Chapter 1
Before the envelope arrived, before emerald silk and responsibility and the quiet weight of my last name pressed in from all sides, there was Dima.
My first love.
The kind that feels less like falling and more like stepping into sunlight you didn’t know you’d been missing.
We met in the university courtyard during orientation week. He asked if the seat beside me was taken, even though the entire stone bench was empty. His accent curled softly around the edges of his English, and when he smiled, it felt like the world had tilted slightly in my favour.
With Dima, everything was simple.
We shared cheap street coffee that burned our tongues and late-night walks that stretched until the buses stopped running. He sketched buildings in the margins of his notebooks; I pretended to study while watching the way his brow furrowed when he concentrated. He told me he wanted to design places that made people feel safe. I told him that mattered more than beauty.
He believed me. He loved the version of me that lived in thrift-store sweaters and chipped mugs. The girl who laughed too loudly and stole his fries and fell asleep on his shoulder during movies she swore she wanted to watch. And I loved him with the reckless sincerity only first love can survive. But love built on partial truths is like a house with one missing wall.
At first, I told myself it didn’t matter. My family, my name, the private galleries and quiet wealth — those belonged to another world. A distant one. An irrelevant one.
Then one afternoon he saw my driver waiting across the street.
I told him it was my aunt’s.
Another time, he asked why a package addressed in looping calligraphy had been delivered to my door. I laughed and said it was a mistake.
He never pushed. That was part of the problem. Dima believed what I gave him. And every time he did, something inside me twisted. The end didn’t come with shouting. It came softly, the way winter arrives overnight.
We were sitting on the library steps, his sketchbook balanced on his knee. He had drawn us there — two small figures beneath towering columns, shoulders touching.
“I don’t know where I fit in your life,” he said quietly. “It feels like there is a door you never open.”
My chest tightened. The truth pressed against my ribs, heavy and desperate to be free. I could have told him everything. Instead, I said nothing. Silence answered for me. He closed the sketchbook.
“I love you,” he said, not as a question.
I swallowed. “I know.”
It was the cruellest thing I’ve ever said. We ended not with anger, but with an absence — a space where something tender had lived.
Later, I told Lainey and Naomi that we had simply grown apart. That university does that to people. That it wasn’t anyone’s fault.
That was easier than admitting the truth: I didn’t lose Dima because we stopped loving each other. I lost him because I never let him know me. And sometimes, late at night, when the world is quiet and honest, I wonder what would have happened if I had opened the door.
I had always tucked a small piece of myself away, like a secret note folded between the pages of a library book.
It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Lainey and Naomi with my whole heart — they were my heart most days. They were the ones who sat cross-legged on my floor at 2 a.m. when exams felt like monsters. The ones who passed me tissues after the boy who said “I love you” turned out to mean “I love the idea of you.” The ones who laughed so hard at my terrible impressions that milk came out of Naomi’s nose.
They were home in human form.
But some truths felt too big, too glittering, too heavy to lay gently in their hands.
Like the quiet fact that while Lainey carefully portioned out her grocery money and Naomi saved for new watercolour brushes, I could — without blinking — buy the entire art-supply store down the street. Or that my last name wasn’t just a name; it was a key that unlocked rooms most people never even knew existed. Galleries in Paris. Private viewings in London. Hushed conversations about seven-figure bids.
I didn’t feel like that girl, though. Not really.
I felt like the one who woke up with pillow creases on my cheek, who made instant coffee in a mug with a tiny chip on the rim and pretended it tasted just as good as the fancy pour-over stuff. The one who lived in a slightly crooked house with mismatched thrift-store chairs, peeling paint I swore gave it character, and a fridge door that only closed if you gave it a loving hip-check. The one who borrowed Naomi’s coconut moisturizer and promised I’d buy my own next month.
That version of me fit. I breathed easier in it.
I built neat little walls between the two lives, and for a long time the walls held.
Until the invitation arrived.
It came in a thick cream envelope that felt expensive just to touch. The calligraphy on the front was so perfect it looked hand-painted — elegant loops and flourishes that practically smelled of old money and fresh roses. Inside, the details were understated in that way only truly wealthy things can be an exclusive auction, the Rosenfeld collection unveiling, my family’s name discreetly sponsoring the evening.
And on the inner flap, in the same exquisite hand: Maya. Not Miss Maya Whitaker. Not Guest. Just Maya. As if the night had already saved me a seat.
My mother called three hours later.
“You’ll go,” she said, calm as a still lake. “We’re introducing the new collection. There will be press.”
“I have an exam,” I answered, even though I hadn’t looked at my planner.
“You also have a responsibility.”
That word landed like a cold coin in my stomach.
Responsibility. For what? Smiling prettily while strangers appraised paintings — and appraised me in the same breath?
I didn’t fight back. My mother never raised her voice — never had to. The quiet certainty in her tone was stronger than any shout.
I ended the call and pressed the phone against my chest for a second, as if I could muffle the ache.
Lainey breezed past, crunching into an apple, and I flashed my usual sunny smile. Naomi was in the kitchen humming off-key, twisting her curls into a messy bun with a pencil. They had no idea the envelope was sitting on my desk like a quiet bomb.
That night I sat cross-legged on my bed, the dress bag unzipped just enough to let deep emerald silk spill out like liquid moonlight. Custom. Tailored to my exact measurements. The kind of dress that cost more than three months of rent.
I let my fingertips trace the fabric. It was beautiful. It was mine. And it belonged to the other girl — the one I kept locked behind a door I rarely opened. I sighed, soft and unsteady. The worlds I’d worked so hard to keep separate were brushing against each other now, like fingertips reaching across a table. And deep down, in the quiet part of my heart that always tells the truth, I knew nothing hidden stays hidden forever. Especially not when it’s wrapped in emerald silk and smells faintly of roses.
