CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
ATHENA'S POV

Haylen was sprawled across my bed with her feet propped against the headboard. Scrolling through her phone with a concentration that made it obvious that whatever she was looking at, had no business with her education.

When I finally broke the news.

"I'm going to Blake's coronation."

Her thumb stopped mid-scroll. "You're going to what?"

"Blake's coronation." I kept my eyes on the shirt I was refolding on my lap. Mostly because I didn't fully trust my own face to not give away how strange the sentence still felt in my own mouth, three days after I'd agreed to it. "With Adam."

She sat up slowly. Like someone with a back ache. Her phone forgotten somewhere in the blankets, and looked at me with a random expression that was not exactly upset.

More like she was recalculating what she had heard. "Okay," she started when she finally found her words. "I need you to walk me through that; Because on the surface that sounds like you’re willingly agreeing to stand in a room full of people who spent months treating you like you were dying, at the coronation of the guy who rejected you, on the arm of a completely different guy. That's a lot of sentence for one event."

"When you put it that way…" oh well.

"I'm putting it the only way there is."

I was seated on the edge of the bed, the shirt I'd been folding was now laying abandoned in my lap. "I know how it sounds. I've had the same argument with myself about four different times a day since I said yes."

"And you still said yes." She didn’t mean that as a question.

"I still said yes."

I watched her study me for a long moment, and go through the same process I'd gone through myself. Weighing whether this was bravery or something closer to self-punishment dressed up as bravery. I still wasn't entirely sure myself which one it was, if I was honest. Maybe some of both.

"Why?" she asked. Her voice proved that she genuinely wanted to understand.

I thought about how to answer that honestly instead of giving her the easy version. "Because I'm tired of making every decision out of fear. Adam asked me the first time because he wanted people to see me doing well, and I said no because I didn't want to be anybody's proof of anything. But then I kept sitting with it and I realized the reason it felt so impossible wasn't really about being someone's proof. It was that some part of me still believes that I don’t deserve to be in a room like that anymore. Like walking in on Adam's arm would somehow be announcing to everyone that I've moved on, and moving on felt like something I hadn't earned yet."

"Athena."

"I know how that sounds."

"It sounds like you've been carrying something you don’t need to be carrying." Haylen's voice had gone soft. The way it usually did when she dropped the teasing older-younger-sister thing entirely and just spoke to me like a friend. "You didn't do anything wrong. You don't owe anyone an extended punishment for trying to survive a rejection."

I felt my throat tighten unexpectedly at that. "I know that. Most days I know that. It's just easier to know it than to actually feel it."

She reached over and squeezed my hand. "Okay. Well... If you're going, you're going properly. Not shrinking into a corner in something forgettable. If you're doing this, you're doing it like you mean it."

"That's not exactly what I meant by moving past the fear."

"It's exactly what you meant, you just didn't want to admit the fun part out loud yet." She was already reaching for her phone again, though this time with an entirely different energy behind it.

Her thumb began moving fast, clearly pulling something up. "Okay. Coronation. That's formal, that's the kind of formal where people wear things that get photographed, which means we are not doing this half-hearted."

"Haylen…"

"What colors does Adam wear for events? Do you know? Because if he shows up in navy and you're in something that clashes, I will actually never forgive either of you."

"I don't know what colors Adam wears to formal events, I've known him for a few months, not a lifetime."

"We'll find out. This is a good problem to have, by the way. A month ago you were counting your ribs in the mirror and now we're discussing color coordination for a royal coronation. I'd call that progress."

I hadn't thought about it in those terms, but she wasn't wrong. There was something almost dizzying about how far the distance had stretched between where I'd been and where I was sitting now.

Cross-legged on my own bed, talking about dresses instead of counting how many days I might have left.

"You really think it's weird," I wanted to verify with her. "Going with Adam. To Blake's coronation."

"I think it's a lot." she admitted, setting the phone down for a second to actually look at me. "I won't pretend I don't. There's something almost poetic about it. Like something out of one of those web novels Mom used to read on her phone at the kitchen table. Showing up on the arm of the man who's trying to get you to fall for him, to the coronation of the one who threw you away. I don't think you're wrong for doing it. I just think you should walk in there knowing exactly what story it's going to look like you're telling. Whether or not that's actually the story you mean."

"What story does it look like I'm telling?"

"That you're doing just fine without him." She said it like it was the simplest thing to ever exist. "Which, for the record, I actually think is true. I just want you to be remember that you're walking in there for you, and not to perform for a room full of people who don't deserve an explanation from you either way."

I sat with that for a moment. "I think it's both, honestly. I think I get to want both things at once. To be there because I actually want to be there with Adam, and also to walk in and let them see that I'm still standing, without that being the entire reason I go."

My sister smiled. A small but genuine smile. "Okay. Then we're doing this properly." She was already scrolling again, faster now. The images were flashing past too quickly for me to catch. "I'm thinking something in deep green. It'll look incredible against your skin tone since you’re almost a ghost now and it's different enough from anything you've worn before.”

Ah yes… sweet Haylen.

"You've clearly already had opinions about this."

"I've had opinions about your wardrobe since I was nine years old, this isn't new information." She held her phone out toward me, showing a dress already pulled up on the screen. It was deep emerald with a neckline that made me immediately understand why she'd picked it. "What do you think of this shade?"

I looked at it for a long moment, and for the first time in longer than I could remember, I had a night ahead of me that felt less like dread and more like something close to anticipation.

"I think I actually like it."