Chapter 9 #2
It was a nice place: two bedrooms in a building that had been converted from an old textile mill, with exposed brick and big windows that let in good light.
She’d been proud of it when she signed the lease, her first solo apartment after years of roommates and then the brief, ill-advised experiment of living with Marcus. It was hers, and it suited her.
But today, it felt too still, had too much space for thinking.
Miller dropped her bag by the door and stood in the middle of her living room, not sure what to do with herself.
The afternoon sun slanted through the windows, catching dust motes in the air.
Her running shoes sat by the door, but her legs felt heavy.
The television remote was on the coffee table, but she couldn't imagine sitting still long enough to watch anything.
She ended up in the kitchen, opening cabinets without purpose. She wasn't hungry. She made tea anyway, then let it grow cold on the counter while she leaned against the sink and stared at nothing.
Astoria’s world was nothing like this.
The thought surfaced without warning, and Miller found herself looking around her apartment with new eyes: the secondhand couch she'd reupholstered herself; the bookcases from IKEA, still slightly crooked because she'd assembled them alone and refused to admit defeat; the gallery wall of prints she'd collected from local artists at weekend markets—nothing expensive, just pieces that made her happy.
She thought about the leather folder with the gold clasp, the suit that probably cost more than everything in Miller's closet combined, the watch on Astoria's wrist, simple but unmistakably expensive.
Astoria lived in a different universe, one where elevators were worth bribing maintenance staff over because her time was that valuable and where discovery disputes were handled between status conferences and whatever else filled the days of someone who ran a global company.
What would Astoria think of this apartment?
The question was absurd. Astoria would never see her apartment, would never have any reason to, but Miller couldn’t stop her brain from wandering down that path.
Would she find it charming? Quaint? Would she even notice the difference, or was wealth so ingrained that she’d stopped seeing it?
Miller shook her head and picked up the cold tea. She dumped it in the sink and watched it spiral down the drain.
This was ridiculous. She was standing in her kitchen, thinking about what a woman she barely knew—a woman on the opposing side of an active case, no less—would think of her furniture.
As if that was the important question. As if that was what her brain should be fixating on instead of the actual problem.
She’d felt something in that elevator, something she’d never felt before.
Miller moved to the couch and plopped down, pulling her legs up underneath her. The evening light was starting to shift as golden hour approached. She should probably eat something, go for a run, call her moms, or do any of the normal things that filled her otherwise normal evenings.
Instead, she sat there and let herself think about it.
She’d dated men her whole life. Nice men, mostly.
Brandon in high school, who’d held her hand at football games and kissed her goodnight on her moms’ porch.
Garrett in college, who’d been pre-med and steady and had wanted to get serious before she was ready.
Trevor, who’d proposed after three years and had been genuinely confused when she couldn’t say yes.
Marcus, who’d collected stamps and never pushed for more than she offered.
And most recently, Ethan with eight months of pleasant dinners and forgettable sex and a mutual breakup that had felt more like a relief than loss.
None of them had ever made her feel like that.
She’d assumed that was normal. That the breathless, all-consuming passion in movies was exaggeration, fiction, something teenagers felt before they learned that real relationships were built on compatibility, shared values, and comfortable silence.
She'd built a whole framework around the assumption that she was practical, grounded, not the type to lose her head over anyone.
But today, in an elevator, a woman’s hand had brushed hers, and Miller’s entire body had responded like it had been waiting her whole life for exactly that touch.
She pulled a throw pillow into her lap and pressed her face into it, muffling a sound that was a half groan, half something closer to panic.
It didn’t mean anything. It couldn’t mean anything. Astoria was a billionaire CEO going through a messy, public divorce. She was a woman, and Miller was—
Miller was what?
The question hung there in the silence of her apartment, demanding an answer she wasn’t ready to give.
She thought about Sienna, her best friend in high school.
She thought about the sleepovers where Miller had felt nervous in a way she couldn’t explain, the way her stomach had flipped when Sienna had laughed at her jokes, and how devastating it had felt when Sienna started dating Jason Reeves junior year and suddenly had less time for Miller.
She thought about Professor Naomi Fowler in law school, the way Miller had hung on to her every word and found excuses to visit office hours. At the time, she’d told herself it was just admiration for a brilliant legal mind.
She thought about all the women she’d noticed over the years—in coffee shops, at the gym, across crowded rooms—and how she’d always filed those observations away under “aesthetic appreciation,” as if noticing that someone was beautiful was the same as noticing a lovely painting.
The pillow wasn’t helping. Miller tossed it aside and stood up, pacing to the window and back.
She wasn’t ready for this, whatever this was, the question forming at the edges of her mind, the one she’d apparently been avoiding for years, maybe even her whole life.
Miller looked outside. The sun was setting and turning the sky shades of deep orange and pink, but Miller didn’t really see it.
She could still feel Astoria’s hand against hers. Hours later, the memory was as vivid as the moment itself—the warmth, the way everything else had fallen away, the look in Astoria’s eyes when their gazes met.
Something fundamental had shifted today, and Miller had no idea what to do about it.