Caleb
THE WOMAN WAS TALKING about her family’s vineyard. Sonoma. Something about soil composition.
He told a joke. She laughed at exactly the right place.
He let the conversation roll. Let her ask about filming schedules, whether small towns blurred together. He answered easily. Smiled easily.
This was uncomplicated.
Across the room, the music shifted. He almost ignored it. But then the lyric landed, and his brain snagged on supply closet before he could pretend it hadn’t.
That was this morning. Fluorescent lighting. A cupcake balanced on a filing cabinet. April laughing like she’d decided to make chaos a hobby.
He looked toward the dance floor. April was in emerald. Phones were lifting. And Jiro wasn’t singing to the crowd. He was singing to her.
The woman beside Caleb followed his gaze. “That’s… something.”
“Yeah,” Caleb said.
He pulled his phone out. Checked the ‘group chat’.
Arthur. Liam. Killian. Mateo. Jax.
Him.
He read the names, then glanced back at the stage.
Jiro was clearly part of whatever this was.
He looked back at the chat.
Jiro wasn’t.
Why am I in and he’s not?
He didn’t need to know. He wasn’t seeing her after tonight anyway. He locked his phone and slid it back into his pocket.
“So,” he said smoothly, turning back to the woman at his side, “where were we?”
She smiled again, leaned closer.
He made himself stay in it. It would have worked, too. Except he kept seeing the dance floor and caught the part the room wasn’t filming.
April’s smile was still on, but her eyes kept flicking past Killian’s shoulder like she was counting exits instead of measures.
The room leaned. Another song and the story would harden.
He pulled his phone out again.
Caleb: She’s not fine.
He sent it and kept the phone in his hand. He waited.
Any second now, one of the men who’d apparently signed up for infrastructure duty would step in. Someone would handle it, clean and competent, and he could go back to pretending this was someone else's problem.
This was the cue. The obvious one. The kind actors hit in their sleep.
And they were standing there.
He checked his phone.
Nothing.
Caleb: Anyone?
No one stepped in.
The woman from Sonoma was saying something. He looked at her.
“Excuse me,” he said.
She said something. Confused, maybe offended.
His feet were already moving.