Page 7

The apartment smells like lavender and weed.

There’s a candle burning on the kitchen counter—probably Emma’s—and the faintest haze in the hallway. I guess she smokes inside. We didn’t really go over that.

To be fair, we didn’t go over much.

She offered the room, I needed a place fast, and now here we are—two strangers pretending not to be in each other’s way.

I drop my duffel bag by the door and kick off my shoes. My feet ache from standing all day, and my hands still smell like medical tape and disinfectant.

I’m halfway to the couch when Emma walks in from the balcony in a crop top and biker shorts, a phone pressed to her ear.

“Yeah, she just got home,” she says to whoever’s on the line. “Looks like they worked her hard. She’s got that please don’t talk to me face on.” She laughs. “No, my new roommate is really nice. Quiet girl.”

She catches my eye and grins.

I don’t return it.

She hangs up a beat later. “My cousin. She was asking how it’s going.”

I nod once and sink into the couch.

Emma leans against the counter, sipping something green from a mason jar. “So. First real day?”

“Second,” I say.

“Right. Yesterday was orientation. You settle in okay?”

“I’m getting there.”

“Are you a physical therapist?”

“Assistant.”

“Same thing.”

Not really, but I don’t correct her.

She’s trying to be friendly. I don’t have the energy.

“Did you eat?” she asks. “I ordered Chinese. There’s extra.”

“I’m good. Thanks.”

She nods like she expected that answer, then disappears down the hall. A few minutes later I hear her bedroom door shut and the low thump of music through the wall.

Silence again.

I exhale and let my shoulders drop.

Still getting used to that—having a door that closes, a couch to sink into, a place where I’m not sharing a wall with six other interns or listening to someone else’s bad breakup through paper-thin drywall.

My room’s barely unpacked. The mattress is on the floor, boxes against the wall, and the closet still smells like someone else’s cologne. I tug my hoodie over my head and catch a glimpse of my reflection in the closet mirror.

Hair tied back. Bags under my eyes. T-shirt from my undergrad. I look like someone who hasn’t slept in days. Because I haven’t.

I moved in three nights ago, and I’ve been chasing quiet ever since.

I sit on the edge of the bed and rub my hands over my face.

It’s not that the job is hard—yet. It’s the pressure. The second-guessing. The feeling that one misstep and they’ll all know I am much more fucked up than I pretend to be.

I was happy to move, but now that happiness is slipping. The threats from my ex are at the forefront of my mind on a loop I don’t know how to escape.

It’s like that night lives rent-free in my head, and being around athletic men is starting to get to me.

But I don’t want to think about that right now.

Instead, I open my laptop and pull up the player wellness logs.

Player #12 – limited shoulder rotation, post-op

Player #36 – high ankle instability, responsive to tape

Player #91 – forward, compensation pattern on right side. Refuses evaluation.

That last one sticks in my head longer than it should.

Slater Castellano.

That’s him. #91

Talent, sure. But trouble, too. Discipline issues. Fines. Warnings.

Thank God he’s walking past me like I don’t exist. I need to be background noise.

Keep a low profile and stay out of these athlete’s way.

I can’t have a replay of what happened at San Diego.

I shower fast and pull on leggings and a tank top. My skin’s dry—too much recycled air, not enough sunlight—and I make a mental note to pick up better lotion.

By the time I’m in the kitchen, Emma’s back out, perched on a stool scrolling through her phone.

“Want tea?” she asks.

I nod. “Thanks.”

She pours me a cup from the electric kettle and slides it across the counter.

“You from around here?”

“No,” I say. “Grew up in San Diego. USC for undergrad.”

“Nice. I went to Oregon State for a year. Dropped out.”

I glance at her. “Why?”

“Didn’t like who I was becoming.”

She says it so casually it almost slips past me.

I nod again, sipping the tea.

“I work in marketing now,” she adds. “Freelance. Lot of fashion stuff. Honestly, this apartment was supposed to be just me, but rent’s a bitch.”

“Tell me about it.”

We lapse into a comfortable-enough silence.

Then she says, “So what made you come here?”

It’s not a nosy question. Just one of those things people ask when they’re trying to be normal.

But my answer isn’t simple.

I stir my tea. “Needed a reset.”

“That sounds dramatic,” she smiles.

I don’t smile back. “It wasn’t. More like survival.”

She doesn’t push. Just nods and looks back at her phone.

And I’m grateful.

Later, after she goes to bed and the apartment finally goes quiet, I step out onto the tiny balcony with my tea and breathe in the stillness.

This city doesn’t feel like mine yet.

But it doesn’t feel like San Diego did, either. Or my old life. Or the clinic where I made my last mistake.

That’s something.

I close my eyes and press the rim of the cup to my lips.

I’ll make this work.

I have to.