The woman’s na was Priya and she was clearly not going to let the coat thing go.
Zara, entirely unbothered, attempted to explain.
"He bought it for when we went shopping," she said. "And then his friend dropped it at Ryan’s apartnt by mistake when he was returning our bags, so Ryan brought it tonight."
She said this as a complete explanation that resolved everything.
It resolved nothing.
Priya looked at Ryan. At Zara. At the bag. Back at Ryan. "Our bags," she said.
"We did so shopping," Zara said.
"Together."
"Yes."
"And the bags went to his apartnt."
"So of them."
Priya opened her mouth, closed it, and looked at the man beside her — whose na turned out to be Seth — with an expression that communicated volus without saying anything.
Zara appeared genuinely unaware of what she was communicating.
Ryan kept his face neutral.
"Anyway," Zara said brightly. "Ryan, this is Priya — she handles PR for the agency. And Seth is one of our photographers."
Seth shook Ryan’s hand with the grip of soone still deciding what he thought. "And you are?"
"Ryan Russo."
"Are you in fashion?"
"No."
"Art?"
"No."
Seth waited for the rest of it.
"Early stage startup," Ryan said. "Tech."
The word landed the way it always landed in rooms like this — not badly, just without weight. Tech ant nothing here. It sat in the sa category as ’I’m working on so things’ or ’figuring out the next move’, which in New York translated cleanly to a single interpretation.
Seth nodded with the politeness of soone who had moved on internally.
Priya had a small smile that didn’t reach much further than her mouth. "How exciting," she said. "Good luck with that."
Ryan smiled back. "Thank you."
---
Zara pulled him away after that, steering them toward the windows and the rest of the room like she knew every square foot of the space.
The sun had dropped further, the amber going deeper now, the city outside doing its early evening shift. From up here you could see a significant portion of Manhattan laid out in the darkening light — the grid of it, the density, the way it compressed and expanded depending on which direction you looked.
"Sorry about them," Zara said, not sounding particularly sorry, more like noting a fact.
"They’re fine," Ryan said.
"Priya is fine. She’s just—" Zara considered it, "—protective. Of things she thinks need protecting."
"And Seth?"
"Seth is a photographer who once described his own work as culturally urgent." She said it without venom, just accurate. "Draw your own conclusions."
Ryan looked out at the city. "Who’s the woman near the bar in the silver — don’t look imdiately."
Zara looked imdiately. "That’s Claudine. She styles for three major editorials and has told the sa story about eting Karl Lagerfeld at every industry event for the last nine years."
"Is it a good story?"
"It gets longer every ti she tells it." Zara picked up a drink from a passing tray. "The man she’s talking to is her assistant. He’s heard it four hundred tis and his face still does that thing where he laughs in the right places."
"Dedicated."
"Underpaid," Zara said.
Ryan smiled.
They moved through the room at a pace that was mostly Zara’s — stopping when she wanted to stop, moving when she’d had enough of a conversation, Ryan falling into step without needing direction. People noticed her the way people always noticed her, a consistent low-level awareness of where she was in the room.
But they also noticed him.
Not in the sa way — more in the way people noticed sothing unexpected.
Zara was known in this space, known well, and one of the things apparently known about her was that she kept her circle extrely tight. Almost no n in it. The few people who knew this well enough were doing the visible calculation of who exactly Ryan was and how he’d ended up here next to her, apparently comfortable, apparently welco.
By the third ti soone glanced between the photo circulating online and the back of Ryan’s head, he was fairly sure the room had drawn its own conclusion.
---
Zara introduced him to a woman nad Celeste — senior editor at a magazine whose na Ryan recognized — and a man called Dominic who did sothing in luxury brand consulting that he explained at a length Ryan found impressive.
Each ti, the sa sequence.
Is he in fashion? No. Art? No. What does he do?
And each ti Ryan said startup, tech, early stages — he could feel the room’s temperature toward him adjust by a degree or two. Not hostile yet. More the coolness of people who had decided sothing wasn’t relevant to them.
Dominic was the most direct about it. He had the confidence of soone whose opinions had been validated by enough people that he’d stopped questioning them.
"A startup," he said. "What stage?"
"Early."
"Funding?"
"Being arranged."
Dominic nodded slowly. "What’s the product?"
"Still in developnt."
Another nod, slower this ti. "So — concept stage, essentially. Pre-product, pre-funding." He smiled, pleasant enough on the surface. "Brave. Most of those don’t make it past the first year, statistically speaking. But soone has to try, I suppose."
"Soone does," Ryan agreed pleasantly.
Zara glanced at Ryan.
Celeste jumped in — just changing a subject they found uncomfortable. "And how do you two know each other?"
"We t at a gallery event," Zara said.
"I insulted the art," Ryan said at the sa ti.
Celeste looked between them.
"He did," Zara confird. "Loudly. In front of several people who’d paid significant money for the pieces."
"One piece specifically," Ryan said. "I stand by it."
"He was right," Zara added. "Which was the annoying part."
Celeste laughed despite herself. Dominic’s smile had beco harder to read.
Later, moving away from that cluster toward a quieter spot by the windows, Priya reappeared with a glass of wine, she had clearly been thinking since the last conversation.
"So," she said to Ryan. "A tech startup. In New York. With no product yet and no funding confird." She tilted her head. "And you’re here because—"
"Zara invited ," Ryan said.
"Right." She sipped her wine. "And you two t at a gallery."
"We did."
"And went shopping."
"We did."
"And the bags ended up at your apartnt."
"So of them."
Priya looked at him for a mont. "You’re very calm for soone being interrogated."
"Am I being interrogated?"
"Priya," Zara said.
"I’m just asking questions," Priya said, perfectly pleasant. "It’s my job to ask questions. Zara is — she’s important. To a lot of people. And n who show up in her orbit with—" she gestured vaguely, "—startups and no product and bags in their apartnt—"
"You can say what you an," Ryan said. "I don’t mind."
Priya looked at him directly. "Fine. You seem nice. But you also seem like soone who’s a long way from being able to keep up with Zara’s world. And that’s not an insult, it’s just—"
"Priya." Zara’s voice had dropped a register.
"—math," Priya finished.
The three of them stood in the amber light from the windows, the party moving around them, the city twenty-sothing floors below going about its business.
Ryan looked at Priya. Took a sip of his drink. Set it down on a nearby surface.
"You know what’s interesting," he said, "about people who are very good at reading rooms?"
Priya waited.
"They get so comfortable reading the room they’re in," Ryan said, "that they forget to account for rooms they haven’t seen yet."
Priya’s expression didn’t change, but sothing behind it shifted.
"Have a good evening," Ryan said pleasantly.
He turned back to Zara.
She was looking at him with sothing he couldn’t fully categorize — sowhere between amusent and surprise.
Then her phone buzzed.
She looked at it. Looked at Ryan.
"I have to go say hello to soone," she said. "Don’t go anywhere."
She moved off into the room.
Ryan turned back to the window and looked out at Manhattan in the early dark — the lights coming on floor by floor across the grid, the city shifting from its dayti face to its nightti one.
His own phone buzzed in his pocket.
He pulled it out.
A text from a number he didn’t have saved. Short, no greeting, just a na and three words beneath it.
*Unknown.*
*We are onto you Russo, it’s only a matter of ti.*
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