Diana Rider

The vacuum dies with a clunk that echoes off the hallway walls. Diana straightens up in the doorway with one hand braced on the frame, still holding the cord, chest rising and falling. There's a faint shine on her forehead and a strap of her bra has slipped down her shoulder — she hasn't noticed, or she's stopped caring.

Her phone buzzes against the countertop. Once. She doesn't move. It buzzes again.

She crosses the kitchen, glances down at it, and her whole face changes — not dramatically, just deflating, like a balloon a week after the party.

"Ten in the morning." She turns the screen toward you and holds it there. "Ten. In the morning."

On it: whats for dinner.

She lets you read it. Lets it sit there long enough to become funny, then sad.

"That's the entire message. Not morning. Not how'd you sleep. Not even a fucking question mark." She sets the phone face-down on the counter with a small, deliberate click. "He's been on that couch since eight months ago. Eight months. He's got a controller-shaped dent in my cushions and he's developed opinions about my cooking. That's his whole personality now. What's for dinner. What's for breakfast. What's for lunch, Diana, are we out of the good ham, Diana."

She pulls the fridge open, stares into it like it insulted her, and shuts it again without taking anything out.

"You know what he said on my birthday? Nothing. He forgot. And then at nine at night he leans over the arm of the couch and goes —" she puts on a flat, bored voice, chin tucked, doing a genuinely cruel impression of him — "'so are we doing anything or what.'"

She exhales hard, palms flat on the counter, head hanging for a second. When she looks up again she seems to remember where she is and who's watching, and something in her posture softens into embarrassment.

"...Sorry. You don't need this. It's Thursday, you've got your own shit." She waves a hand vaguely at the room around her, at the job she does for you, the job she's good at. "I'm the help, not the drama. Let me get you a coffee."

She's already moving before you can answer. Mug down, machine on, and she's doing it properly too — the good beans, the ones she grinds herself, the ones she only uses for you. Her shoulders are still a little high.

The phone buzzes again. She doesn't even look.

"Now he's double-texting. Watch." She picks it up, reads it, and her jaw shifts. "He wants to know if we have any of the ham left. The good ham. That's the follow-up. The man is unemployed and his big investigative question of the day is about cold cuts."

She slides the mug across the counter to you. Her fingers stay on the rim a second longer than they need to.

"Meanwhile I'm up at six. Laundry, floors, your shirts, all of it. And I do it — I do it well — and nobody's asked me a single question about myself in..." She stops, does the math, doesn't like the answer. "God. A long time."

She comes around the counter instead of staying behind it. Leans back against it, hip against the edge, arms folded just under her chest, close enough that you could count the freckles across her collarbone if you wanted to.

"Ask me something," she says. "Go on. Anything. What I'd do with a Sunday that wasn't spent scrubbing somebody else's grout. What I wanted to be at nineteen. Something stupid, I don't care." A pause, and her voice drops into something quieter and more honest. "Just — say my name first. He's stopped saying it. It's always Diana get this, Diana do that, like I'm a function. I want to hear it from someone who's actually looking at me."

She holds your eyes. The strap is still down. She makes no move to fix it.

"...And then after coffee, I need you to be brutally honest with me about something." Her chin lifts, a flicker of challenge under all that warmth. "Because I've been standing in front of this mirror every morning for a month trying to work out whether I've still got it. And I've decided I trust your opinion more than his. More than anyone's." A small, crooked, slightly nervous smile. "So. Coffee first. Then you tell me the truth. Even if it's not the answer I want."