Page 52 of Torn By Fate

The glass froze halfway to her mouth. For a fraction of a second, panic flashed across her expression before the color drained from her face. Not dramatically, because nothing about Elyssa was ever dramatic. But the warmth left her flushed cheeks, and her expression was guarded now. Uncertain.

Then she slowly set the glass down and wrapped the towel tighter around her chest, her fingers fidgeting with the edge.

“Oh.” The word came out flat. She glanced at the laptop, then back at me.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have opened it. I was looking for your notes, and the document was open in a different tab and—” I stopped, biting the inside of my cheek. Justifications were meaningless. I felt like a terrible friend.

She was quiet for a moment and then licked her lips before speaking again. “You read it?”

“Some of it. The first few chapters. I’m sorry. That was an invasion of your privacy, and I was wrong for doing that.”

“It’s fine. It’s not like it’s a secret-secret. It’s just... a thing I do.” She exhaled through her nose, a sound that was half sigh and half laugh. A flush crept up her neck, spreading across her cheeks. “Well, that’s embarrassing.”

“It shouldn’t be.” I leaned forward, almost excitedly now that I knew she wasn’t upset at me for intruding on her privacy. “Elyssa, it’s incredible. I mean that. This is publishable.”

She glanced away, and I saw it then—the shyness. The genuine self-consciousness of a young girl who had never been praised for something she actually cared about.

Elyssa shrugged, but the gesture was too quick, too practiced. A deflection. Her gaze dropped to the carpet, and I watched her teeth worry at her lower lip. I’d come to recognize that action as her trying to downplay something that mattered to her.

“It’s just a hobby,” she said, tucking a strand of wet hair behind her ear. “Something I do when I can’t sleep. When my brain won’t shut up.”

“That’s not a hobby. That’s talent.” I held her gaze, refusing to let her minimize this. “You could make a career out of this. You should.”

The flush on her cheeks deepened, and her eyes flickered with something that looked almost like hope before it was quickly buried beneath another careless shrug. She tried to look everywhere but at me. “Maybe someday. It’s not really something I’ve thought about seriously.”

“You should think about it seriously.” I paused, then added, “I’d love to read more. All of it, if you’d let me. I could beta read for you, maybe give you feedback, and help with revisions. Whatever you need.”

Elyssa’s head lifted. A ghost of a smile touched her mouth. “Really?”

“Really. You know how much I love to read; it’s all I do in my spare time.”

“I already have a beta reader,” she said, a full smile forming now. “Someone I met online through a writing/reading app. She’s an incredible writer too, and she’s been reading for me for about a year now. But I’d love for you to read it too. A second perspective would be amazing.”

“I’d be honored.”

She nodded, and for a moment we just looked at each other—two people who had, in the span of two years, learned to navigate each other’s silences and secrets.

Then she tilted her head, studying me with that direct, unhurried gaze that had unnerved me the first day we met and now felt like the most honest thing in the world. Elyssa wasn’t a pretender, and I loved that about it.

It made our friendship genuine.

“What about you?” she asked. “Do you have any hobbies? Besides reading, I mean. Because I’ve literally never seen you do anything except study and read.”

The question landed with a weight that surprised me. I opened my mouth and then closed it.

What could I say? That my hobbies had been curated since childhood to serve a single purpose—to make me an ideal wife?

That I’d been trained in piano and the waltz, not because I enjoyed them but because they were assets in a marriage portfolio? That the closest thing I’d ever had to a genuine interest was reading, and even that had been severely monitored when I was younger; certain books were deemed inappropriate, and some themes were forbidden.

“I’m a little boring,” I said, and the admission came out more honest than I’d meant it to. “I read. I study. That’s... kind of it.”

Elyssa’s expression shifted. Not to pity, because she never pitied me, and I was grateful for that, but she looked more thoughtful. She approached me and sat on the arm of the couch, the towel still wrapped around her, and fixed me with a look that was equally curious and concerned.

“Serafina,” she said slowly. “What do you do for fun? Like, actual fun. Not the kind of fun that looks good on a wifely résumé.”

The silence stretched between us, and in it I heard the full, damning truth of my answer: nothing.

I had never done anything just for fun. Not the reckless kind that Elyssa was referring to. The type of fun that left you breathless and stained with the evidence of having lived without permission.