The Morning After
1808 Words
Ariana made it three blocks before she had to stop and lean against a building, her heels killing her feet and her head pounding so hard she thought she might be sick right there on the Manhattan sidewalk.
The walk of shame. She'd heard Clara joke about it before, laughing with that careless confidence she'd always had. But this didn't feel like something to laugh about. This felt like crawling out of your own skin, like being a stranger in your own body.
She pulled out her phone—miraculously still in her clutch—and ordered an Uber with trembling fingers. While she waited, she caught her reflection in a shop window. Smudged makeup. Tangled hair. The black dress that had seemed so sophisticated last night now looked cheap in the harsh morning light.
She looked exactly like what she was: a mess.
The Uber driver had the good sense not to make small talk during the twenty-minute ride back to her apartment. Ariana spent the entire time staring out the window, trying not to think about the way Ethan's hands had felt on her skin, the way he'd looked at her like she was something precious even when she'd been falling apart.
She didn't even know his last name.
Back in her apartment, she went straight to the shower, turning the water as hot as she could stand. She scrubbed her skin until it was pink and raw, trying to wash away the evidence of her mistake. But even after the water ran cold and she'd used half a bottle of body wash, she could still feel the ghost of his touch.
"You're pathetic," she told her reflection as she wrapped herself in a towel. "Four days. It's been four days since Ryan, and you're already sleeping with strangers."
But even as she said it, she knew it wasn't fair. She hadn't been looking for revenge or a rebound. She'd just been looking for a way to stop hurting, even if only for a few hours.
She'd found it. And now she had to live with it.
The weekend passed in a fog. Ariana ignored seventeen calls from Ryan, eight from Clara, and three from her mother, who'd apparently heard about the breakup through the family grapevine. She ordered takeout, binge-watched an entire season of a show she wouldn't remember later, and tried very hard not to think about Ethan.
She failed spectacularly at that last part.
His face kept appearing in her mind at random moments. The way his dark eyes had studied her with an intensity that had made her feel naked even before her clothes came off. The way he'd asked if she was okay, more than once, even when things had gotten heated. The way he'd held her afterward, his heartbeat steady beneath her ear.
"Stop it," she muttered to herself, shoving another forkful of pad thai into her mouth. "It was one night. He's probably already forgotten about you."
The thought should have been comforting. Instead, it felt like another small loss in a week full of them.
Monday morning arrived with all the mercy of a freight train. Ariana dragged herself out of bed at six, spent an hour on her makeup trying to hide the shadows under her eyes, and dressed in her most professional outfit—a navy blue suit that her sister had bought her last Christmas with the comment that she needed to "look more serious" if she wanted to advance her career.
The commute to Knight Industries took forty-five minutes on the subway, which gave her plenty of time to rehearse her excuses for the sick days she'd taken. Stomach flu. Family emergency. Mental breakdown after walking in on her boyfriend cheating with her best friend.
Okay, maybe not that last one.
Knight Industries occupied fifteen floors of a gleaming skyscraper in Midtown. Ariana worked on the seventh floor as a data analyst in the finance department—a job that paid well enough to cover her rent and student loans, but wasn't exactly thrilling. Most days she spent eight hours staring at spreadsheets, finding patterns in numbers that most people's eyes would glaze over looking at.
It was boring. Safe. Predictable.
Everything her life had been before last Monday.
"Ariana! Oh my God, are you okay?"
She'd barely made it to her desk when her coworker Sophie descended on her, eyes wide with concern. Sophie was sweet—a year younger than Ariana, with an enthusiasm for office gossip that usually made Ariana smile.
Today it just made her tired.
"I'm fine," Ariana said, setting her bag down and booting up her computer. "Just a bug. Nothing serious."
"Really? Because Melissa said—" Sophie stopped abruptly, her cheeks flushing.
"Melissa said what?"
"Nothing. Never mind. I'm just glad you're back."
But the damage was done. Of course Melissa had told people. Her sister had never been good at keeping secrets, especially ones that made Ariana look weak.
Ariana forced a smile. "Thanks, Soph. I've got a lot to catch up on, so—"
"Right. Yeah. Of course." Sophie retreated to her own desk, but not before shooting Ariana another worried glance.
The morning crawled by. Ariana threw herself into work, grateful for the mindless distraction of data entry and analysis. Her boss, Mr. Peterson, stopped by her desk around ten to welcome her back and dump a new project on her lap—something about quarterly revenue projections that needed to be done by end of week.
"No problem," Ariana had said, even though it was absolutely a problem given how behind she already was.
Lunch came and went. She ate a sad desk salad while scrolling through her phone, which had finally stopped blowing up with messages from Ryan and Clara. They'd apparently taken the hint.
It was just after two o'clock when Sophie appeared at her desk again, this time practically vibrating with excitement.
"Did you hear?"
"Hear what?"
"He's here. On our floor. Right now."
Ariana looked up from her spreadsheet, confused. "Who?"
"Ethan Knight!" Sophie whispered the name like it was sacred. "The CEO. He never comes down to our floor. Like, never. But apparently he's doing some kind of walk-through of all the departments. Oh my God, Ariana, he's even hotter in person than in the magazines."
The blood drained from Ariana's face.
No.
No, no, no.
"Ethan... Knight?" she repeated slowly, her voice barely above a whisper.
"Yeah! You know, the guy who owns this whole company? Billionaire? Thirty-two and still single? Every woman in New York's dream man?" Sophie giggled. "Come on, you have to have seen his picture."
Ariana had seen his picture. It was impossible to work at Knight Industries and not see his picture—it hung in the lobby, appeared in the company newsletters, was plastered across financial magazines and gossip columns with alarming regularity.
But she'd never really looked at it. Never paid attention.
Until now, when Sophie pulled up a recent Forbes article on her phone and shoved it in Ariana's face.
The man in the photo was older, more polished than she remembered. He was wearing a suit that probably cost more than her car, his dark hair perfectly styled, his expression serious and commanding.
But it was him.
The man from the club. The man whose bed she'd woken up in. The man whose touch she'd been trying to forget all weekend.
Was her boss.
Or, more accurately, her boss's boss's boss's boss.
"Oh God," Ariana breathed.
"I know, right? He's gorgeous. Do you think he'll come over here? Should I fix my makeup?" Sophie was already pulling out a compact mirror, completely oblivious to Ariana's crisis.
This couldn't be happening. It was impossible. Manhattan had eight million people. What were the odds that the random stranger she'd hooked up with in her lowest moment would turn out to be the CEO of the company she worked for?
Apparently, pretty good.
"I need to use the restroom," Ariana said abruptly, standing up so fast her chair rolled backward and crashed into her desk.
"But he'll be here any minute—"
"Don't care. Stomach thing. From the flu. Still not a hundred percent."
She fled before Sophie could protest, her heels clicking frantically against the tile floor as she made her way to the women's restroom at the end of the hall. She locked herself in a stall and leaned against the door, her heart pounding so hard she could feel it in her throat.
This was fine. This was totally fine. He probably didn't even remember her. It had been dark in the club, and she'd been drunk, and it wasn't like they'd spent hours getting to know each other. They'd talked for maybe twenty minutes before—
Before.
Her cheeks burned at the memory.
Okay, so maybe he'd remember her. But that didn't mean anything would come of it. She'd left before he woke up. She'd made it clear it was just one night. He was a billionaire CEO with probably a dozen women throwing themselves at him every week. She was just another face in the crowd.
She could hide in this bathroom until his tour was over, then go back to her desk and her boring spreadsheets and her safe, predictable life, and they would never have to speak about this.
That was the plan.
It was a good plan.
It lasted exactly five minutes, right up until she heard the bathroom door open and Sophie's voice calling out, "Ariana? Are you in here? Mr. Knight is asking to meet with you specifically. Like, right now. In Mr. Peterson's office."
Ariana's stomach dropped to her feet.
"What?" she called back, her voice strangled.
"I know! I have no idea why, but you need to come out. Like, immediately. Mr. Peterson looks like he's about to have a heart attack from stress."
This was it. This was how she died. Not from heartbreak or betrayal, but from sheer mortification, alone in a bathroom stall at Knight Industries.
"I'll be right there," she managed.
She heard Sophie's footsteps retreat. For a long moment, Ariana stayed frozen, staring at the bathroom stall door like it might offer her some escape route.
But there was none.
With trembling hands, she unlocked the stall and walked to the sink. Her reflection looked pale but composed—her makeup was holding up, at least. She straightened her suit jacket, smoothed down her hair, and took a deep breath.
"You can do this," she told herself. "You're a professional. He's a professional. You'll walk in there, pretend you've never met, and get through whatever this is."
Another deep breath.
Then she walked out of the bathroom, down the hall, and straight toward the meeting that was about to ruin everything.
- Writer
