol, the phone locked in a Faraday bag for seven days.
But the moment I say, "I got called away on a protection detail and couldn’t reach her," Margie will ask the obvious question: "Why didn’t she know that?
" Why didn’t your girlfriend know what your job involves?
And then the whole thing unravels. The fake relationship. The arrangement. The fact that Tessa doesn’t know the first real thing about what I do, because we never got that far before I walked out of the Conservatory and into a helicopter.
I can’t explain the job without exposing the lie. So I swallow it.
“You’re the example she’s going to use in her next video about men who can’t show up. You became the villain in her story, and she doesn’t even know why.”
“I know.”
“Do you? Because I bet you’re sitting in your apartment right now feeling sorry for yourself instead of fixing it.”
“I’m at her door. She’s not home. Her car’s gone. And she’s blocked my number—I’ve tried calling, texting, all of it.”
The silence on the other end stretches thin.
“Then figure it out,” Margie says quietly. The fury has burned down to disappointment. “You find her. Tell her the truth—all of it—and let her decide.”
“I promise.”
She hangs up.
I sit on the cold concrete and look at the quiet street. The blue door behind me is the same one she opened the night of the gala, wearing that pink dress that made me forget how to form sentences.
Margie’s right. Whittaker’s right. Tessa’s right. The job is a reason, not an excuse. The real failure happened in the Conservatory, in the five seconds between the phone call and the door, when I could have explained what was happening and that my job is sometimes “drop everything and go now.”
And even before that, I should have told her what I do. When I find her, I have to fix that. Tell her everything. No more locked boxes.
For now, I’m going to go to my favorite spot so I can think through things and clear my mind.
The line from her video surfaces again. Her favorite spot. She’s gone somewhere specific.
I pull out my phone and open her Substack. Start scrolling back through the posts—past the advice columns, past the Q&As—looking for something I half-remember. A personal essay in which Curvy Cupid drops the performance and Tessa talks about her life.
There it is. The Comfort of Solitude.
I scan the paragraphs until I find it:
But when I really need to think—when the noise gets too loud, and I can’t hear myself anymore—I go to the Lock & Key Bridge.
I leave my phone in the car because the whole point is silence.
I stand at the railing, look out at the water, and let the city be big enough to hold whatever I’m carrying.
It’s the only place where I don’t feel like I have to perform.
Where I can just be a person with a heavy heart, watching the river move.
The Lock & Key Bridge. She leaves her phone behind. That’s why she’s not answering. Or at least it’s one reason. I still suspect she blocked me.
I’m down the steps and running toward the bridge before I’ve finished the thought. I don’t have flowers or a speech. I have the truth and the hope that she’s standing on a bridge, willing to talk to me.
When I finally get to the bridge, I’m out of breath. And at the far end, leaning against the railing with her back to me, is Tessa.