Derek noticed, of course. But his solution was another glass of cabernet, or a weekend trip I didn't have the energy to pack for. "You need to relax," he would say, as if relaxation were a switch I could flip.
A woman emerged from the shadows. She was ageless—perhaps forty, perhaps sixty, perhaps a timeless thousand. Her skin was the color of warm caramel. Her eyes were the deep green of a forest at dusk. She wore a simple linen dress the color of cream, and her feet were bare. monique-s secret spa- part 1
My days were a blur of back-to-back Zoom calls, micromanaging junior associates, and pretending to care about fourth-quarter profit margins. My nights were worse—three hours of restless sleep punctuated by the phantom buzzing of my work phone. The tension lived in my shoulders like a permanent tenant. My jaw ached from grinding my teeth. I had forgotten what it felt like to take a breath that didn't have an agenda attached. Derek noticed, of course
Not the frustrating kind of lost. The dreamlike kind. Every turn I took seemed to lead to a street I had never seen, though I'd lived in Westbrook for a decade. The address numbers skipped from 118 to 122, with no 120 in between. A cat—a sleek, impossibly black creature with emerald eyes—sat on a mossy stone wall, watching me. A woman emerged from the shadows
The cat blinked slowly, then jumped down and walked away. But not away, I realized. It paused at a narrow gap between two buildings, looked back at me, and waited.
By the autumn of my thirty-third year, the mask was crumbling.
I did not tell Derek about Monique's. Some secrets are not lies. Some secrets are gardens that must be protected until they are strong enough to withstand the sun.