32. The Natalia I Know
The Natalia I Know
Natalia
Three days after Japan, I’m sitting beneath fluorescent lighting while Denise scrolls through the open positions on her screen.
The temp agency occupies the fourth floor of a gray office building between a dental supply company and a place that sells industrial adhesives.
Nothing has changed since the last time I was here.
Same fake plants and stale coffee. Same framed poster insisting every opportunity begins with a positive attitude.
Mine begins with jet lag, heartbreak, and the violent urge to tear the poster off the wall.
Denise glances over the top of her glasses. “How was Japan?”
“It was full of beautiful hotels, ridiculous food, private clubs, temples, luxury. Obviously I missed the rain and concrete of Seattle terribly.”
Her mouth twitches. Denise has been placing me in temporary jobs for nearly two years and still fights every smile like it might damage her face.
“Are you certain you can spare us lowly beings your professional presence?”
“My bank balance doesn't care about my misery. Until posting my face online pays every bill I have, I’m back in the game.”
“You say that every time.”
“One day it’ll be true. Prepared and pretty, it's a devastating combination.”
That finally wins the smallest smile out of her. Denise knows I can sell, show up on time, charm difficult clients, and survive jobs other temps abandon after two shifts. She also knows I get bored easily, which is why she usually saves the public-facing placements for me.
She clicks into another listing. “I might have something that suits you. Lustre Beauty downtown.”
I sit up slightly. "Lustre? They rarely have openings. People retire at a place that high-end.”
“One of their senior artists had spinal surgery. They need coverage for three months.”
“Application and consultations?”
“Along with sales, stock, cleanup, shade matching, appointments. Weekends required.”
“Sounds perfect.”
It doesn’t. Nothing sounds perfect. Perfect is in another country, probably asleep or drunk or pretending he didn’t tear something out of me and leave me alone to patch the empty space.
But Lustre will be busy. It has lights, music, expensive products, and strangers who need things from me. That might be close enough.
Denise studies me. “They’re particular about presentation,” she says. I blink slowly. Her eyes move over my hair, makeup, fitted black sweater, then back to my face. “Which shouldn’t be a problem.”
“I'll try my best.”
She sighs and reaches for the phone.
I have the job by five.
Lustre Beauty takes up half a city block downtown.
The building is a monument to smoked glass, polished black floors, and enough strategic lighting to make everyone look recently resurrected.
The displays glow beneath soft white shelves.
Perfume hangs in the air with setting spray, powder, and the chemical sweetness of unopened products. It puts me at ease immediately.
The manager, Celeste, wears a headset and the expression of a woman who has been disappointed by every employee she has ever hired. She walks me through the store at a speed that suggests stopping is for the weak.
“Skincare is along the east wall. Fragrance in the back. Prestige color in the center. We don’t hover, but we don’t let clients wander unattended either.
Shade matches need to be documented. Sanitation between every application.
No personal products on the floor. We don’t take personal calls unless it’s an emergency. ”
Within ten minutes, I know exactly who hates me.
It’s never difficult. There’s the girl at the Dior station who looks me up and down, then checks her own reflection.
Another near fragrance watches Celeste compliment my base makeup and presses her lips together so tightly they disappear.
I’ve never understood being jealous of someone’s face.
It’s not like I built this thing myself.
I didn’t choose the bone structure or the hair and my breasts aren't from a catalog.
All I did was learn what to do with what I was given.
Anyone with internet access and enough spite can master contour, don't blame me if you can't be bothered, Gertrude.
At least a few of the girls are nice. Melina works skincare and has perfect glassy skin that makes me distrust everything she says about stress.
Janae is covered in tiny tattoos and knows more about lipstick undertones than most scientists know about their own research.
Then there’s Suri, who clocks me within an hour.
She watches me finish a shade match on a woman who swears she’s neutral despite being blatantly olive-toned, then waits until the client leaves.
“Impressively handled, newbie,” she says. “I swear I know you from somewhere.” She narrows her eyes. “Do you know Ryder?”
I keep my face smooth. Ryder. Seattle is an enormous city until someone mentions a man you once let kiss you, and then suddenly everyone lives in the same six rooms.
“Yeah,” I say carefully. “We go way back”
We'd moved in the same social circle for years while he begged for a chance to take me on a date. Cuffing season approached, so then we went sideways for a few weeks at Christmas until I realized his personality was mostly hair and access to guest lists. Suri’s entire face changes.
That distant little glow. Recognition transforming into possibility.
She likes him.
Maybe she’s slept with him. Maybe she wants to, or she's built an entire imaginary relationship out of three conversations and the fact he once remembered her drink order.
“He’s so fun,” she says.
“That's one of many ways to describe him.”
“You still talk?”
“Sometimes.”
The last message from Ryder is from January third :
you out?
He sent at 1:43 in the morning. I never answered. I was too busy planning my lavish excursion to Asia with Kasia. Remembering how stupidly hopeful that version of me was makes my stomach feel hollow.
Suri leans closer. “We should all go out Friday. Melina too. There’s a thing at Halcyon.”
“I can probably get Ryder to come.”
The offer is barely out of my mouth before I watch myself become valuable to her.
Her smile widens. “Seriously?”
“Yeah. He’ll come if I ask.”
He will. Ryder has never encountered a room containing cameras and women without trying to enter it. Especially a woman he never managed to bed despite his best efforts.
Suri has added me to two group chats by the end of my first shift and Melina has informed me which manager steals gratis samples from the stockroom.
I sell nearly four thousand dollars in product, rescue a teenager from an orange foundation disaster, and convince a woman going through a divorce to buy the red lipstick she keeps insisting is too much.
“It’s supposed to be too much,” I tell her. “That’s the point.”
She leaves with the lipstick and a handful of other bold colors she admits she never would’ve considered before today.
The days begin moving. Slowly at first. Time never seems to move quickly enough anymore. Not since Japan. But it moves. I work. I smile. I post. I answer messages from girls I’ve known since high school asking about Japan.
It looked insane.
Your skin was glowing.
Was the food amazing?
Did you meet anyone hot?
I give them pieces. The temples, clubs, and hotels. Breakfast shaped like cartoon animals. I leave out the tour buses, soundchecks, and two a.m. hotel rooms with his head between my thighs. The man who called me Kroppy and made me believe waiting for him meant something.
Kasia has always been careful about her connection to the band.
Medicine is already hostile enough to women without her becoming known as the fiancée of Rafe Ashton before anyone remembers she’s a doctor.
So our friends know we traveled with her.
They know there was money, access, and enough luxury to make them jealous.
They assume Kasia’s doctor salary paid for most of it.
They don’t know why I wake with my chest aching and dried tears on my face that I don’t remember crying.
During the day, I’m flawless. I arrive at Lustre with my hair done and my face perfected.
I recommend serums, mix foundations, explain why someone’s concealer keeps creasing.
I flirt with security guards and accept compliments like currency.
To the outside world I'm still young, beautiful, and interesting. Inside, there's nothing.
The nights are hell. Once the house quiets, Aga goes home, Mama stops moving around the kitchen, and Tata turns the television low enough for the silence to get through.
For the first few nights, I cry. It pains me how messy it is, not a single cinematic tear sliding down flawless skin in sight.
I cry into my pillow until my face hurts.
I wake up angry and swollen, then spend twenty minutes icing beneath my eyes so nobody asks why.
On the fourth night, I decide I’m done. He doesn’t get my tears.
He doesn’t get to sit in some hotel room knowing I’m wrecked over him while he congratulates himself for doing the right thing.
So I bully myself out of it. Whenever my throat tightens, I call myself pathetic.
Whenever I remember the way he held my face, I remind myself what he called it afterward.
Fun.
That’s all.
After a week, I've almost convinced myself I'm fine. That all I need is a good night out and drinks to forget everything. I text Ryder during my lunch break.
Going to Halcyon tonight. Come out.
The typing bubble appears so quickly I nearly gag.
For you? Always.
I stare at it.
Then:
Bring friends.
He sends back a flame emoji and something involving a tongue. Revolting.
Halcyon is packed and it's only ten o'clock. The club sits above the city beneath a glass roof, neon blue light and mirrored columns. Music reverberates through the floor. Suri has been vibrating with anticipation since we left work. She keeps checking the entrance, pretending she isn’t.
When Ryder finally appears, she grabs my arm.
“Oh my God.”
He looks exactly the same. Designer jacket, perfect hair. Smile calibrated to suggest he’s pleased to see everyone while somehow looking directly at me. He hugs me first.
“Look who finally remembered I exist.”
“I remembered. I was busy, Ry. The world does not, in fact, revolve around you. Hard to understand, I know.”
He laughs like I’m flirting.
Suri introduces herself even though they have met at least twice according to her.
Ryder gives her enough attention to keep her hopeful, then spends the next hour trying to talk around her to me.
Every time she hooks her arm through his, he gently peels it away.
I should feel bad. I do, a little but not enough to stop.
We drink and dance. Melina drags us toward the center of the floor.
I let the bass take over and move the way I know people like to watch me move.
Heads turn and men find reasons to get close.
One buys me a drink. Another tells me I have the most incredible eyes he’s ever seen.
Three of them give me their numbers. I type each one in while I stand there doe-eyed, like I’ve been gifted some enormous honor, then delete them the second they're out of sight.
I take photos. Suri is pressed against Ryder. Melina is throwing up a peace sign. I'm in the middle, smiling like Japan never happened. Ryder drapes an arm over my shoulders for the last one, pulling me against his side. I let him.
Then I post everything to my story. Proof of life. Proof that I’m totally fine, that Natalia Sawadzka doesn't fall apart over men who are too frightened to want her.
Twenty minutes later, I check the views. It’s automatic now, part habit and part business. Then I see it.
bomos_tra
Kiri's verified profile sitting between a cosmetics brand and some girl from my last temp job I barely remember. My entire body goes cold. I tap to the next story, our group shot. His little profile image appears beneath it with a heart.
He watched. He wants me to know he watched.
The club contracts around me. Music blurs into one long sound. Suri is saying something near my shoulder, but her mouth moves without sound. Ryder reaches for my waist. A drunk woman bumps into me hard enough to spill a drink, and I barely feel it. All I hear is blood beating through my ears.
He doesn’t get to do this. He doesn’t get to tell me it was nothing, then sit across the world watching me prove I survived him.
Watching changes people.
The words come back to me so loudly I nearly drop my phone. He still wants to be the observer, to watch me reacting because I know his eyes are on me. He wants me orbiting the fact of him, adjusting myself beneath his gaze while he stays safely out of reach. Just like Nagoya.
His fucking particle.
I try to inhale, but the air stops somewhere in my throat. The crowd melts into one motion. My fingers begin shaking so badly I have to grip the phone with both hands.
“Natalia?” Melina’s voice reaches me from very far away. “Are you okay?”
I can’t answer.
My thumb opens his profile. Photos of the tour.
Stage lights. His bass. A shot from Osaka posted only hours ago.
His face turned away from the camera, veil concealing that devastating smile I know so well.
His hair is falling across his eyes like he has any right to look so beautiful after what he did.
I hit the menu.
Block.
A warning appears.
I confirm it and his profile disappears.
Just like that.
The pressure in my chest loosens, just enough for air to drag its way back into me. I stare at the screen.
Take that, you piece of shit. Good luck watching me now.
“Natalia?”
I lock my phone and turn. Ryder is standing there with two martinis, concern pulling his brows together. Suri hovers behind him, watching us both.
“You disappeared,” he says.
“I’m right fucking here.”
I take one of the glasses and swallow half of it in a single burning mouthful.
Ryder smiles carefully. “There's the Natalia I know.”
No, you never knew me, Ry. That’s the point. I set the glass down, grab the front of his jacket, and kiss him. Hard.
He makes a startled sound before instinct takes over.
His free hand slides around my waist, then lower, cupping the fullness of my ass, pulling me against him like this is what he's been waiting for all night. Maybe longer. He’s probably been masturbating to the memory of that New Year’s kiss ever since.
I kiss him harder, then I… wait for something.
Heat, or a spark. Anything. Even disgust would be useful. There's nothing. His mouth is just a mouth. His body is only something solid beneath my hands. No fire. No sense that I’m standing too close to the edge of myself.
Nothing that can hurt me.
Over Ryder’s shoulder, I see Suri. Her face empties as she watches his hands travel over me. At first, guilt gets through, then I close my eyes.
I don’t feel a thing.