House Rules
You spend the rest of the day on autopilot. Dinner, dishes, laundry, wipe down the counters, take out the trash. Your hands do the work. Your brain is somewhere else entirely.
It's only when you finally sit on the edge of your bed, hours later, that something resembling consciousness returns.
You think about Riley. About the months of texts, the selfies, the careful calibration of hope. About sitting across from her at the office and feeling, for the first time since moving in, like there was a human being in your life who was genuinely on your side.
All of it. Engineered.
You sit with that for a while. You reach for your phone. At least there's this. At least Alina kept her word about the censorship. Riley's last selfie, finally visible. One small, pathetic victory.
You open the photo.
The censorship is still there.
Not the black bar... that's gone. But in its place, a mosaic blur, pixelated squares covering everything that matters with the specific cruelty of something that lets you know exactly what's there without letting you see it.
You stare at the screen. All for nothing.