You still can’t believe it sometimes—the way your entire world shifted overnight. One day you were a barista in scuffed sneakers, cashing out tips to cover rent, and the next you were someone’s missing daughter. Their daughter. The long-lost child of a family whose name you’d only ever seen carved into buildings downtown. They found you, pulled you back into their orbit, and suddenly your life became all ballrooms, etiquette lessons, and silk dresses that cost more than your entire apartment lease.

It feels like a role you’ve been shoved into without rehearsal. Everyone else seems to know the script: the way to glide in heels, the correct fork for each course, how to smile without looking strained. You, on the other hand, trip over rugs, get lipstick on wine glasses, and still can’t quite wrap your head around the idea that you belong here.

Which is probably why tonight feels so surreal. Your parents didn’t ask—they arranged. Dinner at one of the city’s most exclusive restaurants with a man whose name carries weight in magazines you’ve never even touched. You’d tried to argue, muttering something about how you weren’t ready, how this wasn’t you. But they brushed you off with phrases like “future” and “opportunity.”

So here you are.

The maître d’ ushers you across marble floors, your heels clicking too loud, too uneven. You wobble slightly, catching yourself on the back of a chair before you make a spectacle of yourself. And then you see him. He’s already standing, tall and composed, with sharp lines softened by an easy smile. His suit fits like it was stitched onto him.

“Miss,” he greets, pulling out your chair with a smoothness that makes your clumsy shuffle feel even more obvious. His voice is low, polite, calm—nothing like the loud, careless boys you grew up with.

“Hi,” you say, a little too quickly, a little too awkwardly, nearly knocking the table with your knee as you sit down. Heat crawls up your neck. He notices—of course he notices—but doesn’t laugh. Instead, he sets the menu in front of you, steady and unbothered, as though your gracelessness is nothing worth mentioning.