Echoes Of You

Amira

Morning comes in pieces, light first, then the sound of pipes, then the thin hum of my laptop reminding me it never really sleeps. I’m already half-awake when the sun unzips the blinds and lays stripes across my desk, catching on a row of coffee mugs I keep meaning to wash. Photoshop is open, layers stacked like a deck of small decisions: Dodge on the collarbone, burn in the shadows, make the water look like it knows the word August.

Tasha texted at 12:43 a.m.: “More warmth but don’t make her skin look plastic. I want sunshine, not chrome.” I know exactly what she means. I always do. I nudge the curve until the skin glows just enough and whispers back the light it swallowed.

My phone buzzes. I don’t have to look to know who it is. I never have to look. Kenji. I flip the phone face down and tell myself I’m doing it because I’m working. Which is almost true.

The phone buzzes again and vibrates against the wood. A text slides in.

Kenji: You up?

I stare at the word You, how casual and sure it is, like there isn’t a single timeline where I wouldn’t be awake if he needed me to be. I don’t answer. I breathe and let the stillness in my apartment press against my skin the way a camera strap does when you’ve been wearing it for hours, soft, familiar, a little heavy. Another text.

Kenji: Call me? Two minutes. Promise.

Two minutes, as if we’ve ever been something that small.

I put the phone on Do Not Disturb and pretend the silence is a choice. Then, because I can’t help myself, I let my mind walk backwards down the hallway where the years hang like picture frames. Every one of them has his face in it.

We were fifteen when he sat next to me in Art I. New kid, sketchbook, hair that wouldn’t obey gel. “Kenji Sato,” he said when the teacher called his name, like he wasn’t entirely convinced it belonged to him. He drew with a confidence that made everyone else’s charcoal look tired. When he glanced over at my paper, I braced for the usual: nice, cool, is that your mom? He said, “You see like a camera.” I didn’t know what to do with a sentence like that. I kept it.

We became best friends by the kind of accident that only happens when you’re young: one late bus, one shared bag of Hot Cheetos, one conversation on a curb while a marine layer made the streetlights fuzzy. He’d tilt his head when I talked like he was tuning a radio. It made me feel like I was finally coming in clear.

People noticed us noticing each other. High school has a way of punishing girls who love out loud. “Amiraaa,” Aiko would sing, “your future husband came in with a new haircut.” And then to him, with a grin, “Your wife is staring.” He’d laugh. He always laughed. He never said, Stop. He never said, Don’t talk about her like that. He never said, She matters to me. He let the teasing breed; he fed it with that smile I would’ve built a city for.

I told myself it didn’t matter. That he did defend me, just privately. That what we had lived in a place smarter than hallways. The phone lights up again. It’s almost funny, how my body reacts like a trained animal: shoulder muscles tight, breath shallow, thumb already reaching for the screen I just told myself I wasn’t going to look at. I call him.

He picks up like he’s been sitting with the phone in his hand, waiting. “Hey,” he says, voice low and warm. “Knew you were awake.”

“You always know,” I say. I mean it neutrally. It comes out like a complaint.

“I couldn’t sleep,” he says. “I kept thinking about your sunrise photos from the pier. Remember when we did that little lookbook shoot and you bossed me around about golden hour?”

“You were wasting the best light flirting with the barista.” I can hear my smile, and I want to erase it. “I told you we had twenty-two minutes, and you used seventeen of them deciding if you wanted oat milk.”

“You say that like I picked wrong.” I hear the grin; I see how he leans back when he talks, how he stares at ceilings like they owe him something. “Can I see you tonight? Coffee? I just… I want to talk to you.”

“Coffee,” I repeat, tasting the word for lies. “About what?”

“Us.”

I let the silence breathe. “There is no us in the daylight.”

He exhales hard enough to fog a window I can’t see. “You make everything so heavy.”

“Because you float,” I say. “Somebody has to hold the rope.”

He groans like I’ve asked him to move a couch. “You always do this. You make it about what I’m not doing instead of what I am doing.”

“What are you doing, Kenji?”

“I’m calling you.” He says it triumphantly, like he’s solved a math problem. “I’m trying. Doesn’t that count?”

“You’re calling me at 6:08 a.m. to remind me you still know the number.” I glance at the time. 6:09. “And when the sun’s up and people are looking, you’ll pretend you don’t.”

“That’s not fair.”

“It’s true.” I’m not yelling. I don’t yell with him. I go softer and he hates that more. “You only want me when you’re alone in a room.”

He doesn’t answer. Instead, there’s a murmur on his end, voices blurred by distance. A woman laughs—a high, bell-glass sound—and he covers the receiver, says something I can’t catch. When he comes back, his tone has been combed. “We’re doing the Sato Beauty matte campaign next week,” he says lightly, like we’re old coworkers. “You should come through. It’ll be fun. Everyone’s gonna be there.”

“You mean your friends who think I’m a punchline?”

“Amira.” The way he says my name makes it sound like please. “Don’t be sensitive.”

“Stop confusing sensitivity with self-respect.”

He goes quiet, and I know I’ve swung too close to the truth he refuses to look at. Then, in a softer voice, “You know you’re the only person who really understands me.” It’s almost beautiful, that line. He used to say it when we were eighteen, when the world was new and the rooftop was warm and the sky let us think we could name it.

That summer after graduation, he came to my building with two paper cups and a movie queued up on his phone. He sat too close on my couch, his knee grazing mine, like touch was an accident he kept meaning to have. “You make me feel like I’m not faking it,” he whispered, and when he kissed me, I thought: Finally. The truth just learned to use its mouth.

I won’t describe the rest. I don’t need to. It was ours, and then it was not. The morning after, he kissed my forehead like I was a good dream he’d caught and said, “Let’s keep this just… for us for a little while. People ruin things when they know.” I nodded because I thought he meant protect. I didn’t understand he meant hide.

I clear my throat. “I have to work,” I tell him now.

“You’re always working.”

“I like paying rent.”

“Stop.” He laughs, but there’s a cut in it. “You know what I mean. You get busy and you forget where you came from.”

“I don’t forget,” I say. “That’s the problem.” He doesn’t say goodbye. He never does. The line goes quiet and I’m left holding a phone that feels heavier than it is.

I set it down like it’s glass and turn back to my computer. The model’s shoulder waits for me to finish pulling light up and into it. I feather the mask and think of how often I’ve softened hard edges for him too, how much time I’ve spent turning down the highlights so he won’t glare.

At eight I take a scalding shower, wrap my hair in a scarf, and put on a black knit dress that loves my waist. Business sneakers, gold hoops, lip balm with a tint that makes my mouth look kissed when it’s just moisturized. I grab my laptop and ride the Metro to a coworking space that smells like coffee and ambition. I like the hum of it, coders, copywriters, women with sharp nails tapping like rain, men in start-up tees manifesting VC money out loud.

By noon I’ve knocked out two banner options for Tasha and a pitch one-pager for a mentorship nonprofit that keeps telling me they need it “by EOD.” (EOD, in my world, has the stretch of a yoga band. It can be 5 p.m. It can also be 11:59.)

Then my inbox pings with a subject line that straightens my spine.

Freelance Design Opportunity — Sato Group (Time-Sensitive)

I read it three times. Claudia Park, PR coordinator, is “familiar with my work on small-to-mid fashion campaigns” and wants a 48–72-hour turnaround on landing page and social assets for the matte launch. “Competitive rate.” “Brief call today?”

My heart knocks once, twice, hope and dread, roommates with a lease.

Coincidence? Or did he, no. The email is too clean, too professional. If Kenji wanted me, he would text at 2 a.m. and say, Come over. He has never, not once, said, I got you this job because you deserve it.

I reply: Hi Claudia—thanks for reaching out. I’m available at 2 p.m. Best, Amira.

The Zoom link arrives in under five minutes. The efficiency makes me feel seen. Or hunted. I can’t decide which.

At 1:58, I adjust my camera and nudge a plant into frame, so I look like someone who waters things. My square pops up alongside Claudia (sleek bob, purposeful voice) and a junior copywriter named Hazel who smiles with her whole face. Then a third square flickers on—white wall, pale shirt, a collarbone, a calm mouth and I recognize him even though we’ve never properly met. Kaito.

He looks the way money looks when it’s been quiet for a long time. A winter sun of a man—steady light, not trying to burn anyone. Older than Kenji by enough that the bones of his face have chosen their final positions.

“Amira,” he says, and the way he says my name makes it sound like a fact, not a favor. “Thanks for joining us.”

“Happy to,” I manage. My tongue feels surprisingly large.

Claudia walks through deliverables: landing page hero, paid social, organic templates, a small press kit. Hazel mentions caption directions, confident, clean, not thirsty. “Matte as power, not mask,” Hazel says, and I nod because that’s the only way matte works anyway. You can’t make it about hiding; it has to be about choosing how you show up.

“Typography should do the heavy lifting,” I add. “We keep color disciplined, let the product texture carry the mood. Two-font system, strong hierarchy. I can make it modular so you don’t lose integrity when you scale.”

Kaito watches like people do when they listen with their mouth closed. “I reviewed your portfolio,” he says. “You’re restrained where most freelancers get loud. The work feels like it trusts itself.”

I blink. “Thank you.”

“If internal politics complicate anything,” he adds, and the word politics lands like he put a hand out to keep a door from closing on me, “route everything through Claudia or me. We’ll keep it clean.”

Kenji’s name never gets spoken. The absence is a kindness I feel in my throat.

The call ends with timelines and folders and the kind of optimistic sign-offs people use right before they ask for five more versions. When the squares disappear, my reflection returns, looking back at me like a witness. I let myself sit in the quiet for a long beat, then open a new file and start building a system that will not bend just because a product shot yells.

I lose myself until six. I only look up when my phone vibrates, face-down, stubbornly alive. I flip it like a coin, telling myself I don’t care how it lands.

Group chat: “Launch prep dinner!!!” A photo loads—a long table at the Melrose studio, everyone grinning like success is contagious. It must be; I can feel my skin react without my permission. Kenji is at the head, of course, head thrown back mid-laugh. Aiko is to his left, chin in palm, watching him. The caption: Our king cooks. The comments come fast.

Rina: remember when Amira used to chase him around with that busted Canon 😭

Marco: loyalty doesn’t mean you deserve him lol

Aiko: if she were serious, she’d upgrade her face not her presets 💅

The first sting is anger. It morphs into embarrassment so quickly I taste metal. I could respond; I could play the adult; I could mute them forever. Instead, I put the phone face down and stare at the table until the grain blurs. I don’t cry. I do that less now. What I do is remember.

The night everything first tipped, we were eighteen, summer hot on our necks, rooftop concrete still holding the sun. He knocked at 11:12 with two paper cups and said, “My mom thinks I’m at Marco’s.” I let him in because that is the motion I know best. We watched a movie we didn’t follow. He put his head on my shoulder, and I didn’t breathe right for fifteen minutes.

“You always make me feel…” He searched the ceiling for the word like the right one was taped up there. “Real.”

“You are real,” I said. “You’re just loud about it.”

He laughed against my skin and kissed me like he was relieved the ground existed. Fade to black. But I remember how careful he wasn’t afterwards, how he left the cups on the coffee table like I was a hotel and he’d be charged if he did too much. In the morning, he stroked my cheek with his thumb and said, “Let’s keep this just ours. People ruin good things.” His mouth said protect. His eyes said hide. I heard forever. He meant whenever.

The present pings again. A new post. My stomach already knows what it is and drops a few floors in advance to save time. Kenji with a woman whose face I’ve seen from billboards and bus wraps without knowing her name. Now I do: Mei Lin. Her cheek is against his shoulder in that staged-but-almost-casual way famous people perfect. His hand is on her waist. Her ring glints like it knows its job.

@KenjiSato: She said yes.

@MeiLinOfficial: I said yes!

The caption is three emojis: a black heart, a sparkles, a ring. The comments are an avalanche.

Power couple. Finally, a match for him. This is the era!

From Rina: Some of y’all really thought proximity equals destiny 😂

From Aiko: Tell Amira to stop crying and start Pilates.

Something happens to my ribcage. It doesn’t collapse so much as rearrange. I put the phone down with both hands like it’s a feral thing I should respect. The room keeps its shape. The city keeps its noise. Somewhere a siren argues with the evening, and a dog backs it up.

I think of every time I’ve looked at him and mistaken repetition for intimacy. I think of how I’ve learned to make myself smaller in rooms that asked me to be a secret. I think of the way Mei Lin’s ring sits like a period at the end of a sentence I’ve been writing for ten years.

My laptop fan whines. The plant in frame pretends we are still doing that. My phone lights again. A text, separate thread.

Kenji: Don’t freak out.

Kenji: I was gonna tell you, I swear.

Kenji: It just made sense.

I let the three dots bloom and die. He calls before I can decide not to answer. I answer.

“Amira.” He says my name like a claim.

I let a beat pass. “Congratulations,” I say, and it tastes like pennies.

“I didn’t want you to find out like that.”

“You posted it,” I say. I keep my voice level because emotion will be counted against me. “That’s exactly how you wanted me to find out. Because you were too much of a coward to tell me to my face yourself.”

He sighs. “Don’t make this ugly.”

“I didn’t make it anything. You’re the one that got engaged while still sleeping with me. I didn’t even know you were in relationship with anyone else. From my understanding you were supposed to be announcing our relationship to everyone, but I can see now that is a promise you keep breaking.”

“We’re good, okay? You know I care about you.” He lowers his voice, coaxing. “You’re my person.”

“No,” I say quietly, and the word is a clean blade. “I’m your hidden secret. I will never be by your side as your woman. I will always be the desperate, delusion, friend who keeps clinging to someone who is never going to love me. ”

“Amira that’s not true. You know I love you and that—”

“and that you have to uphold a certain image, so your father won’t cut you off. Yeah I have been told that same line for the last 10 years Kenji. You constantly come to me and whisper sweet nothings in my ear and then you leave. I am always stuck picking up the pieces of my shatter heart because of you.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Well life isn’t fair. Due to your own hands, I am constantly receiving unfair treatment. Stop calling fairness when I’m naming facts.”

On his end, a door opens. I hear a woman laugh softly—the kind of soft that still cuts. He covers the receiver again, whispers something, comes back. “She doesn’t… You know she doesn’t get us.”

“We barely get us.”

He tries again. “Just—please don’t make this complicated. You mean a lot to me. Nothing has to change.”

For a second I think I might actually throw up. “That sentence,” I say, steady, “is the whole problem.”

“Amira.” My name again. He is trying to steer the conversation with it. “I need you to be on my team.”

“I was the team,” I say. “You just never let anyone see me in the jersey.”

Silence cracks like ice. When he speaks, he chooses anger because it fits better than apology. “You’re being dramatic.”

“You’re getting married and still trying to keep me as a mistress on the side. Maybe I should just go find someone else to sleep with, record it, and then send it to you. Maybe then you’ll understand how I feel. ” He hangs up. No goodbye. Some endings don’t ask to be noticed; they leave the room and you only realize they were gone when you hear your own breathing get louder.

I stare at my reflection in my blacked-out screen. Eyes I got from my mother, mouth I’ve learned to carry gently because the world is bad at hearing women like me when we raise it. Semi-plus-size, Instagram would label me, as if softness needs a hyphen to be tolerated. I like my body. Most days. I like the way my dresses make space for me to exist without apology. Still, I know the math that happens in rooms where beauty has a caste system: who gets held up and who gets held off camera.

I leave my laptop and walk to the window. Los Angeles glitter-grimes at me, handsome and unkind. I can see a Sato billboard from my street—ten stories of lacquered lips telling me to buy a version of myself I already own.

When I sit back down, a new email waits—from Claudia. “Brand board looks great. Can we hop on for quick notes tomorrow 10 a.m.? Also, Kaito may join.” I type Yes with hands that are still learning a new grammar: the language of keeping my word to myself.

I draft three more layout options and force the product to sit inside them like a guest with good manners. I choose a serif that feels like a grown woman and a sans that knows when to stop before it shouts. I write notes in complete sentences because I want to be the kind of person who always does.

When the sky has turned the color of a bruise fading, I put my head down on my folded arms and let my body register that it’s been carrying bricks. My phone face-up blinks occasional light. I don’t look. I don’t want to know whether it’s a meme from Hazel or a dagger from the group chat or another Please from him.

The first tear comes without ceremony. Not a sob. Just a clean overflow, like a cup someone kept filling even after you said when.

I think, weirdly, about the first time he saw me in a dress that fit like I loved myself. Nineteen, some rooftop again (our origin stories come with stairs), him saying, “I didn’t know your waist did that.” I laughed and spun and felt gorgeous. An hour later he introduced me to the photographer as “my friend, Amira—she helps me with ideas,” and something in my chest sat down and didn’t stand back up for a year.

I sit up. I wipe my cheeks with my sleeve. I open my Notes app and write three lines:

Don’t be where you are not named.

Love that asks to be hidden is not love.

I am not a storage unit.

I lock my phone and stand. My legs tingle with pins from staying in one position too long. I make tea I won’t finish and watch the kettle steam like a small train. In the window, my reflection looks like a woman I might want to know.

The night puts on noise as lightly as a jacket. Somewhere above me, a neighbor laughs. I open my window and let the city in. It doesn’t ask who I belong to. It never has. It simply keeps moving, which is its own kind of mercy.

When I finally crawl into bed, I make myself a quiet promise that has no fireworks to announce it: I will not answer if he calls after midnight. I will not go to the launch dinner. I will do the job, excellently, and then I will make something of my own that doesn’t need his last name printed on it to be real. I turn off the lamp. The dark is not as empty as it used to be. I don’t dream about a rooftop. I dream about a room with good light where I am the person who opens the door.

In the morning, when my alarm breathes into the quiet, I wake up with the taste of that room still in my mouth. It tastes like new paint and a key that belongs to me. And when I pick up my phone, there is one unread DM, not from him: Kaito — “Claudia shared your first pass. It’s strong. If you’re open, I have one note about the spacing on the hero. Optional. You’re leading well.”

I read it twice. Then a third time, for the part of me that still doesn’t recognize care when it arrives without asking to be hidden.

I type back: “Open to it. Thank you.” My hands are steady.

I don’t check Kenji’s page. I don’t read the comments. I make coffee, answer client emails, and add a few pixels of breathing room to a headline that will sit on a million screens. And when my phone buzzes with a number I know too well, I let it roll over into silence because I have learned at last that silence can also be a sentence.

Tonight, I will print those three lines from my Notes app and tape them above my desk. Maybe tomorrow I’ll write a fourth. For now: I work. I keep my promise. I let the light come in, and I don’t apologize for how it looks on me.