Callie’s POV
It wasn’t immediate.
It wasn’t a blow, or a sound breaking the balance of the afternoon, not even a clear presence I could point to and say, there it is—that’s what doesn’t fit. It was something far more uncomfortable. More persistent. Harder to ignore precisely because it had no concrete form—because it slipped between normal things like an invisible c***k you could only perceive when you stopped looking directly at it.
I kept folding the garment in my hands, slow, deliberate movements, as if repeating the gesture could hold together the normalcy that was beginning to fracture somewhere I still refused to name. Meanwhile, my attention—traitorous—kept drifting back to the door, to the glass reflecting the outside, to the steady flow of people coming and going, unaware that
