Chapter 1
Wren
THE SONGBIRD
Ding.
My phone goes off for what feels like the millionth time in the last ten minutes. Realistically, it’s only gone off about eight times, but at this point, the exaggeration feels justified.
I glance down at my phone. Richard. Again.
Rolling my eyes, I switch it to silent, shove it in the back pocket of my jeans, and get back to work. I can’t keep letting him distract me while I'm on the clock. This asshat has taken up enough of my time and I’m fucking over it.
Richard is my ex. We were together for two years, until I finally couldn’t take the mental abuse anymore. He wasn’t always like that, though. In the beginning he was actually quite the opposite. Charming, sweet, and so unbelievably loveable.
We met at a house party he was throwing in Beverly Hills.
My best friend, Olive, insisted that we go.
She’s into the extravagant and ritzy lifestyle.
I, however, am not. I would rather stay home curled up on the couch with a good movie and save my money.
But of course, there’s no saying no to Olive.
So, to Beverly Hills we went. The second he saw me, it was over.
He didn’t leave my side the entire night and we were immediately entranced with each other.
Rich was everything a woman could possibly ask for.
The kind of man that made you feel as if you were the center of his world.
He was constantly showering me with gifts, smothering me with affection, and praising me like I was his queen.
There wasn’t a day that went by where he wasn’t calling me beautiful or reminding me how much he wanted me.
It didn’t take long before I was absolutely swooning over him.
I should have recognized the love bombing for what it was.
The red flags came slowly, and at first, it was harmless little questions.
Who are you hanging out with? Where are you going?
Who’s all there? Then the judgment started.
Mainly passive aggressive comments about my outfits.
It was subtle at first, like I was showing too much skin or something, but then it started to get aggressive.
Whore and slut were probably his favorite insults to call me.
After a while, he began accusing me of cheating on him every time he threw a house party or whenever we went out with his buddies; as if I would ever touch any of those pretentious assholes in the first place.
He’s the reason I’ve lost so many of my closest friends.
Everyone tried to warn me, but foolish little Wren, I never listened.
Working at a bar didn't help matters. My entire job revolves around being friendly; I don't exactly have much of a choice. God forbid I came home after a long shift and tried to tell him about my night. If there was mention of a man, that’s all it took. He’d scream at me and accuse me of fucking them.
It got to the point where he started coming to the bar just to sit and watch me.
He wouldn't speak a single word to me or interact with anyone else.
Just a silent watcher while he sipped on beer after beer.
It was creepy and it made all the other servers super uncomfortable. Eventually, Joe, our bouncer, caught on to the shit he was pulling and stopped letting him in. It was embarrassing, but I was glad someone else at the bar had my back.
As awful as all of that was, it wasn’t even what finally made me leave his pathetic ass.
One night after coming home from the bar, I found him passed out in bed, a rocks glass damn near sliding out of his hand while the ice melted into a small puddle on the bed sheets.
While trying to clean up his mess, I kept seeing his phone screen light up and I was curious about who would be blowing up his phone so late.
Reluctantly, I decided to check his messages and regretted it almost instantly.
I shouldn’t have been surprised by the dozens of messages from other women, but I was. And suddenly, everything made sense. The accusations, the paranoia, the constant need to control me, it was all projection. He was the piece of shit.
There was a part of me that wished I had stayed ignorant, but the smarter part of me was glad I looked.
It went so much deeper than just text messages.
There were hundreds of pictures of all the women he’s manipulated over the years.
It disgusted me to know that this was the man I was sleeping with.
I left that night. No goodbye, no crying.
I just packed what little I had at his house and went to my best friend Olive’s apartment.
But not before I screenshotted the most recent text thread that had popped up on his phone and set it as his background, so he’d know exactly why I left.
He wasn’t worth the conversation. After everything I had to endure as a child, I sure as fuck wasn't about to let another man disrespect and take advantage of me.
From an early age, I was subjected to abuse that no child should ever have to go through. It wasn't the kind of thing you talked about, not when you’re so young. You just learn how to bury the trauma really deep, and eventually, it becomes a wound that never quite heals.
Somewhere along the way, you stop questioning why the world always feels so fucking heavy all the time. All that fear and silence you’ve been forced to have, the constant sense of unease. You start to think it's normal; how could you not when it's all you know?
And after all that constant abuse, you learn to start bracing yourself for the next blow.
That little voice inside your head that’s always whispering the worst things starts to sound right, and nothing ever makes sense anymore.
It doesn’t just scar your skin. It carves itself into your mind and soul.
I’ve spent way too many years feeling powerless and swallowing down fear, constantly feeling like I’m trapped in silence.
Never again.
“Wren, mijita, are you okay?” Snapping out of my dark line of thoughts, I look over at my coworker, Loretta. Her weathered face is etched in concern, the deep furrows of worry clearly visible in the wrinkles around her eyes.
“Y-yeah, sorry, I’m okay,” I mumble, more to myself than to her, as I struggle to bring myself back to reality.
I hate lying to her, but seeing her worried about me hurts worse than reading Richard’s messages.
Honestly, seeing his texts doesn't really hurt me anymore.
If anything, it just annoys me now. Working on autopilot, I hand the ticket order for table three to the line cook, and move to grab drinks for another.
“Is it that boy again?” she asks in a whisper, following me back behind the bar.
Retta knows all about Richard. She may be as old as my grandma, but damn does she always have the best advice.
I tell her everything. No matter how dark or fucked up it is, she never looks at me any differently.
She just listens, and somehow, it makes it all feel a little less heavy.
It took me a while to tell Retta about my father, but once I did, I knew there wasn’t anything I couldn’t tell her.
She even joked about killing him once. I laughed, but she meant it.
Lucky for me, that piece of shit has been locked away for years.
I’ve been working at Pour Decisions for five years now.
It wasn’t my first job after moving out, but it was the first one that made me feel like I belonged.
I moved out of my mom’s house in Palmdale when I was eighteen, desperately needing to escape the horrors that haunted the place I used to call home.
I couldn’t handle the person she was becoming.
Watching her throw her life away to drugs after my father was sent to prison was something I never expected to happen.
She was supposed to be my lifeline, but instead, I ended up becoming hers.
That’s when Olive and I made the decision to get out together.
I was scared, but Olive gave me the push to do what we both knew was best for me.
We packed up what little we had and moved to Los Angeles with barely enough money between us to pay the first month's rent.
We were lucky to find a tiny one-bedroom apartment above a little Chinese restaurant in Chinatown called Sun Hong Kong.
Chen, the owner, was kind enough to give us a break on rent when he saw how desperate we were, and even kinder when he offered to let us help out downstairs.
His wife, Mei, had been sick for a while, and he needed the extra hands.
We shared the cramped apartment for the first year, surviving off the leftovers Chen and Mei would leave at our door and boxed wine, clinging to each other through every breakdown.
We almost let the dark days win a few times, but we pushed through every obstacle until finally, the two of us were able to afford our own places.
Olive moved to a nicer side of town, but I wanted to stay at Sun Hong Kong.
It felt like home, and I couldn’t imagine leaving Chen and Mei behind.
Despite all of Chen and Mei’s help, I needed more income to make ends meet.
That’s when I found Pour Decisions. I started bartending part time to help cover rent, and soon enough, it turned into something much bigger than a second job.
Not long after I started there, Mei’s condition worsened.
Chen did everything he could to keep her comfortable, and within months, she passed.
Losing her felt like losing a piece of my heart.
Olive and I cried together the night it happened, holding each other like we always had.
A few weeks later, Chen handed me a set of keys. They belonged to Mei’s old Honda. “She would’ve wanted you to have it,” he said, his eyes rimmed with fresh, unshed tears. It was the first car I ever owned, and I still drive it to this day.