Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Sammie
Morning learns my name and says it too gently, like it’s trying not to scare me back into last night.
I wake in my own bed and for a disorienting heartbeat I’m angry at my ceiling for being my ceiling—flat white, the tiny crack I’ve been promising myself I’ll fix, the shadow from the streetlamp cutting the room on a diagonal.
It should be hotel wallpaper and a blackout curtain breathing city glow; it should be the hush of a place built for secrets.
Instead it’s my room, my radiator, my life arranged exactly as I left it before I walked into a night I can’t return.
I stretch and the memory in my muscles stretches with me: his weight braced at my side, the careful pressure of his hand saying I’m here, the way my body finally answered back with something other than a double-locked door.
My chest pulls tight, not with regret, not with fear—though both are alive and pacing—but with that uncovered tenderness I’m still learning how to carry in daylight.
Coffee first. Movement. Make the animal of morning obey.
The kitchen is winter-quiet; the mug I reach for is the one with the tiny chip on the rim, my mother’s old favorite.
I press my thumb to the chip without thinking, the way you worry a scab to check if you’re healed.
The smell of dark roast and cinnamon lifts into the air, and for a second I see the gala like a movie playing across my cupboard doors: glittering donors, the check-in line curving like a river, the lighting I fought for making faces look softer than consciences.
Three days. That’s the line on the calendar.
Three days until I stand in a dress I chose with eyes open and a name on my wrist no one can read unless I let them.
The phone buzzes against the counter. I do not jump. I do not act like a woman whose entire circulatory system has moved into her messages. I sip. I make myself walk over like the text is from a vendor with a normal question.
Unknown: North corridor. Two minutes. If no, type any word that isn’t my name.
I stare at the letters long enough to map each one onto a part of my body that still remembers his mouth.
The instruction is not an instruction; it’s permission wearing a jacket that looks like control to people who don’t own that word.
He knows I’m not a morning corridor kind of girl; he knows I’m a calendar and a clipboard and a woman who likes plans written down in ink.
He still asks. That’s the part that makes me ache.
Me: No.
Me: Later.
Two messages, clean as a boundary. The three dots appear. Disappear. The absence of complaint feels like a hand on the back of my neck saying good girl without making me want to run through a wall.
I shower with the door cracked to let the steam escape; it curls around the mirror like a shy animal.
When I wipe a circle with my wrist, my face looks back with more oxygen in it than most Decembers have offered.
“Hi,” I tell her. She lifts her chin. We agree to be the same person in the kitchen and the corridor and the ballroom.
I pick navy. Not because he asked, not because of the ribbon, but because blue makes me feel like weather that can be generous and still demand a coat.
Jeans, turtleneck, hair up. The ribbon stays on the dresser for a beat too long, theatrical.
I roll it between my fingers, the velvet dragging against my skin with that familiar combination of luxury and trouble.
I loop it under my cuff and leave the tails tucked. Not hidden. Not obvious. Mine.
The rink lobby always smells like popcorn at this hour, even when no one’s popped anything yet.
It’s a ghost scent, warm and buttery and oddly bureaucratic.
The plastic garlands survived another night; one bow droops like it had too much to drink.
I fix it with two fingers and the satisfaction of tiny order.
The vending machine hums its constant low E.
Somewhere behind glass, edges scrape ice into confession.
“Early,” Dad says from behind me, and it’s a greeting and a test and a history lesson all at once.
“Couldn’t stay home,” I answer, and when I turn he’s in the jacket I bought him last year because the old one made him look like a man who’d given his best coat to a fire.
He studies my face like it’s a scouting report. He isn’t looking for guilt; he’s looking for fatigue, the kind that becomes sloppiness. I let him find only what I want found: a woman who slept enough to be dangerous.
“Final vendor confirmations?” he asks.
“In your inbox,” I say. “PR wants the run-of-show by noon.”
“They’ll get it when it’s right.”
“It’s right now,” I say, and the banter lands us on the narrow plank we can both walk without falling: respect disguised as sniping.
He nods toward the whiteboard in his office. “Five minutes, then I need to be on the ice.”
We stand shoulder to shoulder in front of columns of names and arrows. He taps an empty square. “Auction showstopper?”
I know what he’s fishing for. “Not dinner with the captain.”
His mouth twitches despite himself. “Good.”
“Pierce Langley added a cabin weekend,” I offer. “Ridiculously cozy, his words, not mine.”
“Cozy makes wives feral,” Dad says gravely, as if he’s warning me about a forecheck.
“Already budgeted for broken heels,” I say. “We’ll put the basket by the tree. He’ll feel like Santa.”
He grunts approval and hates that he’s amused by my competence; he hates that the amusement comes mixed with dread. I put a hand on the edge of the board to steady both of us. “We’re ready,” I tell him. “And I’m not a variable you have to outcoach.”
He doesn’t answer for a beat. When he does, it’s not coach. “I know who you are, Samantha.”
“Do you?” I ask, and it isn’t defiance; it’s an invitation.
He opens his mouth and closes it again, like the sentence he’s chewing would turn into a prayer if he let it out. “Don’t ask me to bless something I can only permit,” he says finally. “It’ll make me worse at both.”
I nod because it’s mercy for both of us to acknowledge that truth out loud. “I’m not asking that.”
“Good,” he says. “Then let’s go to work.”
The rink swallows him the way churches swallow pastors—whole and holy and convinced of purpose.
I watch him for one extra beat because I am a girl who learned to love by watching a man commit to it like a profession.
Then I turn toward my office and the spreadsheets that make other people’s generosity visible.
The day lifts and settles in equal measure.
Two volunteers cancel; one texts to say her kid has a fever and the other simply ghosts.
The caterer calls to ask if I want the cocoa bar before or after speeches; I tell him after and he blesses me through the phone like I saved him from a massacre of marshmallows.
The florist sends a photo of garlands that are, in fact, asymmetrical in the way I requested; I send a heart back and then delete it because I’m not that girl.
The DJ tries to sneak a novelty carol into the early playlist; I remind him this is an event, not a mall.
He sends a skull emoji and then a thumbs-up, because men like him don’t know which face to put on respect.
Between calls, my phone sits face-down on the desk like a trained animal. When it buzzes, I let it. Twice. Three times. On the fourth, I flip it and treat myself like a person who makes choices on purpose.
Unknown: I’m leaving the north corridor alone like you asked.
Unknown: This is me being good.
Unknown: And this is me hating it.
I bite back the noise that wants to escape. The office door is closed; I could let the sound out and no one would hear. I don’t, because I like the way discipline feels when it’s self-chosen.
Me: Good looks beautiful on you.
Me: I’ll tell you when to be worse.
The dots appear and vanish once, twice, three times. I can feel, across the building, the way he’s pacing and not pacing, the way he learns patience like he learned skating—by falling a thousand times and calling it practice.
Unknown: Copy.
Unknown: Your father just told a rookie to “hydrate like you love yourself.” I’m stealing it.
I laugh, the unguarded kind that makes my shoulders drop. I type do it and drop the phone into my drawer like a superstition.
By early afternoon, the building is a throat clearing itself.
The practice squad tromps past my door in that post-ice swagger that is half exhaustion and half relief.
A junior staffer asks where we keep extra tape; I send him to the cupboard above the microwave where all good intentions go to die.
The PR lead knocks and stands just inside the doorway like she’s afraid to bring the outside world into my sanctum. “Photo placements?” she asks.
“Tree, entry columns, team wall,” I say, pointing. “No step-and-repeat by the concession stand; we’re not a prom.”
She grins like I fed her something hot and spicy. “God, I love when you’re ruthless.”
“Tell that to my father,” I mutter.
“He already knows,” she says, and is gone in a flash of ponytail and competence.
The equipment room is my last stop before I let myself sit.
I promised the manager I’d count the extra cords and label the surge protectors because his wife is eight months pregnant and he hasn’t slept a full night in weeks.
The room smells like rubber and oil and clean sweat; it’s always been a comfort, a place where function wins over flourish.
I kneel among plastic bins and sharpies and the residue of lives spent hitting walls on purpose, and the thought arrives that I am happiest in rooms like this—backstage, practical, hands busy with things that become invisible once the show starts.
“Don’t sneak up on me,” I say without looking up, because the skin between my shoulder blades just taught me a new language.
“I tried not to,” Triston replies softly. “You still felt me.”