Ella
Aarthi picks me up in a dented Honda Civic with a READY TO WED bumper sticker her mother put on before Aarthi could stop her. McKenzie is already in the back seat with two iced coffees and a bag of cashews.
"Fuel," she says, thrusting a coffee at me. "We're going to need upper body strength, and I have been surviving on vending machine Doritos."
The aerial silks studio is in a converted warehouse in Lawrenceville, on a block that also has a ramen shop and a tattoo parlor.
Inside, it smells like chalk and rubber mats, and long panels of purple and red fabric hang from the ceiling like something out of Peter Pan.
I count eight silks, each pooling on the floor in graceful heaps, and a handful of women already stretching on mats.
We find a spot near the back and spread out. McKenzie touches her toes with ease. Aarthi sits cross-legged and pulls one arm across her chest, grimacing. I bend forward and feel the burn of a twelve-hour shift in every muscle south of my ribcage.
"So," McKenzie says, switching arms. “Aarthi, we need to discuss that bumper sticker.”
Aarthi groans. "My mother sent me seven — seven — profiles on a matrimonial site this week. One of the men listed his hobby as 'breathing.' Another one's photo was clearly taken at a funeral."
"A funeral?"
"He was standing next to a casket, McKenzie. In a suit. Smiling."
"Maybe he was happy to be there." McKenzie bites a pretzel. "My update is that I got a DM from Kyle."
"Kyle the ex?" I ask.
“The shit burger. He said, and I quote, ‘I’ve considered what you said and think you should return to Kentucky for some growth work.’” She gags. "Growth work. He can't even grow a full beard."
"So that's a no," Aarthi says.
"That is a block, delete, and sage my phone.” McKenzie pulls a leg practically behind her ear, demonstrating incredible flexibility I’m not envious of at all.
“What I actually want is to just … get laid.
No feelings. No growth work. Just a nice man with a functional body and low expectations.
" She turns to me. "Ella. Your brother is a professional hockey player. "
"Unfortunately."
"Doesn't he have friends? Aren't hockey guys like, famously …" She waves a foot in the air. "Available?"
Aarthi snorts. "She means slutty."
"I mean open to casual encounters with consenting women."
I open my mouth to respond — to say something about the parade of women I've witnessed filtering through my brother’s rooms over the years — but the instructor claps her hands and saves me from a conversation I am absolutely not ready to navigate, given that I had a hockey player's hand down my shorts a few hours ago.
The teacher’s voice booms, as if she has practiced broadcasting to a full room. “Welcome, everyone! I'm Jules. Let's start with some basics."
Jules appears white, maybe five foot two, and built like a gymnast, with arms that suggest she could bench-press most of the women in this room. She radiates the calm authority I associate with charge nurses, no nonsense, but Jules is also kind.
We start on the ground. I listen as she explains grip technique: wrap the silk around your hands, pull it taut, feel the tension in your shoulders.
My forearms burn almost immediately. Pumping pressure bags and restraining combative patients in the ER have given me functional strength, but this is different.
This requires me to hold my own body weight, which is not insignificant, and trust that a piece of fabric won't let me go.
"Grip higher," Jules tells me, adjusting my hands. "Good. Now pull yourself up. Use your core, not just your arms."
I pull. My feet leave the ground by about two inches, and I immediately drop back down.
"That's perfect for your first time," Jules says. "Try again."
It feels humiliating, far from perfect. McKenzie, who apparently has hidden lizard DNA, scrambles up her silk with ease. Aarthi manages a wobbly hang. I try again and get slightly higher, arms shaking, the fabric biting into my palms.
"Use the foot lock," Jules says, crouching beside me. "Step on the silk with your right foot. Wrap it around your arch. Now the fabric carries some of your weight."
I do as she says, and something clicks. The silk catches under my arch, and suddenly I'm not fighting gravity alone.
The fabric holds me, supports me. I pull up, wrap my foot tighter, and I'm suspended, a fairy.
Flying. Three feet off the ground, gripping the silk above me, one leg wrapped and locked, the other extended into open air.
It's not graceful. My arms shake. My face is probably purple. But I'm up. I'm off the ground. My body — this body that I've spent years thinking of as too big, too much, taking up too much space in too many backseats — holds me in the air.
"Beautiful!" Jules claps. "Hold it. Breathe."
I breathe, thinking of Bernard offering the same suggestion and feeling my body flush all over.
I look down at my hands wrapped in purple silk, my knuckles white, my forearms straining.
My leg extends in the air, pointed in a way I choose to imagine is graceful.
My core is engaged, working, and strong.
I tilt my head back and laugh. I can't help it. The sound erupts from somewhere deep and joyful, and it bounces off the warehouse ceiling, and McKenzie whoops from her silk, and Aarthi cheers from the mat where she's given up and sprawled on her back.
I feel incredible. I feel powerful. I feel like my body is a machine. I've been doubting my entire life, and someone just proved it works.
I arch my neck in triumph, chin up, grinning at the ceiling — and through the studio's front window, half-obscured by the logo stenciled on the glass, I see a face.
Bernard.
He stands on the sidewalk with his hands in his jacket pockets, watching me. His expression is strange. Not smiling, not frowning. He looks caught between wonder and ache, like he's squinting at something bright he knows he shouldn't stare at.
My stomach flips. I wobble on the silk, tightening my grip.
He came early to pick me up, and now I’m on display like the prow of a ship, but he sure doesn’t seem horrified. His face looks a little like it did when I first took my shirt off for my first lesson of the day. But I can’t think about that now, while I’m in a different lesson entirely.
Jules calls time. I lower myself, less gracefully than I'd like, more controlled than I expected, and land on the mat. My arms are jelly. My palms are raw and pink and I feel like I could run through a wall.
"That was INCREDIBLE," McKenzie announces, dropping from her silk and grabbing my arm. "Ella, you’re a natural."
"I was up for like twelve seconds."
“You looked like a glorious bird. We're coming back next week."
Aarthi joins us, rolling her shoulders in agony. "My cousin is a liar. That was not empowering. That was assault by fabric." She flexes her reddened hands. "But I'll come back because you two clearly need supervision."
We gather our things and head for the door. I'm pulling on my hoodie when McKenzie spots Bernard through the window. He leans against the G-Wagon, scrolling his phone, looking every inch the professional athlete at rest: expensive jacket, expensive car, effortless posture.
"Is that your ride?" McKenzie's voice pitches up half an octave.
"That's my roommate. He offered to pick me up."
"Your roommate. A hockey player." McKenzie grabs my arm. "Ella. You failed to mention that your roommate looks like that."
"He's my brother's friend."
“He’s a threat to panties everywhere.” She's already pushing through the studio door. "We should get drinks. All of us. Does he have more friends? Friends who want to have a casual drink with three sweaty nurses in tight pants?”
I don't have a chance to answer because we're on the sidewalk now, and Bernard looks up from his phone, and his face transforms when he sees me — a flash, quick, the private look from the window — before it folds into something else entirely.
I watch the volume on his personality turn up until he’s nothing like the tender Bernard from earlier today.
"Ladies," he says, pocketing his phone and standing tall. His voice is louder, warmer, pitched for an audience. This isn't the man who whispered my name against my neck. This is Howie Houser, professional charmer, the guy who knows every bouncer in Pittsburgh. "How was clown college?”
"Aerial silks," I correct, trying to control this situation and failing.
"It was amazing," McKenzie says, extending her hand. "I'm McKenzie. Ella's friend from work. We're nurses."
"Howie." He shakes her hand with both of his, and I watch McKenzie lick her lips. "I've heard great things. You're the one from Louisville, right?"
She melts. Actually melts on the frigid sidewalk. He deployed that factoid like a heat-seeking missile of personal charm.
"And you must be Aarthi." He turns to her with the same warmth, the same focus.
Aarthi, who is immune to most forms of nonsense, cracks a reluctant smile. "She talks about us?"
"Constantly." He glances at me, and our eyes catch for half a second, long enough for me to see the real Bernard underneath the Howie show — before he snaps back to performing. "So what's the plan? You guys hungry? Thirsty?"
"We want drinks," McKenzie says. "And Ella says hockey players are fun."
"I absolutely did not say that."
"You implied it." McKenzie turns to Bernard with the confidence of a woman who has fully decided to shoot her shot. "Do you have single friends who might want to meet three incredibly interesting women who just defied gravity?"
Bernard laughs. The big one, the Howie laugh, the one that carries half a block, and pulls out his phone. "I might know a guy or two. Where do you want to go?"
McKenzie names a bar nearby. Aarthi suggests a backup. Bernard's thumbs fly across his screen, and I stand on the sidewalk watching him text his teammates, watching my careful, private world tilt on its axis toward my brother’s loud, public one.
This is Howie. The party organizer. The social connector.
The man half of Pittsburgh has seen buying rounds for strangers.
And I'm standing here in a sweaty tank top with chalk dust on my hands and silk burn on my palms, watching him charm the two people who see me as just Ella — not Baby Rookie, not a hockey player's sister, just Ella. I feel the ground shift.
For the last ten days, I've had Bernard. Private, tender, devastating Bernard, who quizzes me on cardiac conduction and traces my collarbone and tells me I'm gorgeous with a voice like gravel. I've had him in a bubble — the apartment, the car, his bed.
Now my friends are meeting Howie. And Howie is spectacular— magnetic, generous, impossible not to like. But he's not the man who held me while I shook apart this morning. He's the version of that man built for public consumption, and I'm the only person on this sidewalk who knows the difference.
Bernard catches my eye again over McKenzie's head. One look. Quick. The grin stays on his face, but something behind his eyes flickers — a question, a check-in, the real him surfacing for just a breath.
You okay?
I give him the smallest nod.
He goes back to making my friends laugh.
McKenzie asks about the G-Wagon. Aarthi pretends she's not impressed but keeps glancing at the car.
Bernard tells a story about Spinner that has both of them cackling, and I watch him work — this gift he has, this ability to make everyone feel included, seen, important — and I think about how nobody sees him.
They see Howie. The party. The fun.
They don't see Bernard, who woke up early to drive a woman to work because nobody else thought to. Who hung curtains without being asked. Who held my wrist while I came and then told me I didn't owe him a thing.