Ray Lin –
His place is too white.
Too clean.
Too quiet.
It's nothing like the rooms I've known. No locked doors. No rotting carpet. No broken glass or cigarette burns on the walls.
The bedroom he gave me is bigger than the apartment I grew up in.
There's a bed. A real one. Soft. Neat. I haven't had my own bed since I was fourteen.
I sit on the edge of it, jacket still clutched around my shoulders. His jacket. It's too big, too warm, too safe. I breathe it in again like I did in the car. The smell still doesn't make sense. Nothing about tonight makes sense.
A soft knock breaks the silence.
Then the door opens—and suddenly I'm not alone.
Three women walk in, smiling gently like they already know not to come too close. All of them dressed in black. Polished. Calm. One's holding a rack of clothes. The other has two bags in each hand. The third pushes in a cart stacked with boxes and bottles and folded towels like I'm in some kind of dream hotel.
"Mr. Blake asked us to bring these," one of them says gently.
I blink.
They start placing things down like it's the most normal thing in the world.
T-shirts. Tops. Dresses. Jeans. Shorts in every length and color. A deep green satin dress that makes me blink twice. A pastel hoodie that feels like a hug.
There's makeup—high-end, expensive, untouched. Foundations, glosses, palettes. Everything.
Shampoo. Conditioner. Five kinds of body wash. A real loofah. Not the scratchy dollar-store ones I used to steal.
There's skincare I've only ever seen on Instagram. Serums and creams and glass jars that sparkle like jewelry. There's perfume. Detangling spray. A pink hairbrush.
Shoes. Heels. Slippers. Fuzzy ones. Black stilettos that make me feel like a woman. Ballet flats that make me feel like a child again.
Everything a girl could ever need.
Everything I never had.
My voice cracks. "All this… it's not a mistake?"
The woman nearest to me smiles. "No mistake, miss. Mr. Blake said to bring you everything. Anything you didn't have."
"But I didn't even ask for—"
"You didn't have to."
They say it like it's simple.
Like this isn't the first time someone's given me something instead of taking it.
When they leave, I sit on the floor, surrounded by everything. I run my fingers over the folded clothes. The bottles. The shoes. It's overwhelming.
I don't know how to deserve this.
I don't even know how to feel it.
But I want to.
God, I want to.
So I pick up the body wash that smells like vanilla and sandalwood, and I walk into the bathroom. And I lock the door—not because I have to, but because I can.
The hot water burns.
But it's the first kind of pain I choose for myself.