I’d tried to sleep after, but that had been futile, my head full of Reid Sutherland’s words and manners and shoulders and face, my hands fairly itching with the need to make headway on my new project. When that had been another creative bust (be you’ve lost your touch), I’d still worked late, as though I was doing penance, crossing off item after item on my regular task list, first at the small desk I have shoved underneath the lone window in my room, then eventually—uncharacteristically—from my bed. I’d lain in the dark with my phone, tapping out generic but friendly replies to the commenters on my latest videos (xoxo, thanks!—M; keep practicing! XO—M; try using a bigger drop shadow! <3 M), scheduling posts for today, organizing some deliveries for planners I’d finished over the weekend. Usually I keep a hard and fast rule about working this way, doing my level best to follow all the advice out there about screen time at night, about setting work-life boundaries in your space, particularly when you often work from home, but last night I’d been doing anything, everything, to get that meeting with Reid out of my head.

They felt like a sign, he’d said.

I roll to the side and unstick my phone from my skin (Reid is clearly not out of my head, since I picture the face of mild to moderate disgust he’d make at this), squinting at the screen to confirm my suspicion that it’s way too late for Sibby not to be at work on a Monday, and yeah—9:30, when she’s usually out the door by 7:00. On instinct I sit up quickly, grabbing for my sweatshirt off the back of my desk chair. I’m still pulling it over my head when I open the door, still pushing a cloud of wavy frizz off my face when I step out.

She’s coming from the kitchen, her laptop closed and tucked under one arm, a mug of coffee in her other hand as she crosses to the couch. Her curly black hair is piled high and messy on top of her head, her face clean of the winged eyeliner and red lipstick she wears almost every day, no matter that the five- and seven-year-old she spends most of her waking hours with could give a shit about how she looks. But Sibby loves a dramatic face, always has, and it’s jarring for me to see her this way at this time of day.

“Are you okay?” I ask her, arrested in my spot outside my bedroom door, the small square of floor that Sibby and I always joked led to the “sleeping wing” of our place, which had seemed huge to us when we first moved in, a luxurious comparison to our previous apartments in the city.