"Then yeah," Natalie Pierce messaged back, "you might actually be in trouble. Ha—who was it swearing up and down she'd be careful, careful, extra careful, and absolutely not fall for anyone?"
Oakley Ponciano stared at the screen, dazed, as if the words had dropped from a height and struck the crown of her head.
No. Not again. The way she kept stumbling over the same stone—once, twice, and then somehow a third time—was she really never going to learn? She had almost forgotten the oath she made before stepping into this arrangement.
She'd meant to be wary. To lock and bar the door.
She'd vowed to padlock her heart and guard the exit routes. And now, the moment she realized there was a nine-in-ten chance she liked Grace Barron, all it took was a few beautiful words and, yes, impressive… skill—and she was ready to dive in?
No. Impossible. She could not—would not—like Grace.
Oakley threw the switch on her analytical brain and forced herself to itemize.
First: she had a bad habit of feeling sorry for people. Compassion as hobby. Grace wasn't the only name on that list. That's not love; that's the patron saint reflex.
Second: it had been ages since anyone truly understood her, saw through her, named her without flinching. When someone like that arrives, of course your insides heave; you mistake relief and recognition for a compass. That's emotion. Not love.
Third: she'd never gone all the way with anyone—always a question mark there, always a curiosity. Then along comes someone who gets her and, frankly, is excellent at… that. Of course she'd melt. That's clouded judgment, not love.
No, she told herself. Absolutely not love.
"I'm principled," she typed to Natalie with absurd dignity. "I sleep with one eye open like a tiger. Nervous system humming. High alert. I literally can't be careless."
Natalie sent back a single smiley face, the textual equivalent of leaning against a wall and watching Oakley put on a show.
"Mm-hm," Natalie added. "You're absolutely right."
Oakley took another bite of pastry and a sip of tea, then lifted her gaze to the garden: the rivulet that trickled past the fake stone outcropping, the way sunlight sifted through leaves and stitched gold onto water.
A dab of cream clung to the corner of her mouth; she wiped it away with her little finger, kept chewing, and let her thumbs fly. "Also, the woman's not simple."
"How so?" Natalie asked.
"In every area she's three moves ahead of me. You know how people are drawn to someone stronger? I think I've just been lonely for too long—tired, soft, and alone—and then Grace appears and I slide all my spare feelings onto her. It's not love. It's transference."
"You've got a fortress for a heart," Natalie wrote.
"…What else can I do?" Oakley answered. "I can't relive the old stories."
"Misplaced devotion. Being left," Natalie wrote.
Oakley went quiet. "That's probably it."
"Maybe you're just too alone," Natalie said. "Ask someone out. Go do something. Move your attention around and it won't fixate on one person. I'd come with you, but today I'm slammed."
Oakley bit her lip. "Okay. I'll try."
Then another thought tugged at her. Natalie always moved through the world alone, self-contained, like a lake that didn't need a river's approval to exist. How did she do that and stay steady?
"So… are you lonely?" Oakley asked.
"Lonely, not lonely—eh," Natalie replied. "A life is a solo act no matter how you score it. We arrive alone; we leave alone. Thinking of it that way… takes some of the drama out."
It sounded wise. It also carried a weather of its own—cool, unclasped, the kind of wisdom you learn by walking at night.
Oakley typed fast, impulsive tenderness rising. "Hey, I'm your friend. You can tell me things, too. You don't have to be the one who only listens."
When Oakley's message reached her, Natalie was in the shop, a pale green dress falling straight and clean from her shoulders, as crisp as water. She sat at a low table with a board in front of her, playing herself at chess and frowning at a dead end she couldn't unknot. Incense curled beside her like a thought returning to its point of origin; outside, people drifted past the window, but inside the shop the air was still.
She lifted her brows when she read the text. Paused. Then—unexpectedly—laughed, and couldn't quite stop.
"Okay," she wrote back after a breath. "I will."
Oakley finished her little tea-time ritual, sat with Natalie's words and her own inventory of feelings, then decided to follow the advice: find someone, go out, change the channel.
She opened Amelia Hayes's chat and sent, "Amelia, you free tonight? Want to grab dinner? There's a buzzy new hotpot place, tons of options, but it's not really a solo thing—my stomach isn't that heroic. Want to tag along?"
She waited. Nothing. Oakley lounged into her phone, scrolling, scrolling, a faint prickle at the back of her neck.
A while later, Amelia replied. "Sorry, Oakley, tonight's tough. I promised I'd take the kid to the ice rink."
Right. Her intuition had a depressing batting average—and it was winning again.
"Okay," Oakley typed. "Have fun, you two."
After the chat closed, she rubbed her temples and let her eyes rest on the flowers and leaves outside. The stillness thinned into thought.
Yes. She was empty, that was all. Hollow in the middle. When you're hollow, the nearest warm light looks like everything.
So annoying, she thought, and opened a dining-buddy app.
Apparently "find a dinner partner" was a whole movement now; maybe she should go with the current for once.
She registered, wrote a flirty little bio, chose a cat avatar. Before she could message anyone, two chat bubbles popped up.
"Hey gorgeous, you up for it?"
"Hey beautiful, lonely?"
All men. Of course.
Oakley squinted at her phone with the classic "old man on the subway peering at his screen" face. Then she deleted both threads without ceremony.
She decided to be proactive—to find a woman to share a meal with. She sent a handful of friendly invitations.
Silence. Not even a courtesy emoji.
After ten minutes of pinging around the app like a moth in a jar, she gave up and drifted back to apptalk.
And there it was—Grace's profile picture. The tug started again, a fine silver thread hooked into the soft part of her chest. She had promised to pivot away, to put her attention anywhere else. It didn't matter. The line reeled her back.
She wanted to know her. Even a sliver more.
She opened Grace's Moments.
Nothing. Like always—an immaculate blank.
What a terrifying woman.
Realization came like a small, clean click: she had no actual path into Grace's history. No breadcrumb trail.
Then a spark. Of course. There was the other account.
She logged into apptalk's "public side" and searched for Grace's editor profile.
She found "Editor babylon" and tapped through. But all the posts were about work: author announcements, magazine updates, industry links. Even the likes were mostly professional courtesies—publishers, writers, trade news.
In short: nothing to drink from.
Oakley was about to back out when a memory surfaced: that long-ago like from Grace's old personal account. It had been a big deal for Oakley then, a brightness in a dim hall, the kind you remember.
What was it called? "Drift and River," something old-fashioned like that. Yes—"Drifting Rivers."
It sounded like the kind of name your father would choose for a poetry club. She doubted Grace had bothered to change it. The woman didn't even switch wallpapers; she wasn't managing alts with any zeal.
Oakley searched. Found it.
The avatar was a chubby polar bear smiling into sunlight. Absurdly cute.
The feed, though, had been dormant for years. The last update was three years ago:
"Feeling a little lost sometimes. Whatever. No point overthinking—just keep walking."
Below it, a flood of comments—women leaving breezy invitations like "Chat with me and you won't be lost," or "Want to hang out? Look at my lunch."
Grace hadn't replied to any of them—except one, from a user called "Moonwatcher."
Moonwatcher: "We'll get through it."
Grace had answered with a small, polite smile.
Moonwatcher… Sabrina Myers? Oakley tapped through. Yes—it was her. So Sabrina's pen name was "Moonwatcher." No wonder Grace had joked about Sabrina pretending to be broke. If Sabrina was Moonwatcher, poverty wasn't in the cards.
Oakley went back and scrolled further.
Back then, Grace had been almost—what was the word—present. She'd post when she heard something, saw something, met someone. Little markers of a life.
Now she was probably just too busy. No room left for that kind of softness.
About ten posts down, Oakley found a paragraph Grace had written:
"Sometimes I wonder what it feels like to sit down with your family every evening—calm, peaceful—eat together, then watch some TV. Is that what home feels like? Warm, I guess?"
The comments were a chorus:
"Yeah! Family dinners are my favorite. Every time we eat and chat together, I feel like I'm not tired anymore!"
Grace: "That's wonderful."
Another: "Huh? Isn't dinner with family just normal? Doesn't everyone do it? Honestly, sometimes it's annoying—the way they pry. I'm ready to move out."
Grace: "lol—drought on one bank, flood on the other?"
Oakley felt the words land with a strange weight. A casual joke, yes; beneath it, a map of lack and plenty, how life could be parched here and swampy there, and either way you still had to learn to walk.
She set the phone down, half-smiling, half-stung, and listened to the garden water whisper as if it had an answer.