They say if you're late to group, everyone stares. I was counting on it. Five minutes exactly. Enough to say I’m here, but not I’m desperate. I chose the silk blouse on purpose—creased just enough to suggest I’d been crying in it, but not enough to prove it. The eyeliner? Smudged. Precisely. I call it curated distress. Pinterest for the unraveling.

  The therapy room was every shade of beige that thinks it’s better than white. Chairs in a semicircle, the kind they use for interventions or kindergarten. Same posture, just different kinds of pissing yourself. I paused in the doorway long enough to register Arlo, seated like a monk who survived a riot and now teaches mindfulness at gunpoint.

  He didn’t smile when I walked in. Just looked at me like a slow, unblinking door. I nodded. Sat. Legs crossed. Hands folded in my lap like I was waiting for the crown of thorns.

  Some guy was already talking. At the time, I just called him “cardigan grief.” He talked like a eulogy with tenure and smelled like paperbacks and penance. The kind of man you don’t realize is bleeding until the carpet’s ruined. His cardigan was slipping off one shoulder and his voice had the texture of a last will and testament. You had to lean in to hear him, which felt manipulative. But I respect that.

  “I think I stopped being a person,” he said, eyes down, “and just became… memory furniture. Something familiar, but not needed.”

  I wrote that down. Memory furniture. Underlined it. Then scratched it out. Too poetic. Too real. Felt like stealing someone’s hospice note.

  Everyone was silent. Not out of awe. Just habit. The room does that. Swallows things.

  Another man grunted from the corner.

  “Jesus Christ,” he muttered, “Can we get through one session without Daniel sounding like a depressed IKEA catalog?”

  I crossed my legs slowly. Practiced expression number four: thoughtful with a trace of devastation. The one I used on Sunset Falls when Brielle realized the baby might not be hers.

  “Denny.” Arlo didn’t flinch. Just turned to him slowly. Waited.

  Denny blinked first.

  “I’m just saying,” he added, quieter, “some of us are trying to quit crying, not get better at it.”

  Daniel smiled.

  Arlo let the silence ride. He’s very good at silence. Like it’s jazz, or punishment.

  Then he looked at me.

  “Frankie,” he said.

  Just that. Not a question. Not a demand. An opening. One I’d been waiting for. I swallowed. Sat up straighter. Tilted my chin like the lens was rolling.

  “I think,” I began, letting the pause stretch like I was afraid of what I might say next, “I’ve spent most of my life trying to tell the story before I lived it.”

  Pause. Beat. Gentle exhale.

  “I’m not here because I broke,” I said. “I’m here because I realized I couldn’t even tell when I was faking it anymore.”

  They were all watching now. I could feel it. That small, electric hum of attention, like stage lights warming.

  “I thought if I could just narrate it well enough, the pain would feel earned. Like it belonged to me. Like I deserved it. Because if it hurts, but you can’t sell it...”

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  I trailed off.

  Arlo tilted his head slightly. “What then?”

  I blinked. Slow. Vulnerable. Controlled.

  “Then it’s just waste.”

  Silence bloomed. Thick. Damp. Like a hotel towel that won’t dry. There it was.

  I let the silence hold. I didn’t cry. I didn’t blink too much. Just enough. I looked at the floor like it betrayed me.

  It was, in all honesty, my best performance in years.

  “I thought that was… brave,” Daniel said.

  A blonde girl whispered something I couldn’t hear.

  Then finally, Denny grunted.

  “Well, that was cute.”

  Arlo, still unreadable, spoke:

  “Frankie, what does not performing feel like to you?”

  I opened my mouth.

  Closed it.

  Smiled.

  “That question’s rhetorical, right?”

  “Rehab Barbie’s got monologue syndrome.”

  Denny was digging at his hand like he was searching for a better version of himself under the skin. I’d barely finished swallowing the silence when he said it, loud enough to count as generosity.

  “Yeah,” a younger guy perked up. He was dressed like a Pride-themed thrift store explosion—enamel pins, glitter lotion from some event he probably left crying, and an oversized denim jacket that looked like it had survived more overdoses than Denny.

  “So, uh, wow. Frankie. That was like—”

  He pointed at me, vaguely. “That was like broken people poetry.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I think.”

  “I fake it too. All the time. But sometimes I start to think I’m not faking the same thing I used to. And I don’t know if that’s growth or just a different kind of lying.”

  Denny coughed.

  “You know,” said a younger blonde girl in beige, brushing at her ankle like she was too delicate to itch, “the performance thing? It’s kind of… vintage. Like, very Gen X. Hurt me, but make it fashion.”

  I tilted my head. “And what’s the Gen Z thing? Crying for engagement?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t cry online anymore. It’s manipulative. Also, the algorithm doesn’t reward it.”

  “Neither does God,” Denny muttered.

  “I don’t believe in God,” she said. “Just metrics.”

  “Thank you, Sloan.” Arlo leaned forward slightly. Just enough to suggest a shift. “Frankie,” he said, “what did you hope we’d hear in that share?”

  My throat tightened. Just for a second. Not enough to register, but enough to remind me I’d skipped breakfast.

  “I didn’t expect to be heard,” I said, slowly, like I’d practiced it. “I just needed to say it out loud.”

  It was the kind of line that sounded noble. Honest. Maybe even brave. Which is why I didn’t believe it for a second.

  But Arlo didn’t correct me. He just nodded, slow, like a monk acknowledging a hallucination.

  “That’s fine,” he said. “Just make sure the voice you’re practicing isn’t the one that’s still performing.”

  Which was annoying. And hot. But mostly annoying.

  The blonde finally spoke. Her voice was a rasp soaked in honey and bad decisions.

  “Everyone in here’s performing,” she said, staring at the ceiling. “The trick is making sure it gets picked up for a second season.”

  Denny clapped once. Just once. Sarcastic. A punctuation mark.

  Arlo stood. That was the signal. End scene.

  “Group’s done for today,” he said. “Ten minutes early. You’re welcome.”

  No one moved. Not right away. The air had shifted. We were all waiting to see who flinched first.

  Sloan stood like a dancer. The other blonde rolled her eyes. Denny cracked his neck loud enough to warrant an exorcism. Daniel offered me a tissue he’d folded three times and never used. I took it. Not because I needed it. But because sometimes kindness hurts more than cruelty, and I wanted to see if I could survive the papercut.

  Outside, the sun looked fake again. Too clean. Too bright. The kind of light that exposes, not forgives.

  I walked out last.

  Because if you can’t be the first to speak, be the last to leave.

  Control the exit. Let them wonder.

  And for God’s sake, keep your eyeliner intact.

  I made it to the bathroom. Pushed into the stall. Locked it with a thumb that kept missing the latch.

  Sat on the lid like I was taking inventory of my collapse.

  Pulled the burner from my bra like a weapon. It was still warm. That felt sad. Or efficient. Hard to tell.

  Opened Notes. Typed:

  “Group therapy = hell with folding chairs.”

  Deleted it.

  Typed again:

  “You’re not here to be interesting.”

  Just the quote. Nothing else.

  I stared at it until the screen dimmed.

  Locked the phone.

  Dropped my forehead to my knees. Stayed there.

  Not crying. Not thinking. Just… recalibrating.

  By the time I got back to the room, it was late enough that the hallway lights had gone soft—dimmed for healing or whatever the brochure said.

  Trix was gone. Her boots were still there, tossed at different angles like they’d quit her.

  I didn’t turn on the overhead. Just let the door close behind me.

  The notebook was still open on the desk.

  Right where I left it.

  Turned to the page where I’d written my opening: Rock Bottom Is a Myth Invented by Sober People.

  I stared at the sentence like it had cheated on me.

  It hadn’t moved.

  But it felt different now.

  Like maybe it wasn’t enough. Or maybe I wasn’t.

  I sat on the edge of the bed. My body felt like the wrong shape.

  I didn’t touch the notebook.

  I just looked.

  And tried not to wonder if Arlo was right.