Page 163 of The Clinch
The driver steps out, takes my bag, opens the door. “Good morning, Ms. Adler.”
“Morning.”
I slide into the backseat and watch the city wake up through tinted glass. Delivery trucks. Runners. Two teenage girls walking a dog. A man in a suit already furious with his phone.
The morning belongs to everybody at once. It feels open. Unscripted. Full of tiny choices.
I take a sip of coffee and try not to notice how quickly the morning stops feeling like mine.
By the time we cross into Manhattan, I’ve almost convinced myself I’m overreacting. Travis used the same language of care until my world narrowed around him. But Leo is not Travis.
I hold on to that and get out of the car.
The week continuesin the same rhythm.
Wednesday, Eden ambushes me with dinner in the East Village. She feeds me, makes me laugh, makes med school sound survivable. For an hour, it feels like an exhale.
Under the relief, I didn’t choose this either. My afternoon had started to open, and then it was spoken for.
Thursday, Nate swings by campus because he’s heading to Brooklyn anyway. Friday, the car is there again.
Each time, I tell myself it’s kindness. Each time, my body calls it something else.
A few days later, I come out of small group into one of those impossible September afternoons that makes the city look like a movie set. Clear. Gold. Perfect.
I decide I’m keeping my own evening this time. Iced tea on my way to the subway. Then reading at home.
My phone buzzes.
Before I can even look at the screen, dread punches through me.
UNKNOWN
Hey. It’s Lukas. Headed back to Brooklyn. Leo said you might need a ride if you’re still at school
I’m close by
I stop cold.
The whole week rearranges itself in my head with precise, terrible logic. The car in the mornings. Nate and Eden appearing at exactly the right times. The ease of it. The way every path keeps bending before I can touch it.
Not kindnesses.
A system.
I stand there while students flow around me toward the avenue, my pulse loud in my throat.
Lukas.
Not Eden, who loves me enough to bulldoze. Not a driver with no stake in this. Lukas, from Leo’s world. Leo’s camp. Leo’s side of everything.
It’s so obvious that for one second, I feel stupid.
Then I feel rage.
I type back with shaking hands.
LIZ
