Everything I touched reminded me of something.
That's the problem with packing up a life. You think you're moving objects — clothes, shoes, the accumulated material of a person — and then you pick up the wrong thing, and suddenly it's not an object anymore. It's a Tuesday afternoon two years ago. It's a voice you can't hear anymore. It's the specific, airless feeling of grief arriving without its manners, in the middle of a perfectly functional morning, because grief has never once cared about your schedule.
I was standing in my closet holding the Kelly bag when it happened.
---
My mother had her hands behind her back, smiling the way she did when she was pleased with herself — which was often, and always completely justified.
"*I have a surprise for you.*"
I was fifteen and vibrating. "*Is it the JJ Quinn tattoo? Just her face, really small, somewhere totally discreet—*"
"*No tattoos.*"
"*Her autograph—*"
"*No.*"
"*Her name. Just her name, I'll put it—*"
"*You're going to be tattoo-less, Asia. Probably forever.*"
I had sulked with the full commitment of someone who believed this was genuinely tragic. She had let me. She always let me sulk long enough to feel heard and not long enough to become boring, which was one of the small arts of mothering her that I had catalogued without knowing I was cataloguing.
Then she brought her hands forward, and I forgot everything.
Burnt orange. Structured. The hardware catching the light like it was making a statement. Hermès — new, from the current season, wrapped in the particular confidence of something that didn't need to announce itself.
"*Look at this heart-stopper, darling.*"
I already had my hands out. "*Now I'll show Regina.*"
She laughed — full and warm and entirely unbothered by the fact that she was actively helping her fifteen-year-old daughter wage social warfare. "*Yes, baby. I saw how she rubbed that Versace Medusa in your face at the club last month. Every single person was looking at her.*"
"*Kill her with this,*" she said, pressing the bag into my hands. Her expression was the one that meant she was enjoying herself completely. "*This is me gracing you with feminine power.*"
"*Is it okay to curse now?*"
"*No.*"
"*You just told me to—*"
"*I said kill her. Metaphorically. We don't want your father giving us a lecture about how our words contribute to our formed personality.*" She did his voice exactly right — the precise cadence, the slight formality. I burst out laughing.
"*That was savage.*"
"*I have my moments.*" She put her hands on my shoulders and looked at me, and her face had that thing in it that her face sometimes had — the love, yes, but underneath the love something that looked like it was already carrying the future. Like she was trying to memorise me. "*Thank you, Mom. I love you.*"
"*Love you too, Asia.*"
---
I opened my eyes.
Martha's face was close. Her hands were on my arms, and my cheeks were wet, and the Kelly bag was still in my hands, and the closet was just a closet again.
"*Mi amor.*" Her voice was careful in the way it got careful when she was afraid of what she might find. "Are you alright?"
I set the bag down. Stood up. Grabbed the cardigan from the coat rack without looking at it and shoved my hands into the pockets and found the keys already there — the keys to the car in the garage I wasn't technically supposed to take alone — and my phone from the nightstand.
"I have to go," I said.
"Asia—"
"I can't talk right now." I was already moving. I heard her ask where I was going, heard the worry in it — that specific frequency she only used when something had genuinely frightened her — and I left anyway.
I need you to understand that this was not cruelty. It was the only self-preservation available to me at that moment. Sometimes you can either deal with the feeling or deal with the person watching you have it, and I couldn't do both.
---
The cemetery was cold.
I parked where I could already see the headstone from the car and sat there for a moment, hands on the wheel, looking at it through the windshield. The distance felt like a negotiation — if I stayed in the car I could still pretend I was fine. The moment I walked out, I wasn't.
I walked out.
Someone had left fresh flowers. White ones, just beginning to turn at the edges. I stood there and looked at them and thought about the fact that other people remembered her too — that her life extended beyond me, had touched other people, had left marks I would never fully know the shape of — and that thought cracked something open that I'd been keeping sealed since the plane.
I cried the way you can only cry when you're certain no one is watching. Not the composed version, not the manageable version. The real one — loud and ugly and without any dignity whatsoever. My knees went and I let them, and I sat on the cold grass next to my mother's grave and came completely apart.
An old man tapped my shoulder eventually. Caretaker, from the look of him — weathered face, unhurried eyes, the specific gentleness of someone who had witnessed enough grief to stop being uncomfortable near it.
"It's alright, miss," he said. "Let it all out." He patted my shoulder once and left me to it.
I stayed for an hour.
I talked to her. About the trip, about New York, about Freya — which I knew was petty and said anyway because she would have understood the pettiness. About Martha and Art and the Kelly bag and the life I was packing up tomorrow. I told her I was going to be fine even though I wasn't entirely sure. She would have called me out on the uncertainty and also told me to go anyway. She was very good at holding both things at once.
The air felt different when I stood up. Less sealed. More liveable.
I drove home.
---
Martha was in the hallway directing a kind of controlled fury at one of the maids when I came through the door.
This is her stress response: find an external target, redirect everything outward, escalate steadily into Spanish. The maid was practically vibrating with the effort of staying still. I watched from the doorway for a moment before the laugh escaped me.
Martha spun around.
The look.
I prepared myself for the full weight of it — the Spanish, the gesturing, the specific volume she reserves for when she's been genuinely worried and is choosing to express it as anger because anger is more manageable than fear. She delivered. I kept my face as neutral as I could until the Spanish overtook her entirely, at which point the effort became physically impossible and I cracked up.
Full volume. Genuinely uncontrollable.
She stopped mid-sentence.
The silence was worse than the yelling.
"I went to see Mom," I said.
Martha went very still.
The anger left her like air from a slow puncture. She looked at me for a moment — just looked, the way she looks when she's taking inventory of damage — and then she exhaled.
"*Mocosa mimada,*" she said quietly. Spoiled brat. But gently. The way you say things you mean as comfort and disguise as criticism because the love would be too much otherwise. "Upstairs. Make sure everything's packed properly. Come down for something to eat."
"It's noon."
"Then it's brunch."
"I was thinking we combine everything into one enormous—"
She reached for my head. I ducked and ran up the stairs before she could decide whether to laugh or smack me. Behind me I heard her say something to the maid — dismissive, almost fond — and then nothing.
I took the stairs two at a time.
---
Arthur texted while I was finishing the bags.
*On my way.*
I sent back a thumbs up and kept moving, pulling the last of the closet together with the slightly manic efficiency of someone who has been emotional all morning and is now converting it into productivity. I was thinking about Martha's theory — about Art, about the way he looked at me — and I was doing the thing I always do with thoughts I don't want, which is move faster than them.
It almost worked.
His voice came up the stairs when he arrived. "Hey, I'm here."
"Almost done," I called.
I came out of the closet for my laces.
He was sitting on the edge of the bed.
Or I thought he was. I assumed he was doing what he always did — phone in hand, easy and unhurried, giving me room to finish. But he wasn't looking at his phone.
He was looking at me.
I was in a mid-thigh chemise. This had never been a thing. Arthur had seen me in various states of undress for years — sleepovers, changing rooms, the summer in Greece when half our wardrobes stayed in a bag for a week — and it had never been a thing. It was not supposed to be a thing.
Except his mouth was slightly open.
And his eyes were doing something they were not supposed to do.
I should have made a joke. I should have said something sharp and deflecting and moved us quickly back to the version of ourselves where this wasn't happening. I had the line available. I opened my mouth.
I said nothing.
He stood. Crossed the room slowly. Stopped in front of me close enough that I could smell his cologne — cedar and something warmer underneath, the specific smell I associated with every important memory of the last three years.
His hands went behind his back. That gesture. The composed one, the Arthur-in-control one. He leaned in until his mouth was at my ear.
"Why do you always do this?" Very low. "I'm not made of wood, Asia. Being your friend doesn't mean I don't *want* you."
The room temperature changed in a way that had nothing to do with the thermostat.
"It takes everything I have not to do something about it." He pulled back just enough to look at me properly. His eyes were very clear and very serious and nothing about his expression was performing anything. "Tell me — what is stopping me?"
I had an answer. Several, technically. The word *friendship* was in there somewhere, and *three years* and *you're the most important person in my life and I won't let us destroy it for forty-five seconds of—*
He kissed my neck.
My brain and my body filed a formal disagreement.
My body won briefly. I will not pretend otherwise. There were approximately forty-five seconds where Arthur was not my best friend and I was not making any responsible decisions, and the sound I made is something I took to my grave mentally.
Then something in me found the relevant gear.
I pushed him back. He stopped the moment I moved — immediately, completely, no resistance — because Arthur has always known exactly when to stop, which has always been one of his best qualities and was in this moment profoundly unhelpful because it meant I couldn't be angry at him for *not* stopping.
I slapped him anyway.
Not hard. Enough.
"*What the hell*, Art." My voice came out steadier than I deserved. "We are supposed to be *friends.*"
"I know." He touched his cheek. Looked genuinely ashamed. "I lost control. I'm sorry."
"You think that's a reason?"
"It didn't mean anything," he said. And then, slightly too quickly: "It won't happen again."
I looked at him.
*It didn't mean anything.*
Something landed wrong about those four words and I filed it immediately, efficiently, into the section of my brain I kept for things I intended to examine later, which was full and getting fuller.
"I can't lose you," I said, finally. "You're my best friend. I'm not blowing that up."
He nodded. And again. "Asia and Arthur. Asian-Art. Nothing changes."
"Nothing changes," I said.
We were both lying.
We both knew it.
We hugged, and it lasted a second too long, and then we let go and went downstairs and did not speak of it again, which was our specific and practiced method of survival.
---
The ride to the airport was deliberately, aggressively normal.
I made it that way. I talked too much about nothing — his Oxford schedule, our visit plans, the number of times we'd decided we'd make the Atlantic crossing before Christmas. He played along because Art knew when I needed the performance and always had the grace to perform it with me.
We stopped for ice cream. He made me laugh three times, genuinely, the way only he could. By the time we reached departures the wound had enough surface over it to function.
Arthur's mother was in San Francisco. Had been bedridden for five years — the particular trajectory of a long illness that had rearranged his whole life before he was old enough to have finished building it. He'd come to live with his cousin Jake in Washington when she got bad. Jake was extraordinarily good-looking and Art and I had spent a genuinely embarrassing amount of time arguing about that.
I thought about this on the way to the gate. About how Art moved through the world with a specific braced quality — like someone who had learned early that things could simply be taken, without warning, without reason, and had built his whole architecture around that knowledge.
We kept the goodbye short. We'd agreed on this — no movie-scene dramatics, no extended speeches. We'd rehearsed it once, laughing at ourselves, agreeing that film goodbyes were embarrassing and we were better than that.
I hugged him. Firm and quick. Walked away first.
Didn't look back.
I was proud of myself for approximately four minutes. Then I sat in the first-class cabin and the absence of him settled in like weather.
I bothered the flight attendant five times about my luggage.
Eventually I slept.
---
New York at dusk looked exactly like its reputation.
I stepped off the plane and breathed the air first — I'd read somewhere that arriving in a new city with intention mattered, that the breath was the beginning — and it hit me differently than Washington. More urgent. Less interested in being subtle. The smell of a city that had been running at full speed for three hundred years and hadn't considered slowing down.
Sam was late.
I waited with a porter and three bags and the accumulated weight of an entire day and decided I didn't like him before he arrived. When he did arrive — mid-thirties, auburn hair, an expression that communicated precisely nothing — he moved my bags without a word and opened the car door with the specific efficiency of someone operating professionally rather than personally.
I got in.
He drove.
The city moved past the windows in its enormous indifferent way, and I watched it and thought about the fact that not a single person in this place knew my name.
That was either terrible or perfect.
I hadn't decided.
His eyes moved to the mirror twice. I caught both of them. He stopped on the third.
Dad's message came through somewhere on the highway: *Sam says you arrived safe. See you at the weekend, honey. You're going to do great.*
I looked at the back of Sam's head.
He'd reported to my father already. Within minutes of my landing. Not in an alarmed way — in the way of someone with an arrangement.
*Confirmed,* I thought. *He's watching me.*
I filed this, and looked out the window, and had approximately forty seconds of ordinary quiet before my phone buzzed with a number I didn't recognize.
---
**# welcome back, Asia.**
I stared at the screen.
**# I want you in a skirt tomorrow.**
The phrasing was the thing. Not threatening, not obviously wrong — just casual and possessive in a way that had no business being casual. Like familiarity that hadn't been earned. Like someone who had decided how this conversation would go before it started.
**\* who is this**
**# your one and only.**
I let that sit for a moment.
**\* do I know you**
**# used to.**
**\* how do you know me**
**# not important.**
I blocked the number.
Thirty seconds.
New number.
**# you sure about that? you'll regret this. I'll see you tomorrow. At school.**
I blocked that one too and put the phone face-down on my lap and looked at the city going past the windows.
*At school.*
So whoever this was — a bored rich kid, a rival's game, someone my father had stepped on who wanted to rattle me — would be at Ambrose tomorrow. In the same building. In the same hallways.
I catalogued everything I felt about this.
Annoyed: yes.
Worried: I would not be giving that particular word real estate tonight.
I turned the music up in my earphones and watched New York eat the last of the daylight and told myself it was nothing and mostly believed it.
Mostly.
The car pulled into a driveway through a set of tall gates, and the house beyond them was large and lit and entirely unfamiliar, and this was my life now.
*Tomorrow,* I thought. *First day. New city. New school.*
And somewhere out there, in those same halls — a number I'd blocked twice and a voice I hadn't heard yet and the specific, unsettling confidence of someone who already knew my name.
*I'll see you tomorrow.*
I got out of the car.
I walked inside.
I did not look back.