Anything But Back

The side street outside the dormitory was narrow and lit with the amber glow of streetlamps, the city's noise drifting in from the wider avenues nearby. They walked close together on the sidewalk, their footsteps falling into an unconscious rhythm that spoke of months of shared routine. The bar on the corner was the kind of place that was warm without being crowded, friendly without being loud, exactly the kind of place three tired dreamers needed at the end of a day that had tried its best to knock them flat.

They settled into a corner booth. Ordered food. Ordered beers. The conversation settled into something gentler than it had been back in the apartment, the way it always did when there was food on the table and something cold to drink. It was the particular grace of friendship, the ability to walk through the hard parts of a day together and come out the other side still capable of laughing.

It was Lia who circled back to the harder question, the way she always eventually did, because for all her humor, she was also the one who said the things no one else wanted to say.

"Kira," she said, folding her hands on the table. "You said you'll give it a few more months. What will you actually do if it doesn't work out? If you don't sign with anyone?"

The table went quiet. Emma stilled her bottle halfway to her lips. Kira stared at the rings of condensation on the wooden table surface, tracing one with her fingertip before she answered.

"I don't know," she said finally, in a voice just above a whisper. Then, lower still, as though she was saying something she had only ever said to herself before: "But I would rather die than return to my old life."

Neither Emma nor Lia asked her to elaborate. They didn't push, didn't pry, didn't fill the silence with well-meaning questions she wasn't ready to answer. They simply sat with her in it, the way real friends do. And for the moment, that was enough.

They finished their food and split the last two beers among the three of them. The walk back to the dormitory was quieter than the walk out, but not uncomfortably so. When they returned to the building and climbed the stairs to their floor, the night had softened around them, the way nights sometimes do after you've made it through them together.

Emma and Kira headed toward their shared room. Lia paused in the living room, dropping her jacket over the back of the couch, kicking off her shoes for the second time that evening. The fairy lights above the window cast everything in soft gold.

Her phone rang.

She picked it up, glancing at the unfamiliar number on the screen with the casual suspicion of someone who had given her number to too many agency receptionists to expect anything good from an unknown caller.

"Hello?" she answered.

The voice on the other end of the line was smooth and professional, the kind of voice that belonged to someone accustomed to being listened to.

"Hello, Miss Lia?" it said.

Lia shifted her weight from one foot to the other, still standing in the middle of the living room with her jacket half-draped over the couch. "Yes, that's me," she said carefully, the way she always answered unknown callers  present but guarded, giving nothing away until she knew who she was giving it to.

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