Still Becoming

After moving to a new city in search of reinvention, Clarice falls into a life that looks perfect from the outside and feels strangely borrowed from the inside. Her boyfriend, Giorgio, is older, polished, and powerful in quiet ways. He opens doors for her: a job at an art gallery, a curated social world, a version of herself that feels chosen rather than built. But with every carefully arranged room and every affectionate touch, Clarice feels herself growing smaller, softer, less certain of where she ends and where he begins.

A impulsive haircut becomes the first crack in the illusion. The city hums with unspoken rules, the gallery echoes with curated silence, and Clarice drifts through it all like an accessory in someone else's life. She tells herself this is what growing up looks like. This is what being wanted feels like.

Everything shifts the night Giorgio brings her back to his old circle: a group of artists, dreamers, and beautiful chaos living far outside the polished world he now inhabits. There, Clarice meets Austin. Reckless, magnetic, and uninterested in control, he sees her in a way that feels dangerous not because of what he might take, but because of what he might awaken.

Caught between the safety of being chosen and the terror of choosing herself, Clarice begins to question love, power, and the quiet violence of being molded into someone else's ideal. As desire, jealousy, and self-awareness collide, she must decide whether she will continue borrowing a life that looks right, or risk stepping into one that finally feels like her own.