4. Josie
JOSIE
The bell didn't ring when I walked in.
One of them had wedged the door open to let the afternoon through, and the shop smelled like the street — exhaust and old brick and Rosa's garlic from two doors down.
I stopped just inside and let my eyes adjust. The four of them were already at it.
Two at the counter, boxing orders. One at the repair station with a loupe, rewinding a chain I'd meant to get to yesterday.
The last one sorting stones under the lamp, her hands quick and sure.
They didn't need me.
I crossed to the bench anyway and pulled my stool in. The tools were where I'd left them, but someone had wiped down the surface and put the sketches in order. I picked up a pair of pliers and set them down again. My hands felt useless.
The woman at the repair station glanced up, nodded, went back to the chain.
She'd already finished the clasp. I could see it from here, neat and small, the kind of work that doesn't announce itself.
I'd been putting that job off for two days, telling myself I'd do it when I had the time, and now it was done and I hadn't been the one to do it.
The door scraped wider.
"Josie."
Rosa stood there with flour on her sleeve and that look on her face, the one that said she knew something and wasn't going to let it go. I turned back to the bench and picked up a bracelet blank that didn't need anything.
"Rosa." I didn't look up.
She came in anyway. She always did. I heard her shoes on the floor, the soft scuff of her crossing to the counter, and then she was leaning against it with her arms folded, watching me pretend to work.
"You going to tell me what's wrong, or do I have to guess?"
"Nothing's wrong." I bent over the blank and picked up a file I didn't need. My hands were steadier than I'd expected, which was something.
"Josie."
God, she said my name like my mother used to, like I was twelve and lying about where I'd been. I set the file down and met her eyes.
"I'm fine."
"You're not."
We looked at each other. Neither of us said the true thing.
I wanted to, but the words stuck in my throat like I'd swallowed them wrong, and I didn't know how to get them out without crying.
Rosa waited. She was good at that, better than I was — she could stand there all day if she had to, until I cracked.
I cracked.
"What happened?" she asked, and her voice was softer now, less like my mother and more like a friend.
I looked down at the blank in my hands. The metal was cool and smooth, unfinished, not yet anything. "Vince is drifting away from me."
The words came out flat. I'd meant them to sound different, less pathetic maybe, but that's what they were. Pathetic. I was his wife and I couldn't even hold his attention long enough to finish dinner.
Rosa didn't say anything right away. I could feel her looking at me, weighing it, and I hated that I'd said it out loud.
Saying it made it real. Saying it meant I couldn't pretend anymore that everything was fine, that we were fine, that nine years of marriage meant something more than a name on a piece of paper and a penthouse I came home to alone.
"What happened?" she asked again, and this time it wasn't soft. This time it was a push.
I set the blank down and pressed my palms flat against the bench.
The wood was worn smooth under my hands, the same wood my father had worked at, the same grain I'd memorized as a kid sitting on this stool watching him.
I used to think I'd always have this. The shop, the corner, the neighborhood that raised me. I used to think Vince would too.
"There was a fundraiser last night." My voice was steadier now, but it still didn't sound like mine.
"For the mayor. Black tie, the whole thing.
I wore the dress he bought me and I did my hair and I thought — I don't know what I thought.
That maybe he'd look at me the way he used to.
That maybe we'd dance, or he'd put his hand on my back the way he does, or he'd just see me. "
I stopped. Rosa waited.
"He didn't."
"He was working," Rosa said, but it wasn't a question.
"He's always working." I picked up the blank again and turned it over in my hands, running my thumb along the edge. "I stood there in a room full of people I didn't know, and he was right there, and it was like I wasn't even in the room. Like I was invisible. Like I didn't matter."
My throat went tight. I swallowed hard and made myself keep talking before I lost my nerve.
"There was this woman—" I stopped. Rosa's eyes sharpened. God, she noticed everything. I looked away, focused on the bracelet blank like it was the most important thing in the world. "It's nothing. Just this woman he works with, she was there, and they were talking, and I just?—"
I couldn't finish. The image was still there, burned into the back of my eyelids.
Harlow in that red dress, leaning in close, Vince's hand on her elbow, the two of them fitting together like they'd been doing this for years.
Maybe they had. Maybe I was the one who didn't fit anymore, the girl from the corner who didn't belong in a ballroom, who didn't know how to be the kind of wife a man like Vince needed.
The silence stretched out between us, thick and uncomfortable, and I could feel Rosa working it out in her head. She was too smart not to. Too smart, and she'd known me too long.
"Her name's Harlow," I said finally, and the words tasted bitter. "She's his liaison to the mayor's office. She raises money. That's all. It's nothing."
It wasn't nothing. We both knew it. But I couldn't say the rest out loud — that I was jealous, that I was scared, that every time Vince looked at her I felt something in my chest go small and cold and mean.
That I hated her for being everything I wasn't: polished and connected and comfortable in his world. That I hated myself more for caring.
Rosa nodded slowly. She didn't say she already knew. She didn't say she'd figured it out weeks ago, watching me come in with shadows under my eyes and that diamond on my finger I never used to wear. She just nodded, and I was grateful for it.
"What do I do?" I asked. My voice cracked on the question, and I hated how young I sounded, how desperate. "Rosa, what do I do?"
She pushed off the counter and came around to my side of the bench. She didn't touch me, didn't put her hand on my shoulder or try to hug me. She just stood there, solid and real, and looked me in the eye.
"Stop waiting for him to come to you."
I blinked. "What?"
"You heard me." Her voice was firm now, the kind of voice that didn't allow for argument.
"You're sitting here in this shop, working yourself into the ground, waiting for him to notice you're lonely.
Waiting for him to figure it out on his own.
Waiting for him to walk through that door and ask you what's wrong.
Josie, he's not going to do that. You know he's not. "
I did know. God, I knew. Vince had never been good at noticing things like that, at reading the space between words, at seeing what I didn't say out loud. He was good at buildings and deals and numbers that added up, but he'd never been good at me.
"He's busy," I said, and I hated how small my voice sounded. "It's a bad time. He's got the mayor's project, and the Riverside deal, and?—"
"It's always a bad time."
Rosa cut me off, and the truth of it hit me like a slap. She was right. It was always a bad time. There was always another project, another deal, another meeting that couldn't wait. There was always something more important than me.
"He doesn't mean it," I said, but even I didn't believe it anymore.
"Maybe he doesn't." Rosa's voice softened, just a little.
"But that doesn't change the fact that you're the one sitting here alone, wondering why your husband doesn't look at you anymore.
And it doesn't change the fact that if you want something to be different, you're going to have to be the one to make it different. "
I looked down at my hands. The diamond caught the light, throwing little sparks across the bench. It was beautiful. It was worth more than everything in this shop put together. It was the kind of ring a man gave a woman he loved, the kind of ring that meant something.
It didn't mean anything.
The iron ring he'd made me, the one he'd twisted together with his own hands when he had nothing — that one meant something.
That one I'd kept in a drawer at home, wrapped in cloth, because I couldn't wear it and I couldn't throw it away.
Because it was the only proof I had left that he'd loved me once, before the money and the buildings and the penthouse at the top of the tower.
Before he'd decided the streets that raised us weren't worth going back to.
"Go to him," Rosa said.
I looked up. "Now?"
"Right now." She glanced over at the counter, where the four of them were still working, still moving like a machine that didn't need me to keep running. "I'll watch the shop. You bring your husband lunch and you sit down with him and you tell him you miss him."
"Rosa—"
"No." She shook her head, and there was something fierce in her eyes now, something that wouldn't let me back down. "No excuses. No waiting. No hoping he'll figure it out on his own. You go to him, Josie. You go to him and you make him see you."
My heart was pounding in my chest, hard enough that I could feel it in my throat.
I thought about Vince in his office, surrounded by blueprints and contracts, his phone ringing off the hook, Gideon in the corner with his quiet disapproval, Harlow probably somewhere in the building with her red dress and her easy laugh.
I thought about walking in there and interrupting all of it, demanding his time, demanding his attention, demanding that he look at me like he used to.
It scared me.
It scared me more than the break-ins, more than the neighborhood going bad around me, more than the thought of this shop running without me. Because if I went to him and he still didn't see me, if I laid it all out in front of him and he chose the work anyway — what did that leave me with?
But Rosa was right. Sitting here waiting wasn't going to change anything. Waiting never did.
I stood up. The stool scraped against the floor, loud in the quiet shop, and one of the women at the counter glanced over. I nodded at her and she went back to boxing orders, unbothered, like I'd already been gone for weeks.
"Okay," I said. My voice sounded stronger than I felt. "Okay. I'll go."
Rosa smiled, just a little, and stepped back to let me pass.
I grabbed my bag from under the bench and headed for the door.
My hands were shaking, just slightly, but I made them stop.
I could do this. I could walk into Vince's office and sit down across from him and tell him I missed him, that I needed him, that I wanted him to come home to me instead of to the work.
I could ask him for what I wanted instead of waiting for him to guess.
I could do this.
The afternoon light hit me as I stepped out onto the corner, bright and hot and unforgiving, and I didn't look back.