Chapter 3
Three
S tanding next to Larissa in a Wynwood brewery, Tori chugged the rest of her third beer. Happy hour was busier than usual and the late summer air was sticky with humidity. It didn’t help that there were too many people crammed into the bar. Too many people and too much noise and too much slipping out of her grasp.
“Man, that crush is still crushing,” Larissa decided, taking a bite of their shared pretzel.
Tori traded her empty glass for a fresh one. There wasn’t enough booze in the world to make her day feel less like a dream, but she kept trying. Her loft was only a short walk from the brewery, and she didn’t have to get up early in the morning. She could afford the dalliance.
“Are you going to help her?” Larissa asked in a way that meant she shouldn’t.
“Eight hours ago you were forcing us together, and now you’re?—”
“I was tossing you an assist while you froze,” she corrected with a laugh. “Now I’m being your very sexy voice of reason.”
Tori rolled her eyes and then bought some time with the incredibly thorough mastication of a chewy pretzel chunk. She could easily think of a hundred reasons she should not get involved with Mia. Why she should turn down her request and go back to her regularly scheduled programming. She had her hands full at the brokerage, regular networking events, and a running group she’d started with Larissa. Was she supposed to drop everything to help her?
The sound of Mia’s crying, of her voice raw and wavering under the weight of her grief, tore through Tori’s good sense. Mia and her mom had been so close. Even closer than Tori was with hers, and Tori called her five times a day. She couldn’t imagine that kind of loss. The idea of Mia facing something so devastating alone was unbearable.
Tori’s instincts were the heat rushing over her skin. A primal need to stand between Mia and the source of her pain made her forget all the work she’d done to prioritize herself. Made it seem worth the risk of losing so much ground.
“You can’t resist, can you?” Larissa smirked at her. “What have I told you about laying off the straight ones?”
Tori’s face was hot and her muscles primed to tackle an advancing lion. She forced herself to release the tension and shrugged. “But I like the straight ones.”
“Mule.”
“Nag.”
Larissa chuckled. “I’d be an absolute trash best friend if I didn’t give you the stock advice for this situation.”
Finally buzzed, Tori leaned back and motioned for Larissa to let her have it while she sipped her beer.
“Someone with your condition?—”
“Condition?” Tori interrupted.
Larissa sighed like it pained her to speak, but there was nothing she loved more than a theatrical moment. “You, my friend, have a straight girl fetish sprinkled with a touch of savior complex,” she said like a doctor imparting a diagnosis.
“I do not have a fetish,” she snapped a little too sharply. She’d dated a handful of women still exploring their sexuality, but that didn’t make her some kind of creep.
Larissa scanned her face before nodding once. “It might be more of a magnet. That tomboy femme thing you’ve got going is like catnip,” she decided. “The point is, maybe it’s time you funneled your energy into a nice girl who already knows what she wants.”
Tori shook her head. “Trust me. It’s not like that with Mia. She’s not interested, and I’ve been over that childish infatuation for a long time.”
Larissa’s raised brows called bullshit.
“I’m going to help an old acquaintance in need and move on with my life. It’s not a big deal.” Tori manifested her reality.
“Oh, she’s an acquaintance now?” Larissa chuckled. “You’re doing a lot of distancing, babe.” Her expression lost its perennial amusement.
“It’s not that serious.” Tori finished her beer. “I’m just?—”
“No?” Larissa cocked her head to the side. “You’re not gonna get all entangled with this woman to feel the illusion of intimacy without putting anything on the line?”
Tori nearly choked on her drink. She set down the glass too hard. “What?”
“I hate to do this, but I can’t ignore the possibility of spectacular heartbreak and I have to say it.” Larissa’s tone was more serious than she’d ever heard it.
“Say what?” Tori’s irritation was the harsh edge on her consonants.
Larissa had always been direct, and the fact that she was hesitating was making Tori’s pulse jackhammer in her neck.
“Do you think that maybe…just maybe…you only give people a chance when you know it can’t go anywhere? Can’t get hurt if they can’t really get to you?”
“Absolutely not,” Tori shot back without dignifying the question with any consideration.
“No?” Larissa crossed her arms over her chest. She was in agent mode, focused and unyielding. “Explain Shannon then.”
“Shannon?” Tori had dated the real estate lawyer for six months last year. Not only had she been so very gay that she went on family vacations with her kids and ex-wife, Shannon had been the one to dump her .
“Yes, Shannon. The very lovely lady who gave you the ick .” Larissa pretended to wrack her brain, tapping her chin for the extra flair of drama. “Why was that again?”
Tori blinked at Larissa. She wasn’t going to indulge her game. The conversation was pointless. Tori was just as open to finding her forever as any other single lesbian barreling toward middle age.
“Oh, right!” Larissa punctuated the moment with a single thunderclap that rivaled all the noise in the brewery. “She giggled.”
Tori bit the inside of her cheek to stop the reflexive laugh at Larissa’s ridiculous performance. She couldn’t help but finish the incomplete portrait. “In her sleep,” she said under her breath. “And it was disturbing as hell.”
Larissa’s dark eyes ignited with self-satisfaction. “A stable, emotionally intelligent, mature, and attractive woman who was super into you, and you fumbled her.” She picked up her half-empty glass. “You could’ve just invested in earplugs.”
“She broke up with me ,” Tori reminded her again.
“And you definitely didn’t drift away until she got sick of chasing you.” Larissa sharpened the fact to a point and flung it right at Tori’s chest.
An eye roll was all Tori had at her disposal. “It wasn’t about the giggling. There just wasn’t a spark. Do you want me to settle?”
“Never.” Larissa reached out and squeezed her shoulder. “I love you, you tightly-wound little control freak. I want you to be happy, and I’m afraid that getting mixed up with the girl you think hung the moon is going to make it even harder for you to fall for a mere mortal.”
Tori replied to the unusual show of tenderness with a lopsided smile. “I love you, too. And I’m not getting mixed up in anything. I’m going to help someone in need and then she’s going to go back to not existing, okay?” She signaled to the bartender to close out their tab. “I barely have to interact with her to sell her mom’s house. It’s going to be fine.”
Larissa’s face said she didn’t believe a word Tori said, but she was too good of a friend to say so.
A few minutes later, Tori stumbled into her two-story loft. Being on the eighteenth floor meant she rarely covered the floor-to-ceiling windows that made her place feel endless. She’d gotten her pick of units. It had been a no-brainer to choose one facing the bay. In the distance, Miami Beach was always glittering with life despite the stillness of her silence. It made the world feel vast and within reach all at once.
The moon gave her enough light to see while she kicked off her shoes and carried them upstairs to her bedroom perched above the open concept living space. There wasn’t a place in her house that didn’t bask in the wall of windows. Without the possibility of peeping neighbors, even her shower and standalone tub had an unobstructed view.
Peeling off her clothes, she dropped her trousers into the darks side of her hamper. The top went into dry-clean-only, and her underwear went into the whites before she padded across the marble bathroom and into her walk-in shower. With the moon at her back, she stepped under the waterfall of hot water.
As she shampooed her hair, she imagined herself as a member of Artemis’ band preparing for a hunt. Washing out the doubt and confusion, she replaced it with the feminine power of the silvery light.
Tori chuckled to herself. Fuck, I’m drunk .
After towel-drying her hair, she slipped into soft shorts and a tank. Her king-sized bed faced the windows where the sunrise woke her every morning. She dropped into bed and closed her eyes.
She refused to let out the feelings thrashing in the locked basement of her chest. Refused to think about what Larissa said. Everything in her life was under control. She’d made sure of that.
Drifting between boozy waking and sleep, Tori’s thoughts slipped away. Mia’s smile at the sight of her had been so bright, the memory of it seared into her hippocampus. It joined the thousands of snapshots that had accumulated there against Tori’s will. Mia reciting a ridiculous mnemonic device to help Tori pass her AP Bio final. The one time they’d skipped class to go to the beach, only to panic and sneak back into school. Driving all the way to the Keys in a borrowed car to get Mia’s mom’s favorite key lime pie for her fiftieth birthday.
Her chest throbbed, pulling her out of any attempt to sleep. She hadn’t seen Grisel, Mia’s mom, since Mia’s going away party. So many years had passed so quickly, and now she wasn’t going to ever see her again. Tori wasn’t prepared for how sad that made her feel. How helpless.
Tori resisted the urge to reach for her phone on the nightstand. Resisted the impulse to look up photos of Grisel. To sharpen the edges of her memories.
Grisel had been so different from Tori’s mom. Ballsy and driven where Tori’s mom was sweet and nurturing. When Mia said she wanted to go to college in Philadelphia, Grisel hadn’t reacted like a typical Cuban mom. She hadn’t sobbed and made melodramatic proclamations intended to provoke Mia’s guilt. She hadn’t cried about being abandoned by her only child. Instead, she’d helped Mia put together applications and reminded her she could do absolutely anything she wanted if she worked hard enough.
She muttered a curse under her breath and reached for her phone. Tori opened her social media app. The personal one she shared with very few and never added anyone from high school.
The two drinks too many made it impossible to resist the real reason she’d grabbed the damn thing. She hit the search icon on the corner and typed. Mia Falcon , Our Lady of Solitude High School .
Mia’s face on her screen was a punch to the chest. It was a deluge of too many things she should never have wanted and definitely could not still want. Her heart shouldn’t still race at the sight of her. She flung her phone across the bed, covered her face with a pillow, and screamed.