I took my oat milk latte to the corner table — the one by the fake fiddle-leaf fig tree— and pulled out a folder thick with nothing. Legal pads, mock contracts, an old laptop that didn’t even work anymore. I didn’t need Wi-Fi. I needed posture. Purpose. A look that said: Yes, I’m important. Yes, I bill hourly.

I crossed my legs the way real lawyers did in movies. Let my blazer ride up just enough to show the watch Adrian bought me last Christmas. Silver with a navy face. Clean lines. Still in its box until that morning.

I snapped a photo: laptop open, legal pad to the side, coffee perfectly centered.

“Drafting today. No calls.” 

I didn’t tag anyone. I didn’t need to. They’d see it anyway.

—-

By noon, I was back in my real office — a Nissan Altima with peeling tint and a glove compartment full of granola bar wrappers and empty lash glue tubes. My fourth ride of the day smelled like weed and Axe body spray. The guy gave me four stars because I “seemed uptight.” I drove in circles for another two hours, waiting for another ping, praying my gas tank could stretch until Friday. 

I told all my passengers the same thing — that Uber was just temporary. Sometimes I said I was finishing law school. Sometimes it was a mass layoff at a tech company. Once, I tried out a single mom story with a sick toddler and a job interview across town. The trick was in the pacing — not too dramatic, not too rehearsed. Occasionally it led to bigger tips. Mostly, it just made me feel like less of a loser.

I’d parked in the lot behind an old roadside motel — the one people swore was haunted. It was mostly abandoned now, save for the occasional flicker of a TV through a curtained window. I liked it because no one bothered me there. Sometimes I wrote in that lot — fragments of poems no one would ever read, lines that sounded better in my head than they did on paper. Writing wasn’t a valid career path. I knew that. 

But it helped.

It gave me ideas — especially when I needed a new story to tell a passenger.

Nowadays, I mostly wrote something different:

Anita Vale.

Not an autobiography — a backstory.

A curated past. A cleaned-up version of the mess I’d made.

I wrote to remember who I was supposed to be.

Sometimes, I even believed it.

I changed clothes in the backseat — swapped the blazer for a Target hoodie and slid out of my heels. My feet were already blistered. The stockings I’d worn were from a three-pack I found at Dollar General.

I’m off again and, at a red light, I checked my texts.

A new one from Adrian 💙:

Hope you’re not too swamped today. Still down for dinner?

I smiled, because that’s what girlfriends do. I told him I had to reschedule — “client meeting ran long, meet a bit later?.” We’d been together five years. He still thought I was an associate at a boutique firm downtown. Which — fine — isn’t that far off. I’d been a legal assistant once, back when I thought the track made sense. Back when I still had FAFSA and ambition.

I was going to finish. I’d always planned to.

 And maybe I still would.

Then none of this would even count as lying. Just… premature framing.

He’d been a little distant lately — slower replies, shorter calls, a vague “work’s been crazy” energy that didn’t feel like the truth. I kept telling myself dinner would help. We just needed a night to reconnect. Something quiet. Familiar. A reset.

He’d never been to my place. I told him the roommates made things complicated, which they did — but that wasn’t the real reason. The real reason was that he thought I lived in a high-rise downtown with a view of the skyline and in-unit laundry. Not a peeling four-bedroom with stained laminate and a gamer who smelled like old onions.

I’d never invited him.

Never gave him the chance to see how far from my story I’d actually fallen.

—-

My place wasn’t much — a tiny four-bedroom house, clearly built for three people max, then chopped up and walled off over the years to squeeze in more rent checks. I found it on a roommate board two years ago, back when I thought I’d only be there “for a few months.”

Back when I still had things called plans.

Back when I wasn’t trying to keep up with twenty-something TikTok influencers like my life hadn’t already veered completely off script.

I lived with:

• Dillon, a white guy who lived in a swivel chair who smelled like Monster Energy and dirty laundry. He streamed Call of Duty day and night and called himself a “content creator,” though I’d never seen him post a single video. He also had a painfully obvious crush on me — the kind where he’d suddenly appear in the hallway whenever I got back from a ride shift, acting like we just happened to bump into each other. He was maybe twenty, smelled vaguely like old onions, and once told me I “had main character vibes.” I started locking my door after that.
  
• Jesse and Liv, the on-again, off-again couple who argued through the walls. Loud, creative fights. I once heard Liv call Jesse “a gluten-free narcissist with a savior complex” at 2 a.m. They broke up at least once a month, but somehow always ended up curled on the couch the next morning sharing a joint and watching Alex Jones style conspiracy videos like nothing happened.
  
• And Mr. Ramon, the seventy-something landlord-slash-roommate who technically lived in the converted sunroom with his ancient chihuahua, Peaches — who, disturbingly, he’d named after his late wife. Peaches barked like she was six feet tall — always going off on delivery guys and chasing dogs twice her size down the street. Mr. Ramon kept mostly to himself unless he was collecting rent and watched old Westerns with the volume at full blast.
  

The place always smelled like air freshener trying to cover mildew. My bedroom door stuck when it rained, and the ceiling above my bed had a warped bubble from water damage that pulsed slightly every time it stormed — like it was breathing. I kept telling myself it wouldn’t cave in. Not yet, anyway.

I sank on my bed, I added up my tips, and stared at the mirror long enough to wonder how much longer I had. My skin still held. My stomach still looked flat in high-waisted pants. But I could feel time in my gums, my knees, the way my scalp ached when I pulled my hair too tight. I was getting older — not in some graceful, wine-and-wisdom way, but in the way where everything starts to feel like it costs more than it gives.

I’d thrown away another negative pregnancy test that morning. Maybe the last one. But I didn’t say anything.

Instead, I messaged Adrian:

Still thinking about what we talked about last week. The timing might actually be right…

A baby. That was the plan. It always had been.

Or at least, I had always planned it. 

I’ve wanted to be a mother since I was six — back when I’d name my dolls after characters in movies and tuck them into folded blankets on the couch. Even then, I wasn’t pretending — not really. I wanted it. Not for attention. Not because anyone told me I should. Just because it felt like the one thing in the world I could see clearly: a small, soft someone who needed me. Who chose me.

I’ve second-guessed almost everything in my life — jobs, apartments, haircuts, relationships — but never that. Wanting a baby was the one thing that stayed the same. Through every bad decision. Every almost. Every break-up.

So why had I waited this long?

Because it took this long to find someone who made it feel safe. Real.

Adrian was the right man. Stable. Kind. He called me “babe” in that half-distracted, half-affectionate tone that made things feel domestic. He never raised his voice. He’d make a great dad. The kind who’d learn how to braid hair or do bedtime story voices or keep a stack of parenting books by the bed. He made it feel possible.

And maybe, if I just held on long enough, he’d finally say it back:

Yes.
I want this too.

With you.

Or maybe he’d just leave like every other guy before him had. 

But I tried not to think about it. Not today.

Today, I was still the girl who made it.

Even if it was only in my head.