One More Hour

By Shay Miranda

In the bustling streets of New York City, playwright Daphne Finch finds herself caught in the mundane routine of her life. Juggling her job as an assistant to a wealthy businesswoman and attempting to stage her play, Daphne longs for something more. Meanwhile, New York native and talented actor Raf Pierce grapples with the disappearance of his neighborhood and the responsibility of helping his sister achieve her dreams, all while hoping for his big break. 

 

When Daphne's best friend and roommate, Farah, gets engaged, it leaves Daphne uncertain about her future living arrangements in an increasingly volatile housing market. On the other side of town, Raf's parents receive a devastating rent increase for their stabilized apartment they can't afford. For one night together, Daphne and Raf take comfort in each other's company as they navigate life's challenges and deeper meanings.

 

In a life filled with uncertainty, Daphne and Raf's story is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the transformative power of community and support in the face of adversity. Set against the vibrant backdrop of New York City, this heartwarming and compelling tale will resonate with readers long after the last page.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Narrativ Press
• Release date: Aug 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9798987634622

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

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 laundromat, taking Juna to ballet, mailing some product testers, and bringing Juna home. She would be off and to the theater by two, which would leave a few hours of quiet before the cast would start piling in for rehearsals at four.

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.