Turn 10 of 11

Wait for Theo's question and answer it with another lie

Theo leans forward again, and the sad flicker is gone — replaced by something careful, measured, the expression of a man who has been listening all night and has saved the one question that matters for last.

"Here's what I keep wondering," he says. "You've told me about the agency, the campaign, the harem, the money, the love. You've described this whole life. And it sounds amazing, Priya — it really does." He pauses. The cursor rests on the desk, nowhere near the search bar.

"But what were you doing the night I called? Before the phone rang. What were you actually doing when you picked up?"

The golden warmth shudders. The question is small and simple and it has teeth. Because the answer is: you were sitting on your bed in sweatpants, eating lukewarm pad thai from a container, watching a show you can't remember the name of, and the apartment was messy and you were messy and you were not a model and you were not in love and you were not happy. You were just a woman who got dumped six weeks ago, alone on a Thursday night, and the phone rang, and you decided — in the half-second before you answered — that you would not let him see you like that.

The golden warmth wants to fill the gap. You can feel it pressing against the inside of your skull, offering words: *I was reviewing campaign proofs. I was on a call with my agent. I was getting ready for a fitting.* Each one ready-made, each one true the moment it leaves your mouth, each one another brick in the wall that is becoming your life. The door in your mind is almost closed. The light under it is almost gone.

Sasha takes another step into the room. Her face is peaceful, content, the old resistance fading like a signal losing strength. But her hand — her transformed, elegant, model-perfect hand — moves once toward her pocket, toward the phone, toward the text she sent thirty seconds ago. The motion is tiny. Unconscious. Like a woman reaching for a railing in the dark.

You open your mouth. The lie is right there. *I was at a fitting,* you hear yourself begin, and the room begins to shift — the last trace of the old apartment, the water ring on the nightstand, the crumpled tissue from a crying jag three weeks ago that you never threw away — all of it beginning to dissolve, to be replaced by the pristine studio of a woman who was always going to be this, who was never anyone else, who has no past that isn't glossy and lit from above.

And then — from somewhere deep, from somewhere the golden warmth hasn't reached yet, from a room that is closing but not quite closed — you hear it. Not Sasha's voice. Your own. The voice of the girl who was eating pad thai alone on a Thursday, and she is saying something very small and very quiet and very true, and she is begging you to let her speak.