And maybe that was the first step. Or maybe it was the last moment before things got worse.
Hard to tell from the inside.
Chapter twenty-three
November hit my bank account like a bus.
Event planning has a rhythm. Summer is weddings. Fall is galas. December is holiday parties. But November is the dead zone. The gap between autumn fundraisers and the corporate holiday season, where nobody’s booking anything, the invoices from October are spent, and the December deposits haven’t landed yet. Most years I skated through it on savings and credit card optimism. This year I didn’t have a cushion because I’d been spending weekends with Ellis instead of hustling for side gigs, and the client who’d been my biggest Q4 contract had pushed their holiday event to January.
Rent was due in twelve days, and I was short by eight hundred dollars.
I didn’t tell Ellis. Didn’t tellThe Chaos Coven. Didn’t tell anyone, because admitting you’re broke when your boyfriend works in tech and your best friend has a steady photography income felt like confessing to a failure that was uniquely mine.
Instead, I picked up two last-minute gigs. A sweet sixteen in Bay Ridge and a product launch for a sparkling water brand that wanted “minimalist vibes” on a budget that was already minimal. I worked both in the same weekend, sleeping four hours between them, and by Monday I’d made enough to cover rent but not enough to pretend everything was fine.
Ellis noticed. Of course he did.
“You look exhausted.” Tuesday at his place, eyes on me the second I walked in. I’d come straight from a meeting with the sparkling water people and I hadn’t eaten since a protein bar at noon.
“Busy week.”
“You’ve had three busy weeks in a row. And you keep checking your phone like you’re waiting for bad news.”
“I’m checking emails. I’m a small business owner. Emails are my life.”
He let it go. For four days.
On Saturday, he found the overdue notice from my electric company on my kitchen counter. I’d left it out because I’d been sorting through bills that morning, trying to figure out which ones could wait and which ones would result in my lights being cut off. The answer was depressing.
“Jett.” He held up the notice. “How behind are you?”
“It’s one bill. I’ll handle it.”
“This is marked final notice. How long has this been going on?”
The look on his face, not judgmental or pitying, just concerned in that steady Ellis way that made it impossible to bullshit him, broke through whatever wall I’d been building.
“Slow season,” I said. “It happens every year. I’ll be fine when December hits.”
“December is three weeks away. What about now?”
“Now is tight. But manageable.”
“Let me help.”
There it was. The offer I’d been dreading. Not because offering was wrong. The offer was rational, kind, and exactly what a partner was supposed to say, and hearing it made me want to crawl out of my own skin.
“I don’t need your money, Ellis.”
“It’s not charity. It’s…”
“Don’t say ‘partnership.’”
“Why not? That’s what it is.”
“Because partnership means equal, and there’s nothing equal about my boyfriend covering my electric bill because I can’t get my shit together during slow season.”
The words came out hotter than I intended. Ellis set the notice down on the counter, carefully, the way he handled things when he was trying not to escalate.
