Micah made a small noise of agreement beside me.
I shot her a look.
She ignored it.
“I’m just stressed,” I tried again.
“About?” Lo’s voice was light, but her brow furrowed with concern. The question was simple. Impossible to dodge without making it obvious.
I swallowed.
The pressure of Micah beside me felt steady. The weight of Lo’s attention through the phone felt just as real.
Micah nudged my foot under the table.Do it.
I closed my eyes briefly. Then forced the words to tumble from my lips before I could second guess myself again, “I haven’t heard back from any of the jobs I applied to.”
The words hung there. Once spoken, they took on shape. Before, they’d been a looping panic in my own head, formless and relentless. Now they existed outside me, sitting right there on the scarred wooden table between my chai, my laptop, our notes, and the cracked edge of my phone case. A fact. A fear. A confession.
Lo’s expression shifted immediately, her focus sharpening. “How many applications?”
“All of them.”
“And?”
“And nothing.”
Silence. Not empty. Processing.
“I feel like I did everything right,” I admitted quietly. “And it’s not working.”
Her gaze softened. “That doesn’t mean it won’t.”
“It might.”
“Yes,” she acknowledged. “It might.”
That wasn’t comforting. It was honest. And somehow, that made it easier to breathe.
Because honesty didn’t try to soothe me with guarantees that didn’t exist. It didn’t pretend certainty where there wasn’t any. It just… held space for reality.
“I don’t want to come to you for help,” I added, the words slipping out before I could stop them.
Micah stilled beside me.
Lo’s brows lifted slightly. “Why?”
“Because I don’t want anything handed to me.”
Understanding flickered across her face. Not offense. Not frustration. The kind that made my throat tighten before she even spoke, because it meant she heard the wound beneath the words, not just the words themselves.
“Oh, bebê,” she murmured softly.
That word. Soft. Familiar. Rooted in something deeper than this moment. It slipped past my defenses in a way nothing else could, settling somewhere vulnerable and unguarded.
“I don’t want them to be right about me,” I continued. “I don’t want to be the girl who got her job because of connections.”
“You won’t be,” she stated firmly.