All Chapters of Me, After You: Sekar: Chapter 1 - Chapter 8

"We're actually doing this, ladies."Sary's voice dropped into her anchorwoman register, as if announcing a corporate coup. Legs curled up on my sofa, margarita firmly in hand. On the mahogany coffee table, seven cream envelopes sat in a neat row, each sealed in black wax stamped with a single magnolia. Elegant as a row of time bombs.Sialan. Why did it feel like my heart was about to drop through the floor?This was my idea. I was the one who pressed that Inquiry button. I was the one who convinced six brilliant women that this insane experiment was worth a shot. But now, faced with the physical evidence, my armor cracked. Fifty-one years old, and a thin layer of fear pressed against my chest — an old voice whispering that surrendering control to a stranger was a fatal mistake.I swept my gaze around the room. Sary, silver-laced hair in a messy bun. Beside her Rosa — Oca, to us — tiny inside an old college cardigan. Grace sat with flawless clinical posture. Nina fidgeted with her sca

How could I show up empty-handed?I had been pacing in front of my refrigerator since seven in the morning. In the corporate world, showing up unprepared was tactical suicide. But Nikau's text from last night had been absolute: Literally nothing, Sei. Just yourself.I closed the fridge and faced my open wardrobe. The dotted, burnt amber calf-length dress with flutter sleeves was already on my body, and it felt entirely unnatural. Three times I had almost torn it off to retreat into my standard armor — sharp black linen, navy. This dress had languished in the dark corner of my closet for two years. Too soft. Too... feminine for a woman who had to project ironclad authority.Just as I was weighing a black blazer to bury it under, my phone vibrated. Video call. My son, Arga — still awake at his hour, of course."Ma, seriously? What's with the blazer?" His eyes narrowed through the screen. "Put the blazer back... to wherever it came from! Your dress is enough. Jakarta panas!" He leaned cl

I don't cook for people anymore.I used to. In the early years with Vino I cooked constantly — elaborate, exhausting dinners for his colleagues and his mother and men whose names I've since let go, standing at the stove in heels because he liked me "put together" when there were guests. Cooking, in that house, had been a performance staged for an audience that never once cleared a plate.Somewhere along the way I'd stopped. It was easier to let the kitchen become a room I passed through.Food became something Wiwin arranged, or a restaurant delivered, or I ate standing over the sink at eleven at night reading a P&L.So I don't fully understand why, three days after the picnic, I heard myself say into the phone: "Come over Friday. I'll cook."Silence on the line. Then, carefully, like he understood the size of it: "You'll cook. For me.""Don't make it a thing, Nik.""I would never," he said, and I could hear that he absolutely was.He arrived at seven with a bottle of wine he never me

 I make eight-figure calls before lunch without blinking. Restructuring? Routine. Hostile takeovers? A walk in the park. But the second this man mentioned heading back to his own place, I was glued to the couch like an amateur who'd forgotten how to think. God, Sekar. Get it together. Nikau stood by the door of Arga's room, laptop charger neatly coiled in his hand. The borrowed clothes he'd lived in for two weeks were folded on the mattress. He was actually packing to leave for the first time since my surgery. "Doctor says you're okay on the stairs now," he said, though it sounded like he was convincing himself more than me. "Wiwin