The second breath goes deeper. The third goes deeper still. My hands fist in the back of his jacket, gripping the leather so hard my knuckles ache, the shaking starting to migrate outward from my center into my arms and legs.
“There you go,” he murmurs. “There you go, cousin.”
We stand like that for a long time. My breathing eventually syncs with his completely. When he pulls back he keeps one hand on my shoulder. He looks at me with the expression that lives underneath the charm. “What brought this on?”
“It’s not adding up.” My voice sounds like it’s scraped across gravel. “The bag was wrong. The lenses were wrong. Lyric told the Moreau kid I would call him without asking me and my mother thinks it’s wonderful and I broke the mug, Koda. I broke the mug on purpose and I cannot clean it up because the pieces are—”
“Hey.” His hand squeezes my shoulder. “We are not cleaning it up right now. We are getting you dressed and getting in the car.”
“The shoot—”
“Yeah, the shoot. You are going to get behind your camera and your hands are going to be steady because they always are. The rest of this we figure out later.”
He steers me a few steps farther into the apartment with his hand between my shoulder blades. Then, Koda buttons my shirt from the bottom up without comment. I stand there and let him because the alternative is looking at the buttons and choosing which one to start with.
“Shoes,” he says, pointing at the closet. The single direction cuts through the noise the way a single direction always does. One task. No options. My feet find the black ones closest to the door and Koda nods.
“Bag?”
“On the bed.”
My hand twitches toward the zipper but Koda picks up the bag before I can check it again. He slings it over his own shoulder.
“Alright.” He opens the front door and waits. “Let’s go. You are going to be brilliant today because you are always brilliant and when you are done we are going to talk about the mug and the bag and whatever else is making your brain do this. But right now we are going to the car.”
The hallway is quiet. The door next to mine is closed and silent. I don’t let myself look at it as Koda steers me toward the elevator with his hand on my back and the camera bag on his shoulder. In the car my hand finds the bag on the backseat, my fingers already going to the zipper.
“That is defcon two, cousin.” Koda says it lightly with his eyes on the road, but underneath the easy tone there is the same something that was in his voice at my door.
“I’m fine.”
“You broke a mug and you were only half dressed. For you, Mr. ‘everything has to be perfect’? That isnotfine.”
The silence that follows is the kind where I almost tell him everything. The Omega. The cam. The wall. The photographs. The way my hands forgot their job because my brain was busy imagining what humming feels like against his skin. Ialmosttell Koda but saying it out loud means it exists outside of my apartment and if it exists outside my apartment then I have to do something about it.
“The Moreau thing is getting worse,” I say instead. Just one of many things that can get my mind off of Mavi.
“Lyric is an asshole,” Koda pushes back. It’s the most direct thing I’ve ever heard him say about a family member which tells me he saw the group chat too. “We’ll deal with it.”
The studio appears two blocks north of the production company where my Doll is shooting today. No one knows but me, everyone believing that it’s just a run of the mill location change. In reality, everything about this place is on purpose and after this morning, I desperately need to see him.
“Why here?” Koda asks, looking at the building. “You usually book the place on Seventh.”
“The lighting is better.” It’s not. It’s worse and I’ll have to work harder to ensure I produce the perfect pictures.
He studies me for one beat longer than the answer warrants, then lets it go. “Eat something today,” he says as I grab the bag from the backseat. My hand twitches toward the zipper one more time before I stop it. “And Sai?”
I look at him through the open door.
“Your hands are going to be steady. They always are.”
The shoot is going fine until it is not. Behind the camera my hands stay steady. My model hits every mark. The light behaves exactly as I calculated it would. For the first two hours, the broken mug on my kitchen floor might as well not exist.
Then Priya holds up the grey backdrop with a questioning look. My mouth opens to answer. Nothing comes out. The silence stretches. Two seconds. Three. Priya’s eyes flicker to my face with a confused expression that slowly morphs into a concerned one.
“Grey works,” I manage.
She pulls the backdrop without comment, though that look stays on her face for the rest of the setup. I’m not supposed to show anyone the cracks in my façade and yet… I can’t help it.
