No Longer Needing Him

The streetlights had been out for three blocks. I noticed because I always noticed the dark. My phone said 11:47 p.m., and the only sound was my heels hitting pavement and the distant hum of a highway I couldn't see. I was twenty-eight years old, a senior analyst at Meridian Capital, and I was terrified of walking alone. Five years of this. Five years of calling Caleb every night before sleep, of needing his voice like other people needed medication. He never complained. That was the thing I told myself whenever the shame crept in. He never complained, so it wasn't a burden. I pressed his name on my screen. It rang four times. "Hey," I said when he picked up. "I'm walking home from the office. The lights are out on Delaney and I just... can you stay on the line?" There was a pause. I heard voices in the background, a woman laughing, the clink of glass. "Wren," Caleb said, and his voice had an edge I hadn't heard before. "Sage is right about you." I stopped walking. "What?" "Sage. She's right. You're too clingy. It's been five years, and you still can't walk three blocks without me on the phone. I have to force you to stand on your own, or you never will." My chest went tight. A car passed, headlights sweeping across the dark pavement, and I flinched. "Where are you?" I asked. "Is Sage there?" "She's here. Her parents are in town. And she's right, Wren. She said it kindly, but she's right. You need to learn to sleep without me. There's an app now, it does guided breathing, white noise, whatever. Let it put you to sleep from now on." "Caleb, I'm on a dark street—" "You'll be fine. You're an adult. Goodnight." He hung up. I stood there in the dark, phone in my hand, the screen glowing like a small cold moon. My breath came in short pulls. The old panic rose, the one that had lived in my ribs since I was nineteen, since the hospital, since the night I learned that people disappear. I made it home. I don't remember how. I remember the app. I remember lying in bed with a woman's recorded voice telling me to breathe in for four counts, and I remember staring at the ceiling until 3 a.m., and I remember thinking, over and over, that Sage had said it kindly. Sage Aldridge. My best friend since college. The one who held my hair back at parties, who knew about the hospital, who knew everything. Caleb's friend first, actually. That was how we met. She'd brought him to a rooftop dinner six years ago and said, "This is Caleb, he's like my brother." She said that about everyone she liked. She'd never said it about me. The next morning I went to work on four hours of sleep. Meridian Capital occupied the top three floors of a glass tower on the waterfront, and from my desk I could see the ferry crossing the bay, tiny and white against the gray water. "Wren." Marcus Reeve appeared at the edge of my cubicle. He was my managing director, a man who wore the same navy suit every day and never seemed tired. "Client call at ten. The Aldridge Foundation account." My stomach dropped. "The foundation?" "New money, old name, you know how these things go. They've taken a position with us. Big one. They specifically asked for you on the account." "Asked for me?" "Your name came up." He tapped the edge of my desk. "Whatever you did, keep doing it. This is a forty-million-dollar relationship." Forty million. I thought about Sage's parents, the ones who were in town, the ones Caleb had mentioned. I had never met them. In six years, Sage had never introduced us. At ten I walked into the conference room, and there she was. Sage sat at the head of the table like she always did, blond hair pulled back, a laptop open in front of her. Beside her sat a man in his sixties with her same blue eyes, and a woman with her same sharp jaw. "Wren," Sage said, and she smiled. "This is my father, Richard Aldridge, and my mother, Diane. We're moving the family foundation to Meridian. I told them you were the only one I trusted with it." Her father stood and shook my hand. "Sage speaks very highly of you. She says you're the reason she survived statistics in college." "I mostly just made flashcards," I said. "She's modest," Sage said, and her smile didn't move. "She's the most loyal person I know." There it was. Loyal. The word landed like a small stone. We went through the account details. The foundation held a controlling interest in a shipping company, some real estate in the bay area, a stake in a biotech firm. Richard Aldridge asked sharp questions. Diane took notes. Sage watched me the entire time, and whenever I looked up, she looked away. After they left, Marcus pulled me aside. "That went well. You're the lead on this now. Everything goes through you." "Marcus, I don't think I should—" "They asked for you. That's a gift. Take it." I went back to my desk and stared at the ferry. My phone buzzed. Caleb. Caleb: Dinner tonight? I want to talk. I typed back: I'm busy. That was a lie. I had nothing. But I was so tired, and I was still standing on that dark street in my head, and for the first time in five years I didn't want to hear his voice. He showed up anyway. I was at my apartment, the small one above a bakery on Clement Street, and at eight o'clock there was a knock. I opened the door and Caleb stood there with two bags of takeout and a look on his face like he'd rehearsed something. "Wren. Can I come in?" "Did Sage send you?" His jaw tightened. "Sage didn't send me. I'm here because I'm your fiancé and I said something stupid last night." I let him in. He put the food on my counter and turned to me. "I was frustrated," he said. "Because Sage was there." "Because you called me in the middle of a dinner with her family. Her father was watching. It was embarrassing." "Embarrassing." "That's not what I—Wren, you know what I mean. You call me every single night. Five years. I love you, but it's a lot." I looked at him. He was handsome in the way that never surprised me anymore, dark hair, square shoulders, a face that belonged in an ad for watches. I had loved him since I was twenty-two. I had needed him since I was twenty-three, since the night the panic started. "You said Sage was right," I said. "What exactly did she say?" He looked away. "She said you lean on me too much. She said she worries about you. She said if something ever happened to me, you'd fall apart." "And you agreed." "I didn't agree. I said maybe." "Maybe." "Wren." He stepped closer. "Come on. You know she cares about you. She's your best friend." I thought about the conference room. I thought about Richard Aldridge, who had shaken my hand and called me the reason his daughter survived statistics. I thought about the foundation, forty million dollars, and the fact that the Aldridges were now a client of the firm I worked for. Sage hadn't mentioned Caleb at that meeting. Not once. And Caleb didn't know I'd seen her parents. He didn't know about the foundation. He didn't know that the family he was siding with was now, quietly, the family that held the largest client account in my portfolio. "Eat your dinner," I said. "It's getting cold." He stayed. We ate. He didn't mention Sage again. When he left at eleven, he kissed my forehead and said, "Sleep well," as if the app weren't waiting on my nightstand, as if he hadn't handed me a stranger's voice to do his job. I lay in bed and listened to the recording tell me to breathe in. I didn't sleep. My phone lit up at 2 a.m. Sage: He's so worried about you. I told him to give you space. I'm always looking out for you, Wren. I stared at the message for a long time. Then I did something I hadn't done in years. I turned the phone face down and lay in the dark with my own heartbeat. It was terrible. But I did it.