"I know."
She stepped into the room, set her coffee on the dresser. Her hands were swift as she pushed his fumbling fingers aside, gripped the sides of the cardigan, and pulled it off him in one clean motion.
"This is a no." Tossed onto the discard pile. "It's giving 'grandpa.'"
He watched it land. Didn't argue.
She tossed him a cream sweater. Once he'd pulled it on, she grabbed the hem, gave it a firm downward tug, then smoothed her palms over his shoulders and back.
"Stand up straight."
He tried.
"No, don't suck in. You'll pass out by ten." Her hands pressed against his shoulder blades. "Just stand. Breathe."
He took a shallow breath. Shaky.
"From your diaphragm, you weirdo."
She stepped back. Head tilted, gaze critical but not cruel. The same look she'd given him since first grade, since the day Tommy Haskins had pushed him into the mud for his lunch money and Jenna, a tiny furious tornado in pigtails, had shoved Tommy back twice as hard and declared Adriel under her protection. She'd been managing his spirals ever since.
"You look nice." Said like she was commenting on the weather. An objective fact, immutable as gravity. "Your body is just... your body. It carries you around. It's fine." She met his eyes in the mirror and held them. "Today, it's carrying you to work. That's all this is."
He didn't look convinced.
He felt like a raw nerve. A bundle of exposed wiring about to short-circuit.
Jenna picked up his leather satchel, the one nice thing he owned, a graduation gift from her, and shoved it against his chest.
"Go. You'll be late." She steered him toward the door, her hand pressing against the small of his back. "And wipe that look off your face. You are going to work. Not an execution."
He clutched the satchel like a lifeline and let her usher him through the apartment, past the kitchen, toward the front door. With every step, something in his gut pulled tighter. The clothes Jenna had approved felt like a costume. He was a trespasser preparing to enter a world he didn't belong to. His pulse thudded in his throat.
The door clicked open. He stepped into the hallway. Behind him, it clicked shut.
And the words began. Old. Familiar. Tuned to the rhythm of his quickening heartbeat and the tightness already gathering in his chest.
I am fine. I will be fine. Everything is fine.
His footsteps echoed. The elevator dinged. Doors slid open, then shut.
In the quiet hum of the descending car, Adriel closed his eyes and tried, desperately, to believe it.
∞∞∞
The lobby of Grayson House Publishing was breathtaking; walls of glass letting the pale morning light flood across vast expanses of polished marble, turning the whole space into something unreal.
People moved through it with a purpose that looked innate. A woman in a tailored sheath dress clicked past without glancing up. A man with salt-and-pepper hair and a cashmere scarf looped just so spoke in low, measured tones into a headset, collecting a file from the reception desk without breaking stride, his shoes polished to a mirror shine.
Adriel stood just inside the towering glass doors, the coffee carrier growing damp in his hands.
I am fine. I will be fine. Everything is fine.
The mantra pulsed in time with his heartbeat, and his heartbeat pulsed in time with his fear.
His steps toward the reception desk were too loud in his ears, each footfall echoing off marble and glass. The receptionist looked up, impeccably groomed beard, a headset curved behind his ear like modern jewelry, and offered a smile that had been workshopped and perfected and deployed a thousand times.
"Adriel Alvarez." His voice came out thinner than he wanted. "I have a nine o'clock. With Mr. Waters."