One more hour, p.1
One More Hour, page 1
Published by Narrativ Press LLC
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2023 by Narrativ Press, LLC
Text copyright © 2023 by Shay Miranda
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover design by Kahns Design
First edition, 2023
ISBN: 979-8-9876346-2-2
ONE MORE HOUR
SHAY MIRANDA
to everyone on their own
doing it by themselves
“Yet, as only New Yorkers know, if you can get through the twilight, you’ll live through the night.”
DOROTHY PARKER
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Shay Miranda
CHAPTER 1
New York City took late August heat as if it had a personal rivalry. The humidity moved into every fissure of personal space, creeping closer and closer to smother the population to death. Daphne Finch was not a native New Yorker, instead hailing from the Death Valley in Nevada, and still she never got the hang of dealing with the humidity of New York. When she told people where she was from, they scoffed at her complaints. Isn’t it hot there? Hot, not humid.
When her roommate began banging on her door, Daphne took it as a relief—a sign her day could begin and she no longer had to toss and turn in her bed, hoping to catch a sliver of a breeze from the fan she had at the edge of her bed. “Daphne!”
She hadn’t set an alarm, so it was presumably way later than it needed to be. As Daphne sat up in her bed and rubbed her eyes, her roommate went on from the other side of the door: “I need your rent check so I can drop it off today.”
Stumbling over the stuff littered across her bedroom floor, Daphne grabbed the written check from her desk and opened the door to her roommate, Farah Khan. She was already dressed for the day in scrubs and a hijab, both with colors selected to complement each other, her skin color palette, and her basic make-up routine. Farah was so put together, it made Daphne look like a complete mess in comparison.
“Good morning, sunshine.” Farah waved the envelope in her hand. “Give me your rent money, or bring shame to your family.”
“They have enough shame, thank you,” Daphne said with a cheeky grin, depositing her check into the envelope for Farah to seal and deliver to their landlord. “Any wild plans tonight?”
“I’m gonna see Kareem for a breakfast date, then a late shift at the hospital, but I should be home if you’re still up when I get back?”
“Yeah, I’ll try my best.”
Farah had been Daphne’s best friend since elementary school, but in more recent times, with Farah’s residency and Daphne’s… whatever it was she did, they had become ships passing in the night, catching each other for single moments or if someone sacrificed sleep for the other—most of the time, it was Farah.
Daphne’s parents had wiped their hands clean of all the responsibility of their child when she was eighteen. It was a long time coming, but she hadn’t expected the finality. Her parents had divorced when she was young and there was a routine 50/50 custody swap which kept Daphne busy her entire childhood.
But throughout the years, her parents moved on. They found new spouses and created new children to dote over. And even though Daphne had been there the whole time, she was the one who was always out of place. Never quite Mom’s, never truly Dad’s.
So it was three weeks after her high school graduation when her father said she couldn’t live with him anymore, and it was another two weeks after her mom decided the same thing. Suddenly, she was alone in a world filled with everyone else who wasn’t.
She had lived with a few friends who, after a few days, said she had to go. It was Farah and her family who offered her a place for the entire summer, and then brought her to the city when Farah started at NYU in the fall. Farah and Daphne had come up with the idea late one night as they huddled under the covers to watch movies on her laptop, and the next morning, Farah persuaded her parents to purchase an extra ticket.
It had been easier to show her appreciation and gratitude when Farah had been in school, or when both of them had to quarantine during the pandemic. Now Farah worked shifts in a hospital, and had a serious boyfriend, so she spent less time at home with Daphne, who could almost see her usefulness slipping away.
Daphne tried to fill her time with various jobs, but writing was a lonely career, and besides the constant nagging from the producer of her play, Anastasia, Daphne continued to exist in a lonely bubble that watched the rest of the world go on without her. In the midmornings, Daphne worked as a home assistant to a marketing director for a foreign beauty brand. There, she would receive a list of things and sometimes a school-aged child to bring with her. Juna, her boss’s daughter, was easy to talk to, because she was twelve and didn’t have a personality of her own outside of her mother telling her what to do. Daphne wasn’t the biggest fan of children, but Juna reminded her of her younger brothers, who she hadn’t seen since they were twelve either, forever frozen at that age in her memory.
Shaking away her thoughts, Daphne wanted to shower, hoping to wash off the sweat that had accumulated on her skin through the night. She undressed, letting the clothes fall from her body onto the floor before she grabbed her towel from her over-the-door rack. She sniffed it and decided it still had to be clean enough, so she wrapped it around her naked body and walked out of her bedroom across the apartment to the only bathroom. Daphne and Farah lived in their apartment for the last five years, and it had become the closest thing to home Daphne ever had. Here Daphne and Farah had celebrated many small versions of birthdays, Eids, Christmases, and more, their home becoming the perfect mix of best friends sharing the world together.
The water pressure on Daphne’s skin was nice, and she stayed under the hot water for a long time, letting it soak into her muscles. She had another busy day ahead of her—heading to her personal assistant job for a few hours before going to work at the theater. Hanna wasn’t a horrible person to work for, and she liked the conversations they had occasionally.
It was Thursday, one day before the gracious weekend that would allow her to stay in bed all day pretending the city outside didn’t exist. Today she had to bring Juna to her ballet class, which focused more on how chubby Juna was rather than her dance skills, and Juna was always in a grumpy mood afterwards. Daphne couldn’t blame her.
After she was done with work, she could head straight to the theater. That was her favorite part of the day, and the one she looked forward to the most, especially if Anastasia was in a good mood. Daphne hoped that would be the case today, because she didn’t know if she had the energy for much else.
It was days past when Daphne was supposed to do her laundry, so she had to search deep into her underwear drawer for a fresh pair, producing one from a pack that she had bought one of her first weeks in New York when she had desperately needed underwear. The fabric was now so worn there was a hole in the butt, and period stains inside from random emergencies throughout the years. She sniffed a pair of high-waisted jeans, deciding they were clean enough for another wear, and then produced a plain t-shirt from the depths of her closet. Daphne’s brown hair had a brush run through it before being pulled up into a loose bun at the crown of her head.
By the time she left her apartment, it was too late to go get coffee, but she went anyway, also ordering her boss’s usual chai latte so that at least when she showed up late, she only received an eye roll for punishment and a wave of the hand away. Daphne’s barista was someone she was familiar with, as they interacted with each other daily in the same setting: Daphne ordering her drink—a matcha latte with cold foam—and her boss’s and tipping as much as she could bear to afford, rushing to the subway with two steaming cups of hot liquid that would be cool enough to drink by the time she made it to her boss’s Midtown apartment.
Hanna was on the phone when Daphne let herself in, offering her chai latte as a peace offering. Her boss didn’t acknowledge Daphne herself, but she took a sip of her latte before she began yelling at her client in Dutch.
Daphne decided she would not get involved.
“Hey Juna,” Daphne greeted the homeschooled pre-teen. She never looked up from her iPad, where she was studying trigonometry.
Juna didn’t respond. Daphne waved her hand in front of the girl’s screen, and she blinked.
“Hello? Do you hear me?”
“Yes, geesh. What do you want?”
“An acknowledgement of my existence would be nice.”
Juna scrunched her nose and looked Daphne up and down. “Trust me, you don’t want it.”
Daphne threw her hands up and looked at the list Hanna had left for her. It was the usual—dropping clothes off at the laundroma
“I’m going to drop off the laundry. Do you wanna go with me?” Daphne asked, thinking more about the play and what she had to do than who she was talking to.
“Do I have to?” Juna asked.
“No.”
“Then no.”
God, what an asshole. Daphne looked back at the laundry cart and closed off the clasp at the top. She grabbed the keys and shook them. “Okay, bye.”
“Is this matcha for me?”
“No.”
Daphne knew it would not be there when she got back, so she stomped in and took a long drink of it, finishing as much as she could before she conceded her drink to the pre-teen, who took it before Daphne even walked out the door.
Outside, Daphne dragged the laundry cart up the hill and into the laundromat, where she handed over Hanna’s credit card and then trudged the empty laundry cart back into the apartment building. She chatted for a few minutes with the doorman, asking about his day, before she headed up in the elevator, which opened into Hanna’s apartment.
The only thing left to do was wait for Juna’s class, so the girls sat together at the kitchen island. Juna did her homework while Daphne wrote story ideas or concepts into her notebook. When it was time to leave, Daphne called an Uber, and they headed uptown together to Juna’s posh ballet studio.
Daphne wasn’t in the mood to hear any more about diet culture than usual, so she left Juna at the door, heading off to do the last things on her list so she could leave as soon as Juna was home. She went to the nearest UPS, mailing the packages Hanna had put aside for her.
It was all useless, mindless work to Daphne. She was stuck in this insane cycle of repetitiveness with no end. Work, pay rent, write, do it all again. Daphne had been in New York for five years, and she’d written countless online articles or listicles to pay the bills and it had never been enough. They did not offer her permanent positions after expired contracts. She never had an agent respond to her query letters. Her accomplishments lingered on Buzzfeed quizzes that went viral or that one time she got to write a scripted series for a large YouTuber.
Daphne thought of Farah, and what she had accomplished since they both came to New York. She spent a lot of her time comparing herself to her best friend, even if she didn’t mean to. Farah was a medical resident, had a great boyfriend, and had been set up for success in all aspects of life, while Daphne cheered her on from the sidelines.
The light at the end of the tunnel was the theater she had been working at for six weeks. Daphne itched in her skin thinking about how incredible it would be to see her work produced in a New York City theater, and she longed for the days of preparation to be over so that the real fun could begin: ticket sales and the royalties (and the press) that would come with it. She had received a sizeable advance from the production company, but it would slowly dwindle down to nothing if she wasn’t on top of things.
Juna was silent in the Uber home, and Daphne didn’t blame her. She tapped her foot on the ground, as if her speeding driver wasn’t going fast enough. Daphne didn’t have to walk Juna up from the lobby, so they parted ways and Daphne headed towards the subway.
She had already swiped into the station when she dug into her bag, looking for the latest version of edits Anastasia had asked for. After a moment of searching, she sighed. She must’ve left them at home.
Daphne checked her watch and then turned around, leaving the station to go back upstairs. She had to cross the street above ground to get to the Uptown train. She tried to wave for the MTA worker’s attention to see if he would let her in so she wouldn’t have to pay again. He shook his head at her, and with a groan of frustration, she climbed over the turnstile without paying, anyway.
The train ride was uneventful. When Daphne let herself into the apartment, she had expected everything to be the same as she had left it in the morning. Nothing to throw everything off its axis.
Instead she tripped over Farah’s sneakers haphazardly taken off by the door, and Daphne stumbled before glancing around her surroundings. Farah’s headscarf lay carelessly discarded on the kitchen table with her phone, keys, and purse.
It was unlike Farah to be the person who left a mess. That was Daphne. Farah tucked her shoes nicely into the shoe rack every single time. She put her keys on the hooks she and Daphne had hung up together, when Daphne kept losing hers and being locked out. Farah never left her hijab out. Ever. Near where they kept the mail, there was an emergency beanie for guests and delivery guys.
“Farah?” Daphne still couldn’t take her eyes off her roommate’s mess.
When her roommate came from her room, Daphne went completely still, her eyes wide. Farah was bursting with excitement and energy Daphne hadn’t prepared for. Her friend said nothing. Instead, she held up her left hand, a smile playing on her lips. It took longer than Daphne should’ve to move her eyes, to look at her hand. She stared at it, her brain working to register the jewelry which hadn’t been there earlier, or even ever.
A gorgeous circular diamond inlaid between a ring of smaller diamonds on a gold band rested on her best friend’s third finger, which had always been bare because Daphne knew Farah was not a jewelry person. She didn’t even have her ears pierced, so a giant wedding ring was completely not her.
But Daphne couldn’t react negatively. This was her best friend’s moment, and she needed to be there for her. Daphne had so many selfish questions running through her head. Her friend squealed in excitement.
“Mashallah, Daphne! I’m getting married!”
“Oh my God! Farah!” In an instantaneous switch, Daphne enveloped her friend into a tight hug as they erupted into excited squeals. And Daphne was excited, of course, because this was her best friend. Farah was following the steps of her life dreams as she made them. And Daphne couldn’t have lived with her forever, but she still didn’t expect it would’ve been so soon. So… now.
While Farah had grown and thrived in college, she had left Daphne behind with obstacles she couldn’t overcome. Sure, she wrote, and she worked enough hours to pay rent, but she couldn’t call that success. The money could barely pay her rent, but she had nothing else to show for the five years of adulthood she had experienced. Farah had a degree, a good job, and now a fiance. What did Daphne have?
“We have so much planning still to do, but it will be so amazing… and you have to come, of course.” Farah erupted into a babble of talk. Daphne had to wiggle out of her grasp.
“This is so… perfect, Farah,” said Daphne as sincerely and honestly as she could. It was enough to not even phase Farah, who had tears in her eyes.
“We’re doing it, Daphne,” she said through sniffles. “We’re achieving our dreams.”
Daphne wished Farah hadn’t said that. It was the only thing on Daphne’s mind, how little success she had. She knew Farah meant the play. The play. Her last strand of hope, her last one thing she could do right. Still the comment infuriated her. She swallowed her rage and blinked. Hard. She was not achieving anything at all; she was struggling to stay afloat. Farah knew Daphne was miserable.
Farah pulled her wet curls into a ponytail, then a bun, almost absentmindedly putting her hair back up into its usual hairstyle as she spoke about her day’s plans. She always showered before and after shifts. “I took the whole day off to celebrate. Kareem will be here in a bit, I think we’re going to go to a late lunch, but it’s also beautiful out, so we might go for a walk… do you wanna come with us?”
“I have to go to the theater,” Daphne said, not even lying. “I just came back to grab some edits I forgot.” Daphne went around past her friend to go into her own bedroom. When she was finally alone, she buried her head in her hands.
