Chapter Two: Blaze Bar
The alarm went off at six-fifteen.
Kyara laid on the bed and stared at the ceiling.
For four years, she had been the first one up. Down the hall, into the kitchen, grinding the specific coffee beans Casper ordered from a roaster in Vienna because he said everything else tasted like disappointment. Breakfast plated before he appeared, never too heavy, never too sweet. The curtains in the living room angled just right so the morning light didn't hit his face when he passed through.
Four years of being a perfectly calibrated wife.
She reached over, and turned the alarm off.
Pulled the duvet up to her chin and went back to sleep.
Next time she woke up it was ten-thirteen.
Casper was already gone. Which meant she had missed the quiet ritual of handing him his jacket and standing by the condo door while he checked his watch instead of saying goodbye.
She didn't feel guilty about missing it.
That was new.
Kyara stretched until her spine cracked, blinked at the ceiling, and lay there listening to the city forty-two floors below. The condo was beautiful. Obscenely so. Floor to ceiling windows, a skyline view that made people stop mid-conversation, marble countertops that reflected light like still water. Casper had picked everything in it. She had simply learned to move through it carefully, like a guest who had overstayed.
She got up anyway, and left her room, striding to the kitchen, She stood in front of the open fridge for a long moment.
Not because she didn't know what she wanted. Because she was waiting for the reflex, the quiet internal veto that had governed every meal for four years. Too spicy. Too heavy. He won't eat this. He doesn't like this smell.
It didn't come.
Her eyes landed on Mrs. Anita's jollof rice, the container her neighbor had brought over two days ago. It had been sitting at the back of the shelf untouched because the one time Kyara had heated it before, Casper had walked into the kitchen, said nothing, and simply opened a window with an expression that closed the subject entirely.
Kyara took the whole container out.
Heated it until the kitchen smelled exactly like it was supposed to. Cracked two eggs into the pan, fried them until the edges crisped up golden. Slid everything into the biggest bowl she owned, sat down at the island without a placemat, without a folded napkin, without waiting.
She took one spoonful and closed her eyes.
She had forgotten. She had genuinely, completely forgotten what food tasted like when it wasn't edited for someone else's palate.
She ate every single grain and licked the spoon after with zero remorse.
Then she called her best friend Ellie.
It rang twice, which was unusual. Ellie Spore did not let her phone ring twice.
The girl had been attached to her phone since they were twelve years old, back when they were getting into trouble in the hallways of Westbridge Academy and Ellie was already networking with the children of celebrities because her father ran NovaStar Entertainment and socializing was practically a Spore family sport.
"Kyara." Ellie's voice came through warm and immediately suspicious. "You never call before noon. What's wrong? Did something happen? Is it Casper? Did he finally do something I can be publicly angry about because you know I've been holding back for years, I have so much restraint you don't even know about."
"Nothing's wrong."
"You sound weird."
"I sound normal."
"You sound like the old normal, not the new normal. The new normal is quieter." A pause. "Actually wait, I like this. Keep talking."
Kyara laughed, and it felt like something cracking open in her chest, loose and warm and startlingly real. "I want to go out tonight."
Dead silence.
Then, "Out where."
"To Blaze."
A noise came through the phone that could only be described as Ellie Spore having a moment. "KYARA. Do you understand how long I have been waiting to hear those words? I have been patient. I have been so uncharacteristically patient. My therapist actually praised me for it."
"You're being dramatic."
"I am being honest. There is a difference." She could already hear Ellie moving around, the click of heels on hardwood, drawers opening. "What time? What are you wearing? Please tell me not the beige. Please, I am begging you, not the beige."
"Not that, I'm wearing a Red dress."
Another silence. Shorter and more loaded.
"The red dress."
"Yes."
"The one from Marcello's on Fifth that you bought and then never wore because of you know who"
"Yes. That one."
"Oh." Ellie's voice dropped half an octave. "Oh, something did happen."
Kyara turned the spoon over in her hands. Outside, the city moved forty-two floors below, indifferent and glittering and fully alive without her permission.
"I just decided something," she said. "I've been putting my own life on hold, because of someone else and I'm done with it."
Ellie was quiet for exactly three seconds, which was the longest Ellie Spore had ever been quiet in Kyara's memory.
"Okay," she said finally, and her voice had shifted into something softer, something that had known Kyara since they were twelve and understood without needing the full story. "Okay. Then we're going out. I'll bring Priya and Coco. We'll make a whole night of it."
"One condition."
"Anything."
"No one tells Casper."
"Baby," Ellie said, "Casper's name will not leave my lips unless it is in a court of law."
Kyara spent the afternoon doing something she hadn't done in years. Whatever she wanted.
She ran a bath with the expensive oil she'd been rationing because Casper found the scent overwhelming. She soaked until the water went cold. She painted her nails a red that matched the dress, sitting cross-legged on the bathroom floor with a towel around her shoulders, blowing on her fingers like she was twenty again in her university dorm.
She ordered Thai food for lunch. The spicy kind.
She ate it on the couch with her feet up, watching the reality TV show she had deleted from the streaming watchlist because Casper called it mindless. It was completely mindless. She loved every second of it.
At five, her phone buzzed.
Casper: My colleagues are coming over on Friday. Make sure everything is ready for that day.
She read it again and again.
My colleagues. Make sure everything is ready.
Not can you please. Just a directive, clean and impersonal, the way you'd text a member of staff.
She set the phone down, and went back to her show.
Ellie arrived at eight-thirty in a black Range Rover with the music already going and her head halfway out the window before the car even stopped.
"THERE SHE IS!"