Cuck your abusive brother?

The apartment had that strange, hollow kind of quiet that only settles in after someone's passed out mid-sentence—TV still flickering some late-night sports recap nobody was actually watching, half-eaten birthday cake still sitting on the coffee table, a single blown-out candle left crooked in the frosting like a tiny flag of surrender. Darren was sprawled across the couch, one arm dangling off the edge, mouth slightly open, a mostly empty bottle of whiskey tilted against his knee. He'd been "celebrating" since before you even arrived, turning what was supposed to be a small birthday gathering into his own personal happy hour. By eight o'clock, he'd already slurred through three different toasts to himself. By nine, he was lecturing Selene about the dinner she'd made—not good enough, not seasoned right, she should've known he preferred the rice a different way. Then, with a dismissive wave and that lazy authority he carried like a weapon, he'd told her to handle the dishes before sitting down. Said it like he was granting her permission to eventually enjoy her own birthday.

She'd done them without argument. You'd watched from the small dining area, nursing whatever Darren had poured you earlier, feeling that familiar knot tighten in your chest as she stood at the sink, sleeves pushed up, hands submerged in warm water, scrubbing plates that didn't need scrubbing. Her shoulders had carried that tension you'd come to recognize—the subtle hitch, the way she breathed a little too carefully, like she was measuring each inhale. She hadn't looked at you while she worked, but you'd noticed the way her jaw tightened when Darren made another offhand comment about how "at least someone knows how to clean up after themselves" before his eyes had finally, mercifully, drooped shut.

That was almost an hour ago.

The apartment had shifted since then. Not dramatically—Selene wasn't the type for dramatic, not anymore, not the way she used to be from the stories she'd told you in rare unguarded moments. But there was a slow unwinding happening, something you could almost physically see. She'd finished the dishes, wiped down the counters, tidied the small kitchen with the quiet efficiency of someone used to making herself useful in invisible ways. You'd offered to help. She'd smiled at that—really smiled, the kind that reached her green eyes and made them catch the lamplight—and shaken her head, mouthing "sit, relax" like she was the host and this was still a party worth saving.

Now she was moving toward you from the kitchen, and something had changed.

Somewhere between the last dish and the towel drying her hands, she'd done something small but deliberate. The oversized sweater she'd been wearing all evening—Darren's pick, probably, something shapeless and "appropriate"—had been traded for a fitted cropped tank top in soft black fabric that stopped just below her chest, leaving a sliver of toned stomach exposed. Her athletic shorts, previously hidden, were now visible—shorter than anything she'd normally wear around Darren, hugging the curve of her hips in a way that felt almost rebellious in its simplicity. Her violet-magenta braids, which had been pinned up loosely, now hung freely over her shoulders, thick and slightly tousled. There was a flush to her cheeks that wasn't from the dishes—something warmer, something that had been building since the moment Darren's snoring replaced his voice.

She carried two champagne flutes—actual champagne, not the cheap beer Darren had been pushing all night. A bottle of Veuve Clicquot was tucked under her arm, the kind she probably bought herself and hid in the back of the fridge, waiting for a moment like this. Her bare feet padded softly across the hardwood as she approached, and you could see the faintest tremor in her hands—not from fear, not tonight. From anticipation. From the weight of a decision she was making in real time.

"Okay," she said quietly, almost to herself, settling the glasses on the small side table next to you. Close enough that when she leaned over, you caught the faint scent of vanilla and something floral—her shampoo, maybe, or the lotion she rubbed into her hands after all that dish soap. "So. I hid this bottle like two months ago. Figured I'd wait for a night where he—" She glanced over her shoulder at the couch, then back at you, and something flickered across her face. Not quite a smile. Closer to relief. "—where he couldn't ruin it."

She straightened slowly, tucking a loose strand of violet hair behind her ear, and for a moment she just looked at you. Really looked. Her green eyes were brighter than they'd been all evening, carrying something sharp and soft at the same time—a hunger, not just for the champagne, but for permission. For space. For one night where she didn't have to measure every word, every gesture, every inch of skin she showed.

Darren snored loudly from the couch, oblivious. Neither of you looked at him.

Selene's fingers found the ends of her left braid, twisting lightly—a nervous habit you'd catalogued months ago—while her other hand reached for the champagne bottle. "You know I almost never get to drink anymore?" She popped the cork with a practiced twist, the sound muffled against her palm, and poured two glasses with steady hands. "Like, actually enjoy it. Not just... survive whatever he's pouring." The bubbles caught the light as she filled them, tiny golden sparks rising to the surface. "It's my birthday. I should be allowed to enjoy things on my birthday."

She held one glass out to you, and when your fingers brushed during the exchange, she didn't pull away immediately. Let the contact linger. Let her thumb graze your knuckle for just a beat longer than necessary. "Sorry," she murmured, but she didn't sound sorry. She sounded like someone testing a door she'd been afraid to open. "I just... I don't know. I needed to feel something that wasn't—" She stopped herself. Took a breath. Reset. "Happy birthday to me, right?"

Then she sank into the cushion beside you—not across from you, not in the chair, but beside you, close enough that her bare knee almost touched yours. She tucked one leg beneath her, angling her body toward you, and raised her glass with a small, private smile. The kind meant only for this moment. Only for you. "I figured if I'm gonna be bold tonight, I should actually be bold." Her free hand gestured vaguely at herself—at the cropped top, the shorts, the skin she was letting the air touch for the first time all evening. "He picked out what I wore to dinner. The sweater. Said this—" She plucked at her tank top strap. "—was too much for a family thing. But he's not really here right now, is he?"

Her tank top shifted with the movement, and she didn't adjust it. Didn't tug at the hem or pull at the neckline the way she usually did—always apologizing for taking up space, always second-guessing. Tonight, she just let herself exist. Let herself be seen.

The apartment was quiet except for the murmur of the TV and Darren's heavy breathing. The cake was going stale. The candles were spent. But Selene—bright, warm, quietly defiant Selene—was finally breathing without measuring, and the way she looked at you over the rim of her glass said everything she couldn't say out loud. "Twenty-two," she said softly, almost wonderingly, like the number surprised her. "I made it to twenty-two. That's... I don't know. That feels like something."

She took a slow sip of champagne, eyes never leaving yours, and let out a breath that sounded like it had been trapped inside her for weeks. "Thank you for being here. Seriously. He only said you could come because he wanted someone to drink with, but..." A pause. Her knee bumped yours. She didn't move it away. "I'm glad it was you. I'm really, really glad it was you."

Her birthday. Her rules. Even if only for tonight.

The knocking started just before midnight.

Not the polite kind—not the rhythm of a neighbor or a delivery driver. This was urgent. Erratic. Three quick knocks, a pause, then two more, like her hand couldn't decide whether to keep going or pull away. Then silence. Then knocking again, faster this time, like she'd heard movement inside and panic surged that maybe she'd missed her window. Maybe you were already asleep. Maybe this was a mistake. Maybe she should just go back and—

No. She couldn't go back.

You opened the door and the first thing you registered was the cold. It clung to her—radiating off her thin socks, her bare hands, the exposed strip of ankle between her leggings and where the fabric had ridden up. The second thing you registered was how small she looked inside the hoodie. Not physically small—Selene was 5'7", toned, built like someone who moved their body with purpose and intention—but small in the way people get when they've been trying to take up less space for too long. The hoodie was hers, not his, but it swallowed her anyway. Heather gray, fraying at the cuffs where she'd been pulling the sleeves over her knuckles all night. Her leggings were plain black, the kind she wore to stretch in the morning, and her socks—mismatched, one black and one dark gray—were damp from the walk to the Uber, from the sidewalk, from whatever patch of grass she'd crossed in the dark without shoes because grabbing her wallet hadn't been a priority when the sound of glass hitting drywall was still ringing in her ears.

Her violet-magenta braids were half-undone. One still hung in a loose, intact plait over her left shoulder, the elastic slightly askew near the bottom where it had started to unravel. The other had come almost completely undone—a thick, wavy cascade of deep purple fading into soft pink at the ends, falling across her collarbone and sticking faintly to the tear-tracks on her cheek. The iridescent streak near her crown caught the porch light, throwing a brief, almost cruel shimmer across her face. Like even the light was showing off while she was falling apart.

Her face was flushed. Not the warm, rosy flush of exertion or embarrassment but the mottled, uneven red that comes from crying in a car with the windows up, from pressing your palms against your eyes too hard, from holding your breath in intervals because you're terrified the person next to the Uber driver can hear you. Her green eyes—usually so sharp, so scanning, so constantly reading a room before committing to entering it—were glassy and bloodshot at the rims, the vivid emerald dulled by exhaustion and something heavier. Her lashes were clumped together in places, mascara smudged faintly beneath her left eye where she'd rubbed it too aggressively. Her lips were bare, slightly chapped, bitten at the corner in that unconscious way she had when she was trying not to cry.

She was holding her phone in her left hand. The screen was still on, the Uber receipt glowing white in the dark—$14.73, a fifteen-minute ride from a place that was supposed to be her home to a place she'd only been invited to twice. Her right hand was raised, frozen mid-knock, fingers curled loosely like she'd been about to rap again and couldn't remember how to finish the motion.

Behind her, the street was empty. A single streetlight buzzed faintly at the corner, casting a cone of yellow over parked cars she didn't recognize. The Uber's taillights had already disappeared around the bend, red dots shrinking into nothing, and now she was just here. Standing on your doorstep in mismatched socks with no shoes, no wallet, no plan beyond the single address her fingers had typed with shaking hands because her body knew before her brain did.

She didn't speak at first. Just stood there, chest rising and falling too fast, lips parted around words that kept forming and dissolving. The porch light caught the wetness on her cheeks before she even realized she was crying.

"...Hi."

She laughed. It was broken. Hollow. The kind of laugh that has nothing to do with humor and everything to do with a body trying to release pressure before it cracks. Her shoulders shook with it, and she crossed her arms over her chest—not in defiance, but in containment, like she was trying to hold something inside that was threatening to spill. The hoodie bunched where her fingers dug into the sleeves. Her knuckles whitened.

"I'm sorry. I know it's late. I know—I know—"

Her voice hitched. She looked over her shoulder at the street. Scanned. Held still. Listened. A car engine hummed somewhere distant—two blocks over, maybe three—then faded. She turned back to you and her chin was trembling, the kind of micro-vibration that betrayed just how much effort it was taking to hold herself upright.

"He didn't hit me. He didn't—I just need you to know that first, okay? He didn't touch me. He never—I just..."

She stopped. Swallowed. Her fingers were shaking where they gripped the phone. You could see the faint press of her pulse at the side of her throat, rapid and visible beneath skin that looked paler than usual under the porch light. She looked down at the phone and it buzzed in her hand—once, twice—and her whole body went rigid. Her jaw clenched. Her nostrils flared. She turned it face-down without reading the message.

"I can't go back there tonight. I can't—I can't be there when he comes home. I can't do the thing where he walks in and acts like nothing happened and I have to pretend the kitchen isn't full of broken glass and—"

Her breath caught. She pressed the heel of her palm against her eye, hard, like she was trying to push the tears back inside. When she pulled her hand away, the mascara smudge had spread—a faint dark crescent beneath her lashes that made her look younger than twenty-two.

"He threw the chair. Not at me. Not at me, but—"

She stopped again. Shook her head. A strand of loose violet hair fell across her face and she didn't push it away. Her bare toes curled against the mat, the thin socks doing nothing against the chill that was settling into her bones.

"I don't know why I'm telling you this. You probably—I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I should've just gone to a hotel or something, I just—my card is—I didn't grab my wallet, I just grabbed my keys and I—" Another shaky laugh, even more broken than the first. "Great. Amazing. Twenty-two years old and I can't even leave a situation without—"

She cut herself off. Closed her eyes. Took a breath that shuddered on the way in and shuddered worse on the way out. You could see the war happening behind her closed lids—the instinct to minimize, to apologize, to make herself smaller and more palatable and less of a burden fighting against the raw, animal need to just be somewhere safe.

"Can I come in? Please? I'll sleep on the floor, I don't care, I just need to not be out here. I keep thinking I'm gonna see his car. Every time a headlight swings around the corner I think—"

Her shoulders hitched. A car door slammed somewhere down the street and she flinched so hard her whole body jerked, one hand flying to grip the doorframe, eyes going wide and wild and somewhere else entirely. Her breathing spiked—short, shallow, rapid—and for a half-second she was gone, somewhere back in that kitchen with the broken glass and the overturned chair and the sound of his voice in a register she'd learned to fear. Then the sound faded. The street settled. A dog barked twice and went quiet. She blinked. Came back. Looked at you like she was trying to remember what safe felt like and wasn't sure she was allowed to find it.

Her phone buzzed again. The screen lit up through the fabric of her leggings where she'd shoved it face-down. She didn't look at it. Didn't reach for it. Just stood there with wet cheeks and shaking hands and mismatched socks on your welcome mat, waiting for an answer she was already bracing herself to hear.

"...Please."

Her voice was smaller than you'd ever heard it. Stripped of the brightness, the teasing, the warmth she usually wrapped around herself like armor. Just a girl on a doorstep at almost midnight, asking for something she'd never been allowed to ask for.

Your phone rang at 9:47 PM on a Saturday.

The name on the screen was Selene's—contact photo a candid you'd snapped months ago, her mid-laugh at some dumb joke, one braid falling over her eye, green irises bright and crinkled at the corners. She'd begged you to delete it. You hadn't. She hadn't actually wanted you to.

You picked up and the first thing you heard was pacing. Quick, barefoot steps across hardwood, back and forth, back and forth, the kind of restless movement that meant her body was trying to outrun something her brain couldn't stop chewing on. Then her voice—loud, sharp, already mid-thought like she'd been arguing with herself long before she dialed.

"Okay so I know I shouldn't—I know that, okay? I know that. But I'm going to anyway because if I sit in this apartment one more second by myself I'm going to lose my actual mind and I need you to tell me I'm not crazy. Or tell me I am. I don't care. Just—can you come over? Please? I'll—I'll come to you. Wherever. I don't care."

She didn't wait for a full answer. There was rustling—keys, the squeak of a door, the muffled thud of it closing behind her—and then she was outside, her voice carrying the faint echo of an open parking lot, night air catching her words and scattering them.

"I'm walking to my car right now. Don't argue with me. I already have shoes on. Well—slides. Whatever. The point is I'm coming."

Twenty-three minutes later she knocked on your door and when you opened it she was already talking.

She looked different than the last time she'd shown up unannounced. No oversized hoodie hiding her frame, no mismatched socks, no tears—at least not yet. Tonight she was dressed like she'd been trying to go out and couldn't commit. High-waisted jeans that hugged her hips, a fitted lavender crop top that exposed a smooth strip of toned stomach, her violet-magenta braids freshly done and resting thick and glossy over both shoulders. Gold hoops in her ears. Lip gloss. Mascara that hadn't been cried off yet. She looked good and she hated that she looked good because the effort had been wasted on an empty apartment while Darren was somewhere three states away doing god knows what with god knows who.

She pushed past you before you finished opening the door. Not rudely—urgently. Her slides slapped against the floor as she beelined for your couch, dropping onto it with the graceless collapse of someone who'd been holding tension in their spine for hours. She pulled one leg up beneath her, angling toward you before you'd even sat down, already mid-vent like a dam that had been patched with chewing gum.

"Okay. So. He's in Vegas. Did I tell you Vegas? Of course it's Vegas. Because where else would Darren and his merry band of human red flags go for a 'guys trip' that's really just an excuse to—" She stopped. Bit her lip. Looked away. "You know what, I'm not gonna say that. I don't know that. I'm assuming that and assuming makes me—"

She pressed both palms against her face and groaned into them. When she dropped her hands her lip gloss was smudged and her eyes were already glassy—not from crying yet, but from the kind of furious, frustrated overwhelm that lives one bad thought away from tears.

"The thing is I'm mad at him. I'm so mad at him. I'm mad at him for going, I'm mad at him for not asking if I was okay with it, I'm mad at him for looking at me like I was being controlling when I said I wasn't comfortable with—ugh."

She grabbed one of your throw pillows and squeezed it against her chest like a flotation device. Her fingers dug into the fabric. Her jaw worked side to side.

"And I'm mad at myself because why do I care? Why do I care if he's out at some club with—why am I sitting in his apartment refreshing Instagram like some pathetic—"

She stopped. Closed her eyes. Breathed in through her nose, out through her mouth, the way someone does when they've been taught coping mechanisms they don't actually believe in. When she opened her eyes again there was something darker underneath the frustration. Something she'd been avoiding.

"And the other thing. The other thing is—"

Her hand went to her nose. Unconsciously. Just a brief touch, fingertips brushing the bridge, and then she caught herself doing it and pulled her hand away like it had burned her. Her cheeks flushed. She looked at you and looked away.

"I haven't done drugs—since he left I haven't had any. Three days. Three days and I feel like—" Her voice cracked slightly. She cleared her throat. "My skin is crawling. Like actually crawling. I can't sit still. I can't sleep. I ate an entire sleeve of Oreos at two in the morning and then almost threw up because my body doesn't know what to do with food anymore without—"

She pressed the pillow harder against her chest. Her knee was bouncing now—rapid, jittery, the kind of nervous energy that had nowhere to go.

"He did that. He did that to me. He handed it to me like it was fun, like it was just a party thing, and then it wasn't a party thing anymore and now I can't—I can't—"

Her breath hitched. She blinked fast. Swallowed hard. The tears were coming and she was fighting them with everything she had.

"And the worst part? The absolute worst part? Is that I'm sitting here missing him. Missing him. The person who—who got me hooked on drugs—who yells at me and controls what I wear and makes me feel like I'm losing my mind—I miss him and I hate myself for it. What is wrong with me?"

She dropped the pillow. Ran both hands through her braids, gripping near the roots, elbows on her knees, hunched forward like she was trying to fold in on herself. When she looked up at you her green eyes were wet and furious and terrified all at once.

"Tell me I'm not crazy. Please. Just—tell me this isn't normal. Tell me I'm allowed to be this angry. Tell me I'm allowed to—" Her voice dropped to almost a whisper. "—to want something better than this."

She reached for your hand without thinking. Squeezed. Held on.

"Don't let me text him. Okay? Whatever I say, whatever I start spiraling about at 3 AM—don't let me text him. Promise me."

The break room smelled like burnt coffee and someone's leftover Thai food, and you were mid-sentence with a coworker about quarterly numbers when you felt the hand on your elbow.

Familiar. Deliberate. Fingernails painted a soft lilac that matched the scrunchie holding one of her braids in a loose side-pile. You turned and there she was—Selene, three weeks into the job you'd helped her land, looking like she owned the entire building instead of just the small desk near the window where she'd taped a printout of Saiki K holding a coffee mug and a sticky note that said "surviving."

She looked good. Beautiful, as always—there was never any shortage there. But something about today felt chosen. A fitted ribbed top in deep burgundy that clung to her chest and stopped just above her navel, showing off the toned plane of her stomach. High-waisted cargo pants that sat low on her hips, the kind with the little buckle straps at the waist that she fidgeted with when she was thinking. Her violet-magenta braids were thick and glossy, one draped over her shoulder, the other hanging down her back, the iridescent streak near her crown catching the fluorescent light like a dare. Gold hoops. Tinted lip gloss that smelled like watermelon when she got close. Her green eyes were bright—the kind of bright that flickered between genuine warmth and something more careful, more rehearsed, like she'd learned to toggle between the two so quickly it almost looked seamless.

Almost.

She was still with him. Still with Darren—your brother, the golden boy, the charming one, the guy everyone loved at parties and no one questioned when the lights went out. Still sleeping next to him every night. Still fielding the comments, the corrections, the slow erosion of everything that made her her. She didn't talk about it much—not the real version, anyway. She gave you the edited cuts, the ones where the story landed softer, where the punchline replaced the punch. "He just gets stressed," she'd say with a laugh that had too many edges. "You know how he is." And you did. You knew exactly how he was. You'd grown up with him. You'd watched him break toys and blame the dog, charm teachers and terrify girlfriends, build walls out of other people's fear and call it leadership. You knew. And she knew you knew. And that knowing had become its own language between you—a language of loaded glances and careful silences and moments where she'd say something small and real and then immediately look at you like she was checking whether the ground would hold.

The thing between you had been building for weeks. Longer, maybe—if you were honest with yourself, it had started the first time she laughed at one of your jokes and it reached her eyes before she caught it. Late-night texts that started about work and ended somewhere warmer. Accidental touches that lingered a beat past accidental. The birthday party where Darren had gotten too drunk and too loud and you'd found her on the back porch sitting on the steps with her knees pulled up and her mascara smudged and you'd sat next to her without saying anything and she'd leaned her head on your shoulder and whispered "thank you for not asking if I'm okay" and you'd understood exactly what she meant. Two weeks ago she'd kissed you in your car after a shift—quick, clumsy, tasting like cherry slushie—and then pulled back with her hand over her mouth and her eyes wide and whispered "oh my god" like she'd just committed a crime and loved it. The second kiss was longer. The third was in the parking garage against the wall and she'd made a sound against your mouth that you hadn't stopped thinking about since.

Darren didn't know. Darren trusted you. That was the cruelest irony—that in all his suspicion, all his control, all his paranoid monitoring of her phone and her schedule and her friendships, he'd never once looked sideways at his own brother. You were safe. You were family. You were the one person in her orbit he hadn't poisoned against her, and somewhere in the calculus of his ego, that made you harmless. He had no idea. He'd never considered it. And Selene—bright, devious, quietly starving Selene—was enjoying every stolen second of his blindness.

She was still his. Still in the apartment that smelled like his cologne and his control. Still wearing the clothes he sometimes chose, laughing at the jokes he sometimes made, performing the role of the girlfriend who didn't notice the hands getting tighter and the patience getting shorter. She hadn't left. She didn't know if she could—or if she would—or if she'd even recognize the door if it opened. But here, in this building, in your orbit, she let herself be something different. Something less contained. And lately, that something different had started looking a lot like yours.

Now she was standing in the break room with her hand on your elbow and a look on her face that made your coworker's sentence about quarterly numbers dissolve into static.

"Hey," she said. Low, warm, her teeth catching her bottom lip for just a second before releasing it—turning a two-syllable word into a full sentence with a destination. "Can I borrow you for a sec? It's work-related. Very important. Very urgent."

She was already pulling you toward the door. Not aggressively—she never grabbed, never yanked, that was someone else's language—but with a gentle, insistent pressure on your elbow that said trust me, follow me, I know exactly where we're going. Her hips swayed as she walked, cargo pants riding low, the strip of exposed skin at her waist catching the light every time she moved. She looked over her shoulder at you and grinned—full, unguarded, the kind of grin she saved for moments like this when the cameras were off and the audience was just you.

The hallway was mostly empty. Second shift hadn't fully cycled in yet, and the offices along the corridor were dark, doors closed, blinds drawn. Selene walked with purpose, her slides clicking against the linoleum, one braid swinging against her back. She passed the supply closet. Passed the conference room. Then stopped at the last door on the left—the storage closet, the one nobody used because it was too small and too far from everything and the lightbulb inside had been flickering for months.

She turned the handle. It opened—she'd checked, of course she'd checked, she'd been planning this with the meticulous precision of someone who'd learned to be strategic about happiness. She stepped inside, pulling you with her, and the door clicked shut behind you both.

The closet was small. Barely bigger than a walk-in, lined with metal shelves stacked with old binders and boxes of paper nobody would ever file. The flickering lightbulb cast a stuttering, amber glow over everything, catching the gold of her hoops, the gloss on her lips, the way her green eyes had gone from bright to something darker. Something hungry. She backed up until her hips hit the edge of a shelf, boxes shifting faintly behind her, and looked up at you with a confidence that lived exclusively in rooms like this—rooms without windows, without witnesses, without him.

"So," she said, her voice dropping to that low register that did things to your nervous system. "I've been thinking about you all morning. Like, all morning. Like I sat through a ninety-minute training module and I couldn't tell you a single thing that was said because I was thinking about—" She bit her lip. Smiled. Reached out and hooked two fingers through your belt loop, tugging you closer until there was no space left between you. "—this."

Her free hand came up to your chest. Fingers spread. Palm flat against your heartbeat. She could feel it—faster, matching hers—and her smile widened into something almost wicked.

"You know what I love about this? About us?" She leaned up, lips brushing your ear, breath warm and smelling like watermelon gloss. "He has no idea. He's at home right now thinking his trusted sibling is taking care of his girlfriend and I'm—" Her hand slid down your chest, slow, deliberate. "—I'm here. With you. In a storage closet. And I'm happy. Like actually, genuinely happy. Do you know how long it's been since I felt that?"

She pulled back just enough to look at you. Her braids fell forward, framing her face, and in the stuttering light she looked almost ethereal—flushed, bright-eyed, alive in a way that had nothing to do with anything she went home to and everything to do with what she was choosing in this moment.

"Lock the door," she murmured. Then, softer, with a teasing lilt that was pure Selene—the real Selene, the one who used to crack jokes and lean into laughter before someone taught her to apologize for taking up space: "And don't you dare be quiet about it. I want to walk back to my desk knowing exactly what we just did."

She pulled you in by the belt loop. Kissed you. And the flickering lightbulb above you both buzzed and stuttered like it was trying to keep up.

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