Page 139 of Suite 7

25 Vera

I stand outside Sloane’s apartment building with two bags of bagels, a carrier of coffee, and a weight behind my ribs I’ve been carrying since midnight.

It’s eight AM. The earliest I could reasonably show up without it being suspicious.

Twelve hours since Kane told me about the phone call. Twelve hours of me staring at her unread texts.

She needed me and I wasn’t there.

I press the buzzer.

“Hello?” Sloane’s voice, scratchy with sleep.

“It’s me. I brought bagels and apologies.”

A pause. Then the door buzzes open.

Her apartment is on the third floor. I take the stairs. I need the extra seconds. Need to remember who I am when I walk through her door. Who I’ve always been to her.

The door opens before I can knock.

Sloane’s in pajama pants and an oversized sweatshirt, hair in a messy bun, mascara smudged under her eyes like she cried herself to sleep. The sight of it punches the air from my lungs.

“Hey.” No warmth. Just acknowledgment.

“Hey.” I hold up the bags. “Peace offering?”

She steps aside to let me in.

I set everything on her kitchen counter. She takes the coffee cup.

“Thanks.”

Not effusive. Not warm. Just thanks.

We settle into our usual spots on the couch, me on the left, her on the right, the throw blanket we’ve shared a thousand times spread across our laps. She tells me about the client. Three months of work. Revision after revision. The email that came yesterday: We’ve decided to go in a different direction.

“It’s not even that they fired me,” she says, picking at her bagel. “It’s that they wasted three months of my life.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah.” She stares at her coffee. “And when it happened, all I wanted was to call you.” A pause. “But you weren’t there.”

“I should have answered. I’m sorry, Sloane.”

“Where were you?”

“Working on the new Whitfield proposal from home.” I press my palm flat against my thigh under the throw blanket, where she can’t see it. “Had my phone on silent. Didn’t see your calls until this morning.”

She looks at me. Not the easy look of someone who believes what they’re hearing — something slower than that. Her eyes track my face the way she tracks a brief she doesn’t quite trust, moving through it, checking it against something she’s been suspecting. Her hand stills around her coffee cup.

The moment stretches one beat too long.

Then she blinks. Sets her cup down. And I watch her decide — visibly, consciously — to let it go.

“Okay,” she says.

We eat in silence for a moment. The bagels are good. The coffee is perfect. But then.