Page 94 of Boardroom Mask

My face blushes as I remember that lie, one of a billion similar ones I’ve told since Weston and I first became friends and I started my wholeSexually Liberated Jillshtick to keep the heat off me. “That’s different.”

“How?!” asks Weston, incredulous.

“It just is, okay? I’m not talking about this anymore.” I turn around as if to go back to work, but Weston makes no move to do the same. I can feel the heat of his gaze on the back of my neck. I shrug my shoulders and pray that the high collar of my blouse hides the lines of Kir’s belt, because if Weston sees that, his inquisition will know no end.

This is getting harder, though. I can feel the performance cracking around the edges. Two weeks ago, this would’ve been easy. I would’ve leaned into the bit, made a joke about Kir’s jawline, asked Weston to DM him on my behalf, played the whole thing for laughs. That version of the routine used to come so naturally I didn’t even have to think about it.

But now, there’s a handkerchief in my pocket and belt marks on my throat, and the breezy deflection that used to fit so well feels two sizes too small.

“You’re being weird,” Weston decides. “Weirder than usual, even.” He narrows his eyes, then drops his voice into a concerned register. “Jill… Did something happen at that hospital event? You’ve been off ever since.”

I shake my head without looking back at him. “Nothing happened. I’m just tired.”

Weston squints at me for another few seconds, then sighs and shrugs. “Fine. Keep your secrets.” He rolls his chair back to his side. “But for the record, you’re a terrible liar.”

I turn back to my screen. Once upon a time, he would’ve been wrong: I used to be averygood liar.

Not anymore, it seems.

After a long and incredibly unproductive day, I leave the office at six and take the long way home. I don’t plan the detour; my feet just go where they go, and by the time I realize where I’m headed, I’m already crossing into the park with the last bit of daylight bleeding out behind the buildings. The air is cold enough to sting my cheeks and I should’ve worn a heavier coat, but I keep walking.

The playground is emptier than it was on Thanksgiving. But on the swings, a woman is pushing a little girl. The girl is four, maybe five. Her brown hair is tied up in two stubby pigtails and she’s wearing a purple coat with a fur-trimmed hood and rain boots with daisies. She kicks her legs on the upswing and squeals every time she reaches the top of the arc. Her mother catches the chains on the backswing, gives another push, and says something I can’t hear from here. The girl throws her head back and laughs, the purest sound I’ve ever heard.

I wrap my fingers through the chain-link fence.

I do the math in my head, same as I always do. Five years and three months, if I’m being exact, and I’m always being exact, because the math is the only thing I let myself cling to. Everything else, I gave away. A hospital bracelet on a tiny, chubby wrist—gone.

The girl on the swing has brown hair. Hers would have been red. I’m almost sure of it. My mother was a redhead. My grandmother was a redhead. It runs in the blood so deep that I can’t imagine it skipping a generation just because the other half of the equation was dark-haired and monstrous.

She’d have freckles across the bridge of her nose. She’d be stubborn. She’d be loud.

She’d bemine.

I don’t cry. I used to, whenever I came by here and did exactly what I’m doing right now, but I’ve trained that out of myself. Crying is a door, and once you open it in a place this public, it’s almost impossible to shut it again.

The mother looks over. Our eyes meet across thirty feet of woodchips and rubber matting, and I watch her face change when she sees me staring. She stops the swing mid-arc, scoops the girl off the seat, and walks briskly toward the jungle gym on the far side of the playground. The girl protests, reaching back toward the swings, but her mother doesn’t slow down.

I look down at my hands. My knuckles are white around the chain-link, fingers threaded through the diamond-shaped gaps so tightly the metal has left red grooves in my skin.

I can’t really blame her. I feel a rush of guilt and shame all at once. A woman standing alone at a playground fence, watching a child that isn’t hers… I know what that looks like. I know exactly what that mother just saw when she looked at me, because I would’ve done the same thing. Any good mother would.

I let go of the fence. The grooves in my fingers fill back in slowly, red fading to pink.

I turn around and walk home. I don’t look back at the playground, no matter how bad I want one more glimpse of a happy little girl and the mother who loves her.

My building comes into view and I dig for my keys, head down, still shaking off the lingering feeling left behind by theplayground. It’s like a residue that sticks to my skin and makes it cold and clammy. I take the stairs up, then slip inside my apartment.

I drop my bag on the counter and kick off my shoes, the usual ritual. Then I hear a tap on glass.

He’s on the fire escape. No mask tonight. Just Kir as himself, sitting on the metal grating with his back against the brick, one knee drawn up, wearing a dark sweater and jeans.

I unlatch the window.

“You wanted access,” he says instead of a greeting. “Let’s talk.”

I step back and let him climb through. He stands in my kitchen, full height, and I feel the familiar twin surges of bothwhat am I doingandhow could I ever stop. So I open the cabinet and pull down two glasses and the whiskey.

“Okay,” I say as I pour one for me and one for him. “Talk.”