11. Anouk
Anouk
Idon’t remember leaving the office.
I know Finn brought me home, but it’s all vague, as if my brain stuffed cotton between me and the world to muffle the edges. The only clear memory is Luther’s hands holding mine.
Coming home comforts me. The scent of basil from Finn’s indoor herb garden, laundry detergent, Finn’s cologne—everything that makes our home ours.
He tosses my bag onto the armchair and turns to me, his eyes softening.
“Annie….”
“I’m f-fine.”
“No, you’re not.” He steps closer. “Come here.”
And that’s it. I fold into him, my forehead hitting his chest, my knees giving out. He wraps both arms around me, steadying me with his strength, then guides me down onto the couch and settles beside me, holding me close.
The tears come silently at first. Then they don’t.
My body shakes in a way I can’t control—each breath a tumble of grief, confusion, and guilt. Finn holds me through all of it.
“Shh,” he murmurs. “I’ve got you. You’re okay.”
“But I’m n-not,” I choke. “She’s dying, and I don’t know how to f-feel—”
“You don’t have to know. You don’t owe anyone your feelings.” He rubs slow circles on my back. “You survived her. That’s enough.”
I fist his shirt. “Does it make me a b-bad person if I don’t want to see her?”
“It makes you a human person,” Finn corrects, kissing the top of my head.
Eventually, the sobs taper off, leaving me hollow and exhausted.
He tucks a blanket around me and goes into the kitchen. When he returns, he presses a glass into my hand.
“Drink.”
I take a few sips because he told me to.
“I’m guessing you’re not hungry,” he says softly.
I shake my head. Some people eat when they’re stressed. I never have.
He turns on the television—a cooking show. Gentle voices. Familiar rhythms. Background noise that pulls the outside world back in and breaks the sealed bubble of grief.
After a long stretch of quiet, where we just hold each other, he asks, “Who called?”
“The warden,” I whisper. “He said she’s in the last stages. She asked for me.”
Finn’s arm tightens around my shoulders. “You don’t owe her that.”
“But what if…what if I’m the only person she has left?”
“You are the only one she has left,” he confirms. “But it’s not your job to take care of her. She’s the parent. It was her job to take care of you. She sucked at that.”
“I hate her.” Fresh tears sting my eyes. “And I hate that I hate her. I hate that she’s dying. I hate that I’m not sad. I hate that I’m feeling like this. I hate all of it.”
Finn rests his chin on my hair. “All of that is allowed.”
He doesn’t judge me or tell me to forgive her. Doesn’t give me some bullshit about how forgiveness is healing. We both know it’s not.
So, he does what we’ve been doing for each other for years: He holds me together while I fall apart.
When the worst of it passes, he makes soup—soul food, Miss Helen style.
Chicken broth, noodles, carrots, and leeks.
I sit at the kitchen island, wrapped in a blanket, and watch him move around the kitchen.
He glances over. “By the way…your CEO dude?”
My heart flutters. “L-Luther?”
“Yeah.” He stirs the pot. “He texted to check on you.”
He did?
“He looked wrecked when I got there,” Finn continues. “He was genuinely worried.”
He was?
“Dot sent him to look for you when you wouldn’t answer your phone.” Finn picks up a spoon to taste the soup. “I’m glad he stayed with you until I got there.”
Me too. The thought warms me and aches at the same time.
We eat soup in front of the television and watch Hallmark movies, a modicum of normalcy in my day.
By the time I go to bed, I’m feeling almost normal.
“Tell me one good thing that happened to you today,” Finn says when I settle into bed.
I chew my lower lip as I ponder. “Luther holding my hand in that conference room,” I say honestly. He’d comforted me, stayed with me until Finn got there, took care of me even though he had no reason to.
Finn smiles. “You know what, Annie, that’s the best thing that happened to me today as well.”
I go in the next day, even though Finn tells me I should stay home. Dot calls to say the same thing. Luther texts, asking if I’m okay and reminding me to take all the time I need.
But I need routine. I can’t let her derail me any more than she already has.
This place—these numbers—are my refuge. So, I disappear into my data, into cross-tabs and formulas, letting the model's logic push everything else out of my head.
Dot tries once more to send me home, then gives up.
I stay even after most people clear out, which is usually by six—even the dedicated ones leave by seven.
Finn has a night shift—he offered to trade it away, but I told him not to. I don’t need a crutch. I need to hold myself upright. Finn understands.
I glance at the clock on my screen and decide to give it another couple of hours.
I dive back into the model, rechecking everything I’ve done—everything Erin mocked, everything Luther didn’t acknowledge. I fix what isn’t broken. Rewrite sections that were already clean.
My eyes burn, but I keep going.
Maybe if it’s perfect, Luther won’t think I’m incompetent.
Maybe if it’s perfect, I won’t feel like I’m a child again, standing in a courtroom with words trapped in my throat.
At nearly ten, I finally shut my laptop.
Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, Market Street glows with headlights and motion, the city moving on without me.
As I step toward the elevators, I’m startled to see a tall figure, hand pressed against the “down” button.
Luther turns.
He looks surprised to see me. “Still here?”
“I had…work.”
He tips his chin in acknowledgment. “Me, too.”
We ride down in silence down to the lobby.
When the doors open, he hesitates. “Have you eaten dinner?”
I short-circuit for a second. “N-no.”
“Let’s grab something nearby.” He shifts his backpack on his shoulder. “Pinecrest Diner’s still open.”
What does this mean? Nothing, Anouk. It means absolutely nothing. It’s a “you worked late and so did he” thing.
I respond without thinking, without weighing my words. “O-okay.”
What the hell are you doing, Anouk?
I don’t know!
We walk the two blocks to Pinecrest Diner, the city buzzing around us. I’ve been there a couple of times before. It’s typical with a big neon sign, chrome counters, and red vinyl booths.
We sit in a booth by the window, and a waitress in a blue apron comes over almost immediately and places menus in front of us.
Luther gives her a warm smile. “How’s your night going, Martha?”
She brightens. “Slow, hon, but slow is good at my age. You working late again?”
He laughs. “You know me! I’ll take my usual.”
Martha gives him an indulgent smile. “Alright, hon. One coffee and a patty melt with feta and extra onions.”
He nods and then glances at me. “Anouk?”
I scan the menu. I’m not getting a patty melt, for sure. It’s half a pound of ground beef with rye bread, cheese, and grilled onions. I don’t have that kind of appetite.
“Um. Gr-grilled cheese.”
Martha pats my hand. “Hon, that’s not enough food. I’ll bring you a side of tomato soup, too. You want something to drink?”
I shake my head. “Wa-water is fine.” I wait until she leaves and ask Luther, “You come here often.”
“At least a couple of times a week since I moved here…but I’ve been coming here for the past decade.” He pushes the menus to the side of the table.
“A decade?”
“My sister Ria goes to school here, and my best friend lives here, so…I came around a lot even when I lived in New York,” he explains.
He’s telling me personal things, nothing groundbreaking, but it’s nice that he talks to me like this and not just about work.
Martha returns with coffee for Luther and a glass of water with a wedge of lime for me. I drink some of the water and set the red translucent plastic cup down.
“How are you feeling today?” he asks softly.
“O-okay.”
He studies me carefully. “You sure?”
“I am.” Then I straighten. “Th-thank you. For st-staying with me.”
He tilts his head. “Dot said Finn is your brother. But he said he was your date.”
I meet his eyes, biting back a grin. “He…he’s like a br-brother. We grew up together.”
“Where? Here in SF?” He picks up his coffee and blows on it.
“Oakland.”
“Were you neighbors?”
“Yes.”
I never talk about my private life at work. Only Dot knows—and even she doesn’t know all of it. Mila, whom I genuinely like, knows almost nothing about me beyond what’s professionally necessary.
There are reasons for that.
First, I don’t want to talk about my life. When a few people learned about my past at Stanford, their reactions always fell into one of two categories: pity, which makes my skin crawl, or judgment, which I’m even worse at handling.
Second, I live with a constant, low-grade fear that someone will connect the dots and realize my mother is in prison. That single fact has a way of collapsing everything else about me. I stop being a competent, quiet analyst with a stutter and become a tragic figure with a damaged family.
I don’t have the energy to survive a transformation again—from a lost child from a broken home to a competent adult. Regardless, I want to tell Luther, give him a part of me, because he was there for me yesterday.
“We…grew up in a st-state home.”
His expression doesn’t change from normal to “oh, you poor thing,” instead he asks, “How long have you known each other?”
“We met when I was ten…so e-eighteen years.”
He cocks an eyebrow, smiling. “That’s a long time to be friends.”
I lean back against the leather backrest. “We are family.”
He narrows his eyes, but there’s a twinkle in them. “So, why did he call you his date?”
I give a slow, uncertain shrug. “He likes to play pranks.”
Our food arrives then, rescuing me from twisting myself into a verbal pretzel trying to explain that Finn was testing whether Luther had a crush on me—as I did on him. The thought alone makes my face burn, and I’m grateful for the distraction.
The tomato soup is nourishing, and the grilled cheese is terrific. There’s a reason the Pinecrest Diner has been a San Francisco staple since 1969.
“You like the food?” he asks.
“Very much.” I wipe the corner of my mouth with my napkin. “I’m surprised you come here so often.”
His eyebrows furrow. “Why?”
“You don’t seem like the type who’d enjoy diner fare.”
That catches him off guard. “Really?”
I shrug casually. “Just…you’re a CEO and…y-you know a b-bigshot.”
This amuses him. “A good patty melt, darling, is a good patty melt. And they make it very well here. Of course, it can’t compete with a New York slice, you understand? But it’s the best San Francisco can offer.”
It’s nice to just talk to him.
Conversation comes easily—no effort, no performance. He isn’t stiff or imposing the way he can be at work. I realize he’s one of those people who operates in two modes—the polished professional and the private man. He keeps them carefully compartmentalized, and tonight, I’m with the latter.
After dinner, he asks if he can walk me to my car.
I shake my head. “I don’t have one.”
He does a double-take. “How are you getting home?”
“My b-bike.”
He freezes. “Your…bike?”
“Yes. Haight is not far. Just a fifteen-minute ride.”
His jaw tenses. “Please tell me you don’t ride alone through Haight at night.”
“I do.”
He looks horrified. “No. Absolutely not.”
“It’s f-fine.”
“It’s not.” He leans down so his face is close to mine. I can smell his cologne. “Why don’t you have a car?”
My shoulders slump. “I…I don’t have a license.”
Now, his eyes widen. “How come?”
Damn! Now I have to tell him more about myself, and I don’t want to because it is all embarrassing.
“I…I have anxiety, and driving makes me…anxious. So, I de-decided that I’d just bicycle.”
“And Finn’s okay with this?” he demands.
He’s angry, and I don’t like it. I don’t like the raised voice. I tamp down the first tendrils of disquiet.
I don’t like that he brings up Finn, like he’s my keeper. I want to say, “My transportation isn’t Finn’s business,” instead I mumble, “Of course.”
He shakes his head. “We’ll have to find a safer option.”
We? Who’s this “we” he’s talking about? And why does he care? Why does his care affect me?
When we reach my bicycle parked in the HelixSphere parking garage, he stops dead as I unlock my mint-green bike.
“This is yours?” he sounds incredulous.
“Yes.” I put my hands on the handlebars and brace for judgment.
But he surprises me by smiling. It’s a full-blown one, too, that crinkles the edges of his eyes. “It’s very you.”
Warmth blooms inside me so suddenly that I almost lose my breath.
“See you tomorrow?” he asks as I swing my leg over the seat.
“Yes.”
I pedal away into the night, heart fluttering in a way it never has before.