Halley: The Mirror

The “force” doesn’t get to be sad.
Not in public.
The “force” gets to be angry, funny, or “unbothered.”

So Halley chose “unbothered.”

She was in the raw, hollowed-out aftermath of Kai, but she performed “fine” with terrifying skill.

She screened Mira’s calls, letting them go to voicemail, only to text back hours later:
Just swamped with work, babe! All good!
She was “too busy” for Tess’s offer of coffee.
She was isolating, her armor turning inward, becoming a bunker.

She was ashamed.
The “fixer” was broken.
The “strong friend” was the one in the trenches, alone.

The kids’ school fundraiser was mandatory.
A silent auction in a loud gymnasium.
The kind of event she usually owned. She loved nothing more than working the room, making people laugh, running the bar.

Tonight, she just wanted to disappear. She put on the dress. The “good” one. Put on the lipstick. An armor in red. She walked in, a perfect caricature of the “fun, single mom.”

She saw her friends—Mira, Rowan, Tess, Jude—all clustered near a table, laughing. A “foundation” of people. Mira saw her and waved, her face bright with relief.

Halley just… couldn’t. Not yet. She gave a small wave and made a hard left toward the wine table. She needed a prop.

She was nursing a plastic cup of bad chardonnay, pretending to look at a silent auction basket, when she felt a presence.

“Halley.”

Paige. Of course.
Paige, who looked… present. Calm. Solid.
With effortless composure.
The woman who had left Rowan.
The woman who had, by all accounts, set her first life on fire and simply walked away to start a new one.

Her steadiness unnerved Halley more than any sharp word could have.

Paige was a woman who made everyone stand a little taller

To Halley, who was desperately trying to hold her own life together, Paige’s calm felt like an insult.
An unearned, privileged peace.
Her own armor, in contrast, felt cheap and loud.
The “brass beneath the gold.”

She had to poke. It was a reflex.

“Well, look at you,” Halley said, her voice a little too bright, too sharp. “Must be nice. Just floating through. You always this… calm? Doesn’t anything ever stick to you?”

Paige turned, holding a program. Her expression flickered, something soft, almost like sorrow, but she didn’t look away.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Paige said quietly.

“Oh, come on.” Halley gestured with her cup. “You just… show up. All ‘steady.’ All ‘healed.’ Like none of the mess ever happened. Like you didn’t just… You know.” Burn it all down. “Must be nice to just… decide to be happy and have it work out.”

It was a jab, mean and small. She knew it.

She was trying to get a reaction. To see the force in this woman, to see anything besides this infuriating calm.

Paige just looked at her. Really looked.
Not with judgment.
Not with anger.
With recognition.

“I don’t think this is about me, Halley,” Paige said, her voice quiet, not a single sharp edge.

“Oh, here we go. The therapy voice?”

Paige gave a soft exhale that almost sounded like a laugh.
“No,” she said, shaking her head once. “That one’s retired.”
Then, “You think being ‘the force’ makes you free. You think being this… ‘unbothered’…” she gestured to Halley’s rigid posture, “is protecting you.”

Halley’s smile froze on her face.

Paige’s eyes were kind, but they were surgical.
And behind her kindness was something else. Understanding. The kind that comes from having been there.

“It’s just armor, Halley. And it looks heavy,” Paige said. “And it’s okay to set it down. You don’t have to prove you can carry it.”

Her breath caught.
Don’t cry. Not here. Not in front of someone who sees too much.

Paige hadn’t risen to the bait. She hadn’t defended herself.
She had just… seen.
She had looked past the “force,” past the “sharp tongue,” past the red lipstick, and seen the cage.

Halley’s “force” had no one to fight. Her “sharp tongue” had no reply.

Paige hadn’t brought a weapon; she’d just brought a mirror. And Halley shattered against it.

She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t speak. Paige had seen it.

The 18-year-old girl hiding behind the “fixer.” The “unapologetic” woman who was just one long, running, terrified performance.

She just… nodded. Once. A small, tight, broken movement.

“I have to… I have to go check on my daughter,” she mumbled, a lie, but she needed an exit.

She didn’t run.
Running was loud.
She retreated.

She put the plastic cup down and walked out of the gymnasium, not looking at Mira, not looking at Theo, not looking at anyone.

She got to her car, and for the first time since she was a small girl who’d sworn to “never again,” Halley put her head on the steering wheel, her “force” gone, her armor in pieces on the gymnasium floor…

And she just… was.

Broken. And, not anywhere close to being a force.

She was just human.