Page 175 of Silent Shadows

I take another deep breath. “What if I do it the way I actually want to?”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning…” I exhale hard. “Not making fun of them.”

The words come faster now.

“Not turning them into jokes or clickbait or whatever version feels safest.”

I gesture wildly into the air.

“What if I actually make it weird?”

Her eyebrows go up. “Weird how?”

“I don’t know.” Frustration spikes. “Make it mean something.”

She blinks.

Then immediately grins. “Oh my God.”

“Don’t.”

“You’re getting emotional.”

“I’m so stoic right now.”

“This is huge.”

I bury my face in the comforter. “Kill me.”

“No.” She sounds delighted now. Which feels hostile. “Daisy Bennett, emotionally unavailable queen of irony, developed sincerity in the woods.”

I groan into the blanket. The sound comes out muffled and tragic.

“You don’t understand.”

“No, I actually think I do.”

I sit up. “Riss, I spent ten years building this whole thing.” I gesture at the apartment, at myself. “The jokes. The confidence. The sex podcast thing.”

“The aggressively hot chaos persona?”

“That.”

I take a deep breath and the room quiets again. Sunlight crawls across the bedspread. Outside, LA hums loudly enough to feel performative. “I’m good at it,” I say eventually.

“At what?”

“Being… consumable.” I grimace as I say it.

Marissa goes still.

I laugh once. “I know how to make people like me.”

Pretty enough. Funny enough. Interesting enough. Sharp enough that nobody notices when I’m scared. Open enough to feel intimate. Closed enough to stay safe.

“It’s easy when people only want the shell,” I say quietly.