Sai
The lenses are in the wrong order. The 50mm is sitting in the middle slot where the 85mm belongs. I packed this bag last night at ten-forty the way I have packed it every night for six years, my hands reading the exact weight of each lens without looking because they have never needed to look.
Except last night, Mavi’s music slipped through the wall, vibrating straight into the plaster. He was humming underneaththe melody, and that sound slid down my spine and made my whole body loosen. While my mind drifted to what that humming would feel like against my throat, my chest, and the soft skin inside my thigh, my fingers simply kept moving. They placed the wrong lens in the wrong slot and kept going without me.
I fix the order now. I zip the bag, unzip it, and check everything again. My palm presses flat against the nylon to stop my hand from going back a third time. I quickly glance toward the fridge and decide against embarking on what would be a disaster of being unable to choose, so instead my feet carry me into the studio.
The shadow on the 24mm falls crooked across the label, so I slide it two inches left and then shift the 35mm to compensate. The morning narrows around me while I rearrange objects in tiny increments no one will ever see. Part of me wants to sweep the whole shelf onto the concrete floor, to hear every piece of glass and metal shatter and know what it feels like to leave the mess behind without my chest clamping shut and my vision sharpening at the edges.
My phone buzzes on the nightstand, stealing my attention for a second. The family group chat is already active, everyone performing for one another before eight in the morning. The same sick pull that forces me to recheck the bag drags my thumb across the screen. I scroll through the messages with the numb rhythm I have spent my entire life perfecting.
Alistair: Quarterly board meeting moved to Thursday at 10. Agenda attached. Attendance mandatory.
Tylen: Gallery event still needs final approval on the guest list. Who’s handling the Moreau table?
Phillip: I thought we were pushing it to next month? The lighting install isn’t finished.
Lyric: Elias Moreau asked about you at the Whitfield brunch. I told him you would be in touch.
My jaw locks until my teeth ache. He did not ask. He did not consult. He did not even frame it as a suggestion. He simply decided. He decides everything that way, quietly and without appeal, and then he drops it into the chat like it is already done.
Mom: Wonderful. It’s about time.
The phone flies out of my hand before I have consciously decided to throw it, the crack of the case against the plaster wall sharp in the quiet apartment. A small dark scuff marks the white paint and sends a fresh wave of panic through me that has nothing to do with the Moreaus and everything to do with visible evidence that something is out of place.
My fingers start tapping fast against my thigh.Index, middle, ring, pinky. The rhythm refuses to settle the panic.
I look around the room before stalking back into the living room, failing to get my breathing under control. A dirty mug sits on the counter, the single white mug that is supposed to live on the same exact square every single day, washed and dried and returned the moment it is empty. I never leave shit like that. The sight of it irks me so deeply that my hands shake harder.
The mug is wrong. The scuff is wrong. The lenses are wrong. Lyric decided for me. My mother thinks it is wonderful. Mavi’s humming is still curled inside my ribs and everything is stacking and none of it will settle.
My fingers close around the mug and I sweep it off the edge. It shatters on the tile floor. The sound of it breaking is so catastrophically wrong in this apartment where nothing ever breaks that my knees almost buckle.
White ceramic lies scattered across white tile. Bending down to pick up the pieces would mean choosing which shard to touch first. The act of choosing feels impossible right now. My body simply will not move toward the mess.
Everything else keeps piling on. I am standing in my kitchen half-dressed with broken ceramic at my feet. The worst part is that I cannot make myself move.
The mug needs to be cleaned up. The lenses need to be fixed, I think. The bag needs to be checked once more. The cabinets need to be wiped. The thoughts circle faster and faster until they blur together into one continuous scream inside my skull.
A knock cuts through everything.
“Sai.” Koda’s voice comes through the door. It is not a question and it is not casual. It is the voice he uses when he has already decided something is wrong. “Open the door.”
The knock comes again, harder.
“Sai. You didn’t answer my text or my call and your car is in the lot. Open the door or I’m using my key.”
My feet carry me forward on autopilot. My hand turns the lock and pulls the door open. Koda stands in the hallway with his keys already in his hand and his usual easy expression completely gone from his face.
His eyes track from my face to my hands to the apartment behind me where the broken mug is visible on the kitchen floor. Whatever my expression is doing is apparently bad enough to make Koda Hollis stop pretending everything is fine.
“Okay,” he purrs as he steps inside and closes the door behind him before his arms are around me, pulling me into his chest, one hand on the back of my head pressing my face into his shoulder. He smells like leather and engine grease and pine and underneath it all just Koda, the one person in this family who has never used what he sees against me.
“Breathe,” he says against the top of my head. “Match me. In through the nose.”
His chest expands against mine and my lungs try to follow. They stutter. They catch. The breath hitches in my throat like ithas forgotten how. His hand presses firmer against the back of my skull.
“Again. Slower.”
