Sai
Three people are talking to me at once.
Celeste wants to know about the fall show, which gallery, which series, and whether I've spoken to the people at Gagosian or if I'm still considering the space on La Brea. Alistair's assistant is leaning over the shoulder of the man beside me with a tablet angled toward my plate, confirming dates fora campaign shoot I don't remember agreeing to. Another opportunity I'm supposed to crave.
And across the table, half-hidden behind a centerpiece that someone was paid too much to arrange, a cousin whose name I should know is asking whether I've met the Moreau family yet.
Three questions. Three directions. My brain tries to stack them into an order that makes sense but the order won't hold because each one requires a decision I both want and don't want to make, each choice splitting into paths I both need and dread to follow, and the corridors are multiplying faster than I can walk through them, even as part of me longs to run.
"The Gagosian space is beautiful," Celeste says, "but the lighting is wrong for your work. You'd need to gut the east wall."
"The shoot is the fourteenth," the assistant says. "Or the fifteenth. They're flexible, but they need confirmation by Friday."
"Elias Moreau," the cousin says. "He was at the Whitfield thing last month. You must have seen him."
I pick up my water glass, set it down, then pick it up again because putting it down felt wrong. The placement was off for some reason, and now I'm holding a glass of water I don't want while three people wait for three answers I'm supposed to be able to give without thinking.
"I'm in conversation with Gagosian," I tell Celeste, trying to figure out the right words to say. That’s all anyone wants from me anyway. "Friday works," I nod toward the assistant. To the cousin I offer nothing because the queue is empty and my brain is buffering, caught between three open loops it cannot close, and the silence I leave behind is just long enough that I have to fill it with a smile.
The smile works. It always works. The cousin nods and turns away, the loop finally closing and I can breathe again,barely, hating myself for the relief.
Under the table my fingers find the one rhythm that always brings me back to the peace I so desperately crave. Index, middle, ring, pinky. Index, middle, ring, pinky.
Part of me wants to slam my hand on the table, make a scene, and shatter this choreographed performance but I keep tapping. A pattern no one has ever seen because I learned years ago to keep my hands below the surface, to press the panic into something small and repetitive and contained so that the rest of me can continue being the thing this room requires me to be.
Because Hollis Alphas don’t crack. They’re perfect. They’re molded into whatever the family desires and then they perform.
No exceptions.
My mind starts to wander, taking in the dining room and its low light, twenty-two people arranged around a table long enough to land a plane on. I counted when I walked in. I always count. If I know the number, then I know the edges of the room, and if I know the edges of the room then I can calculate how many directions the questions might come from, and the calculation gives me something to hold onto.
Twenty-two is usually manageable. Tonight, though, I want to be anywhere else and nowhere else simultaneously, craving both escape and the approval that keeps me chained here, feeling every single one of them like individual points of heat on a map. Except, my map is full and the legend has run out of symbols.
I let out a small sigh, keeping my shoulders pulled back as I refocus on another point, the untouched plate sitting before me. The salmon was placed in front of me eleven minutes ago—no, twelve now—and I haven't picked up the fork.
I want to eat. I don't want to eat. I want to leave. I want to stay. I want to be seen. I want to disappear.
Picking up the fork means choosing which bite to take first, and my capacity for choosing is currently being consumed by Celeste and the assistant and the cousin and the gallery andthe campaign and the Moreau name that keeps surfacing in my chest like something I swallowed that won't stay down.
I am, to every person at this table, an Alpha in complete command of himself. The silk shirt is correct. The jaw is clean. The posture could be architectural. I have been doing this for so long, performing composure at these dinners, at these events, in these rooms full of people who assess each other like portfolios, that the performance has become structural.
If I stopped, even for a moment, even for the length of a breath, the entire building would come down and everyone would see what's underneath it, which is a man whose brain will not stop sorting and stacking and counting and tapping, a man who is drowning in a room full of people who love him and not one of them knows, because I have made absolutely certain that not one of them can tell.
Sometimes I wish they would notice. Sometimes I'm terrified they will.
A small clank against porcelain steals my attention. One of my cousins, Lyric, is across the table, just one seat over, sending me a silent look of disdain without even actually meeting my eyes.
He hasn't spoken to me all evening, which is how I know he's been watching. I hate him for it. Lyric doesn't do anything without timing it. He is the most patient person I have ever sat across from, and patience in this family is not a virtue but a weapon, the kind that works by waiting until the other person has shown you everything they have before you move.
I have watched him do this to people who thought they were smarter than him, people who talked too much and revealed too much and walked away from the conversation thinking they'd won, never realizing that Lyric had gotten exactly what he came for without saying more than fifteen words.
Lyric smirks before twisting to the woman toward his right, keeping his voice low enough that I can’t make out what he’ssaying. When she laughs, Lyric smiles with his mouth. His eyes are cataloguing something else entirely. I want to call him out on it. I want to learn from it. I want to be nothing like him.I want to be exactly like him.
Frustration builds in my chest as I try to get the chaos in my head under control.
Index, middle, ring, pinky. Tap, tap, tap, tap.
The conversation around us shifts. Celeste turns to someone new. The assistant retreats with his tablet. In the gap that opens, Lyric turns to look at me, suddenly demanding my attention. We’re nearly the same age, Lyric only a few years older than me but the authority he carries within the Hollis family is years beyond me.
