Rooftop and fairy lights

The rooftop was quiet just the way Sera liked it on Thursdays after work. Her roommate, Lily had strung up fairy lights months ago, and though half of them flickered sporadically now, they gave the rooftop a lazy sort of charm.

Sera wrapped her hoodie tighter around herself and took a generous sip of wine from the chipped mug she always used. The one with "World's Okayest Artist" hand-painted on it—by herself, of course. It was half-ironic, half-painfully accurate.

Across from her, Lily crossed her legs on the wooden lounge chair, balancing her own wine glass with one hand and typing something on her tablet with the other.

"So," Lily said without looking up, "we're either celebrating your upcoming art show or your total spiral into chaos. Which one is it tonight?"

Sera sighed, pulling her knees up to her chest. "Definitely spiral. Chaos with a twist of lemon."

Lily grinned and finally put her tablet aside. "Good. I was due for some emotional whiplash."

They clinked their glasses.

Lily—techie, traveler, and therapist-in-a-pinch—was a freelance UX designer who'd somehow managed to make remote work seem glamorous. The kind of person who wore matching pajamas to Zoom meetings and didn't bat an eye when clients ghosted her mid-project.

Sera, on the other hand, felt like she was barely holding her life together with burnt espresso shots and dried acrylic paint.

She glanced at her paint-stained fingers and sighed. "Sometimes I wonder if I'm ever gonna make it."

Lily looked over, her brow creased.

"I mean, as a painter," Sera clarified. "Sometimes it feels like I'm just playing pretend. Working shifts at a cafe all morning, doing freelance commissions that barely cover utilities, and trying to convince myself I'm still chasing the dream."

Lily leaned back in her chair, swirling her wine lazily. "You are chasing it. You've got drive, Sera. Not everyone packs up their life and moves to the city to get a degree in something that makes their parents go, 'but how will you eat?'"

Sera cracked a laugh. A soft, honest kind of laugh that ached in her chest. "It's just…" She trailed off, looking up at the stars. "Back in the countryside, everything felt simpler. My mom..she believed in me. She always said I had something in me that would shake the world if I just gave it time."

Her smile faltered.

"After she died, it was like the silence just swallowed that belief. My dad remarried pretty quickly. My stepmother's sweet in a... passive-aggressive, condescending way. I don't visit much. We don't talk about art or dreams. We talk about harvests and bills and whether I'm being 'practical'."

Lily didn't say anything right away. Just nodded slowly, listening the way she always did.

Sera glanced over, the wine suddenly heavier in her stomach. "And now, there's this new chaos," she whispered.

"What chaos?" Lela tilted her head, her catlike green eyes narrowing. 

Sera sighed, fingers tightening around her mug. "I'm pregnant."

The silence stretched, even the flickering fairy lights seemed to still.

Lily blinked. "Okay... rewind."

Sera looked down at her knees. "I know. It's insane."

"But—how?"

Sera rubbed her face. "It's not the usual story. Do you remember that time when I donated my eggs? I was broke, drowning in student loan debt, and I figured—why not? Quick money, medical screening, and a way to help someone else out."

Lily nodded, acknowledging her words.

"Well... apparently, a fertility center messed up. My egg was used in a surrogacy for a billionaire." Sera released a shuddery breath, looking away. 

Lily's eyes widened, her mouth slightly agape. "Sera—what?"

"I met him, Evander Thorne Ashford. The guy practically walked out of a magazine cover—cold, composed, too clean for a human. He came into the cafe, told me I was six weeks pregnant." Sera stared off into the distance.

"Holy shit." Lily choked on her breath.

"Yeah." Sera stared out at the skyline. "Turns out the pregnancy was detected through my donation ID and tied back to me—because they messed up the records. I thought maybe it was fake. Until the fertility center confirmed it. My donated egg. My baby. Someone else's uterus. Somehow... I'm still pregnant."

Lily sat back, floored. "That's... that's something out of a dark Netflix drama."

Sera threw a short, dry chuckle. "You think I don't know that? There's a contract too. Evander wants me to move in with him and says he'll pay me millions. But I can't just be bought like that." She paused, the words curling bitter on her tongue. "I wanted to be known for my art not for some scandalous surrogacy fiasco involving a stone-faced mogul and a fertility center screw-up."

Lily put her wineglass down and scooted closer, placing a hand over Sera's. "You're overwhelmed. Anyone would be. But... Sera, what do you want?"

Sera blinked, caught off guard. No one had asked her that yet. "I want to paint," she replied. "I want to get noticed not because of my womb or my mistakes or my bank balance but because I created something real."

She looked up at Lily, her voice breaking. "But now, I don't even know what's real anymore."

Lily didn't speak right away. A thoughtful expression crossed her face. She just hugged her. And Sera, for the first time in what felt like days, let herself lean into the comfort.

Her heart threatened to shrivel up. "I can't just let them get away with this," Sera stated in a flat voice despite her vision that blurred from her unshed tears."I am suing."

Lily's brows pulled together. "You're thinking of suing?" she hesitated. "You know that's not going to be easy. Right?"

"I know," Sera murmured. "But I'm not going to stay quiet and let a billionaire and a billion-dollar clinic turn my body into a business deal." And now that the shock had started to wear off, all Sera could feel was the violation. Someone had taken something so intimate, so personal and turned it into a corporate transaction.

Lily chewed on her lip. "Evander Thorne Ashford has lawyers who eat people for breakfast."

"So what?" Sera snapped, surprising even herself with the force of it. "I'm not scared of his lawyers. Or his contracts. Or his glossy fucking suits. He walks around like the world owes him obedience just because he was born rich."

"Sera—"

"And that fertility center?" she continued, her eyes fiercer now. "They violated their own damn protocols. There's paperwork. There are supposed to be chains of consent. How does a donor's egg accidentally end up in a surrogacy program?"

"You'd be fighting two monsters at once," Lily's forehead creased. "Evander and the clinic. It'll be a war."

"Then I'll burn my savings on war paint." Her words trembled with the same rage she'd been trying to suppress since that encounter with Evander.

Lily inhaled, the tension in her shoulders not quite easing. "How much do you even have saved up?"

"Enough to hire a good attorney for a month," Sera replied. "After that… who knows. Maybe I'll sell my soul." 

"Your soul is priceless." Lily muttered dryly.

Sera huffed a breath that was almost a laugh. She leaned her head against Lily's shoulder. "I just want this to end. All of it. My life... it's spinning like I'm just along for the ride."

"And you think suing Evander will fix that?"

"I think... suing Evander might remind me that I'm still me," she said, her fear morphed into desperation. "Even if I lost control for a while, I can still try to get it back."

Lily stayed silent for a moment, her fingers tightening around Sera's. "You've always been the reckless kind of brave," she said eventually. "I guess that's what makes you you."

"And you've always been the reasonable one," Sera plasted a bright smile. "That's what makes you you."

Lily gave a resigned sigh. "Then let me be reasonable enough to say this: Don't underestimate the emotional cost of what you're about to do. Fighting people like him... it'll drain you."

"I'm already drained," Sera said with a bitter laugh. "Might as well bleed for something that matters."

Sera traced the rim of her chipped mug, her thoughts spiraling between anxiety and adrenaline. Tomorrow, she will look up law firms. She'd search for attorneys who had the spine to take on the impossible and would pour every last dollar she had into reclaiming her dignity.

But tonight, Sera would sit under dim fairy lights, sharing cheap wine with the one person in her life, Lily who still made her feel seen. And that was enough.