Page 12 of What You left in Me

Mom’s heels sink slightly into the grass, but she doesn’t stumble. She never stumbles. Her own clipboard in hand, she marches ahead, pointing at tables, at servers, and at the sky itself as if she could bend it into perfection by sheer willpower. “We can’t afford missteps, Ariane,” she chides. “Not on this weekend.”

Her voice becomes piercing and dulls all at once, edgy in tone but numbing with repetition. I already know the script. It’s been drilled into me my whole life.Don’t falter, or flinch, and don’t forget to smile.Be the good girl everyone expects.

Something clatters. A tray slams against stone like a cymbal. My head jerks toward the noise. One of the caterers, all elbows and nerves, probably no older than sixteen, stares in horror at the silverware scattered across the gravel. The utensilsgleam in the sunlight like little shards. His face goes scarlet as he freezes, clutching the empty tray like a shield.

Before I can think, I’m moving. I squat to my haunches, and begin scooping knives and forks into a pile, brushing dirt and grass from the linen napkin they tumbled onto.

“It’s okay,” I soothe, my voice low enough to shield him from the stares around us. “It happens. Just be careful.”

The boy mutters a shaky “thanks,” eyes wide and cheeks burning. He looks exactly how I used to feel: caught between wanting to disappear and desperate for someone to notice me, to assure me that I wasn’t ruining everything.

“Ariane.”

Mom’s voice slices through the air. I look up, silverware still in my hands. She’s glaring. Her clipboard hugged to her chest. To her, this is treason. Jesus Christ.

“That’s what the staff is for.”

The atmosphere changes instantly. My cheeks flame hotter than the boy’s. Slowly, I straighten, standing tall, though my shoulders itch to hunch beneath the weight of her disapproval. “Right, okay,” I mutter, hurriedly placing the pile onto the nearest table. My palms feel dirty even though I just wiped them clean against my shorts.

The boy ducks his head, scurrying back to the catering tent, but I see the relief in his eyes.

Well, at least one of us feels lighter.

Mom turns back to her clipboard; her pen poised like a dagger. To her, the dropped tray never happened—and to me, it’s carved into the morning like a crack in glass. One mistake and the mask slips. And God forbid the mask ever slips in frontof my mother, because once it does, everything beneath it will show.

###

Later that afternoon, when the clipboards, tents, and my mother’s endless instructions start to feel like nails at my temples, I slip away with a book tucked under my arm. The prop is purely because I’ve noticed people ask fewer questions if you’re holding a book.

The lake is quieter than the house, and that’s all I want right now. Some peace and quiet to recalibrate my fried-feeling nerves.

I approach the dock that stretches out into the water, eternally beckoning me to escape further, its boards sun-warmed and worn smooth from years of use. My bare feet pad across them, each creaky whine of wood a reminder that this place has heard more confessions than any priest. It’s near the edge that I perch, cross-legged, with the book open in my lap and my eyes skimming nothing. The words blissfully blur together, and the sunshine warms my shoulders. The breeze pulls stray strands of hair into my face.

Behind the veil of it, I exhale the first real breath I’ve allowed myself in hours.

My relieve putters out in record time when I hear footsteps. They’re heavy and pronounced. It’s safe to say it’s nothing like the hurried shuffle of caterers or even the clipped march of my mother’s gait.

My spine stiffens before I even glance back.

“Book club by the water?” he taunts, edged with a sarcasm I half-forgot but would recognize instantly.

I look over my shoulder, eyes already narrowed.

Finn.

He steps onto the dock like he’s testing its ability to hold his weight. Today, he’s out of his suit. He’s dressed down for once, wearing dark jeans and a black t-shirt that makes his biceps look absolutely insane. His shoulders are broader than I remember, his whole frame heavier. His jaw could cut glass, stubble casting a deliberate shadow across the length of it. His dark hair is much shorter now than it was a few years back, swept back with finesse, though the streak of silver near his temples is what catches my attention most.

Time has made him dangerous.

And hotter, if I’m being honest.

Either way, he looks nothing like the memory I keep in the back of my mind, and that unsettles me more than I’ll admit.

And then there’s those eyes, gray and unreadable, that land on me like I’m a puzzle he desperately wants to solve.

I snap my book closed even though I wasn’t even reading it. “It was either this or helping Mom alphabetize place cards,” I say, mustering a smile. “And honestly? Drowning myself is the more appealing option.”

He huffs out a snort of… amusement? Oh. It’s faint but real.