The night air cut sharper than any argument.
Silver shoved her chair back so fast the metal legs screeched against the restaurant's polished tile floor, the sound cutting through the ambient chatter and clinking of silverware like fingernails on a chalkboard. The noise turned heads at nearby tables, curious faces swiveling toward their corner where the tension had finally reached its breaking point, but she didn't care about the stares or the whispered speculation that would inevitably follow.
Her stomach twisted with the weight of pasta she hadn't even tasted, each bite she'd forced down sitting like lead in her chest. Her pulse still thudded with the aftershocks of that catastrophic dinner, the memory of Eli's flat declaration—You're not her friend—echoing in her ears with the persistence of a fire alarm that couldn't be silenced.
