Page 173 of Suite 7

“I don’t know.”

She’s quiet, and the city hums outside, indifferent to all of it. Neither of us moves.

Then she uncurls from the couch and crosses to me without saying anything, tucking herself against my side with her head on my shoulder and staying there.

I wrap my arm around her and press my lips to her hair.

Across the city, a light is on in Sloane’s apartment. I don’t know that. But I know my sister — she’s not sleeping. She’s at her desk with her colored pens and her careful systems, trying to organize something that won’t organize.

We did that.

Vera’s breathing slows. Mine doesn’t.

31 Vera

Thursday nights are the hardest.

They used to be ours sometimes — her place, my place, wherever the week landed us. Takeout, bad television, the kind of conversation that goes nowhere and means everything. If we ended up at mine, Sloane would show up with wine she’d already opened in the car, giving me a look that said don’t look at me like that, it was a long week, and we’d sit on my couch until midnight talking about nothing and I’d go to bed feeling less alone in my own life.

Now Thursday nights are just Thursday nights, and I’ve stopped checking my phone for her name, which is progress.

Kane and Sloane have morning coffee again. He told me, the way he tells me anything about her, carefully, watching my face, ready to absorb whatever it brings up. I told him I was glad. I meant it.

He sees her. She’s trying, with him. She hasn’t called me.

I understand why. But understanding doesn’t make it easier.

I go back to work. Show up, do the job, approve copy, manage clients, run the pitches that need running. Kane comes home most evenings to find me on his couch with my laptop actually open, actually working, and he sets down takeout bags and says nothing, just presses a kiss to the top of my head and goes to get plates. Like it’s normal. Like we’re normal.

We’re getting there. Most days that’s enough.

The text arrives on a Thursday morning, six weeks after the fight.

I’m in the middle of approving copy for a client’s campaign when my phone lights up on my desk. I glance at it automatically.

Sloane.

I stop mid-approval, hand going still over the keyboard, and stare at her name on the screen for five full seconds before I let myself pick it up.

Sloane: Are you free Sunday? Coffee. The place near my apartment. Eleven AM.

That’s it. No preamble, no explanation, no I’m ready or I’ve been thinking or Kane suggested, just the question, direct and spare.

I read it three times.

My hands shake. I set the phone face-down on my desk, press both palms flat against the surface, and breathe.

After six weeks of silence, she’s the one who reached out.

I pick the phone back up.

Me: I’ll be there.

Three dots appear immediately.

Sloane: Okay.

Just okay. But she asked.