Page 189 of The Lies We Play

Mirrors are a problem.

Not because I hate my face. I’ve done worse things than hate myself. Hating yourself is amateur hour. I am a professional. I can look at my reflection and conduct a full forensic examination for relapse, weakness, damage, tremor, want, and every other crime my body has committed against the family name.

“I was starting to⁠—”

“I’ll meet you at breakfast.”

Her smile pauses.

It doesn't fall. She is too good for that. It simply waits, suspended between concern and correction.

“You’re going?”

“I said I would rest.” My hand stays on the doorframe. One more second, and she will notice I am holding myself too carefully. One more second and she will turn concern into custody. “I rested. I changed my mind.”

I clear my throat.

Fuck, that sounds weak.

I try again. “I’ll take my own car.”

She lifts one manicured hand, a flutter of diamonds and maternal theater. “Don’t be silly. We can share a ride.”

She studies me.

That is the part I hate most. Not the questions. Not the soft voice. The studying. The way she looks at me as if I were still a report she has not finished reading. As if my body belongs to the family archive, filed somewhere between scandal and recovery.

I have spent ten years learning how to disappear while standing directly in front of people.

The trick is not to give them nothing. Nothing makes them curious. Nothing makes them dig.

You give them something familiar.

Tired, then.

I let my face become tired.

It is not difficult. I have been tired for so long that it should have its own room in the apartment. Tired is the one version of me everyone believes without evidence. Her eyes soften by half a degree when she finds it.

There he is, her face says.

There is the broken boy we know how to manage.

“I’d prefer if you came in the car,” she says.

“I want the air.”

“Halston.”

“Six blocks. The car is overkill.”

Her gaze moves to the window, then back to me.

I can almost hear the calculations. Distance. Optics. Risk. The possibility that I will embarrass her by existing off-script before ten in the morning.

“Six blocks,” I repeat. “I’ll see you there.”

I don't wait for permission.