Heat floods my cheeks. “I... I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have... You know what, forget the latte.”
I turn and hurry off, pushing through the door so fast I nearly collide with someone coming in. Muttering an apology, I stumble onto the sidewalk.
The harbour air is heavy and humid, salt and diesel tangling together with the smell of roasting nuts from a cart nearby. I grab onto a streetlight like it’s a life raft, trying to catch my breath and wishing I could undo the last few minutes.What the hell was that?I don’t explode at strangers. I’m the girl who says “excuse me” when someone elbows me in the ribs on the subway, who tips twenty percent even when the service is terrible. I don’t have public meltdowns in coffee shops full of strangers.
Except apparently, I do now.
I just wanted a coffee, one small taste of normal. Should’ve known that was too much to ask.
A deep horn bellows in the distance. Across the water, the Staten Island Ferry glides toward Manhattan—the same ferry I used to take every morning to work, back when I had a job to go to. Beyond it, the skyline gleams like a postcard, all possibility and promise.
But I know better now. I know how quickly it can all fall apart.
My chest tightens. I can’t keep doing this. Can’t keep pretending I’m okay in a city where even a coffee run can turn into a public execution.
I need to get away from here. At least until this whole mess blows over and people find something else to gossip about.
Twenty minutes later, I’m pulling into my parents’ driveway, tyres crunching over the same cracked concrete I learned to rollerblade on. The pale blue clapboard house hasn’t changedsince I was a kid. White porch railings, Mom’s overgrown hydrangeas spilling over them, the gnome by the steps standing guard.
I moved back in with my parents after my ex and I crashed and burned. Just a temporary arrangement, of course, or so I assured them. That was seven months ago.
Yeah. Living the dream, right?
When I step inside, the cool blast of air conditioning hits me, carrying with it the smell of fresh-baked cookies and a hint of lemon cleaner.
“Blair? That you?” Mom calls from the kitchen.
“Yeah.” I close the door behind me and lean against it, suddenly drained.
“You okay?” She pokes her head out, apron dusted with flour, bangs sticking to her forehead.
“Fine,” I say automatically, then pause. “Actually, you know what? Not fine. Really, really not fine.”
“Oh, sweetheart. Hold on, let me get this apron off so I can hug you properly. Come through here.” She ushers me into the kitchen, where snickerdoodles cool on a rack. She tugs off her apron and gathers me close, holding on like she can squeeze the not-fine right out of me. “What happened?”
“Well—”
“Oh, hi, Blair.” Dad appears in the doorway, reading glasses perched on his nose, probably fresh from cross-checking some cousin twice removed in his family tree. He’s always elbow-deep in an obsession, and right now it’s genealogy. “Everything okay?”
I tell them about the barista who wouldn’t drop it, the woman who recognised me, my spectacular meltdown in front of an entire coffee shop. “And I left without even collecting my coffee,” I finish.
“Well, that I can fix,” Mom says. “One coffee coming right up. And a cookie.”
“And if you can set up a meeting with your old boss,” Dad says, “I’ll fix something else. By introducing his jaw to my fist.” He flexes his hand.
“Dad!” I scoff. Violence isn’t in his vocabulary, unless you count shouting at the Maple Leafs from our couch. Dad’s Canadian. Mom too. Me as well, technically, though we moved to New York when I was six months old.
A few minutes later we’re all at the kitchen table, each with coffee and a cookie. Mom leans in a little, offering a small, encouraging smile as if to say she’s right here if I need her. Dad peers at me over the rim of his mug, glasses sliding down his nose.
“I think... I need to get away for a while,” I admit, twisting one of my rings around and around my finger. “New York is just too much right now. I need to go somewhere no one’s heard of the app, or of me.”
Mom rests her hand on top of mine. She and Dad exchange a look, but neither speaks. Not yet. They’re giving me space.
“Before, I’d have gone to Toronto. Stayed with Granny and filled up on clootie dumpling and reruns of Bake Off until the world made sense again. But...” My throat tightens. “That’s not an option anymore.”
Mom’s face softens. “I know, sweetheart. I miss her too.”
I take a gulp of coffee. In less than a year, a breakup, a funeral, and a pink slip. My very own hat trick of heartbreaks. From years of editing children’s books, I know how often writers build things around threes. Trust me, it’s a lot less charming when you’re the one starring in the story.
