14
The restaurant is elegant without overdoing it—pretty, discreet. I’m at a table for two across from Marina, who’s in a burgundy dress with that smile of hers that says, “I missed you, but I won’t say it because I’m a lawyer and I’ve got a reputation to perform.”
“You look even prettier,” she says as soon as she sits.
“And you look more stressed,” I tell her, because she’s got postwar-level dark circles and a tense neck.
“Barcelona wrings me out,” she says, dropping her purse onto the chair with drama. “But Madrid saves me. A week here is a dose of therapy, no couch, no prescriptions.”
I laugh, because she’s always been this kind of chic melodrama.
Marina was my leap into the void, my first client—one of the good ones, if that’s a thing.
It’s hard to feel solemn when you’re charging to hear how her ex left her for a Pilates instructor and, as a bonus, you’re wiping her snot and holding her hair back when sobriety leaves the building and the show begins: Ode to Romantic Trauma in Three Acts.
What we have is an experiment my therapist doesn’t get, and doesn’t need to.
Half confessional, half sex with an invoice.
No mush, solid after-sales service, which boils down to: no forever, babe, but for everything else—like the MasterCard ad.
If we have to cry, we cry. If a boob has to come out to relieve tension, so be it.
I still remember the first time. I was a wreck; she was pristine, pantsuit and a face that said, “Today I’m filing an injunction over a misplaced semicolon.
” Me, fresh out of the youth center, thinking, “She’s going to make me recite the Penal Code while she soaps me up with lavender oil.
” But in the end, she turned out to be more normal than she looked.
We put away a couple of glasses of wine, and not the cheap stuff that gifts you a three-day hangover. No, no. Marina’s the kind who knows life’s too short for bad wine or mediocre orgasms. Amen, sister. She practices what she preaches.
“So, lots of new steak in the catalog, or are you sticking with the usual—women you’ve got down to their cat, their trauma, their quirks?” she asks, crossing her legs with expensive-boarding-school choreography.
The steak thing cracks me up. I picture myself behind a counter slicing thin cuts of affection and wrapping hours of company in gold paper. If I get fancy, there are clients who want prime cuts and others who order ground beef for an emotional stir-fry. No objections.
“You know, the usual. The regulars, basically family minus the fights over the remote. And the occasional lost soul who crash-lands in my emotional practice hoping for a miracle for her clit and a patch for a broken heart. My pussy’s turning into Lourdes for confused lesbians.”
Marina cracks up. That laugh of hers hovers between adopting me and railing me in the bathroom—plan A and plan B fully compatible. My sarcasm works better on her than CBD. If I got paid per cackle, I’d retire before Christmas.
“I’ve been wanting to see you,” she whispers. “You ground me.”
I want to hand her a brochure of my own with typos, errors, and an unfiltered photo. I ground her, she says. I get lost in the cereal aisle. I smile—that’s what I came for.
“Oh yeah? Along which axis? X, Y, or the ‘get me out of here’ one?”
“You remind me not everything is signing documents and pretending my pussy is bulletproof. There’s life outside. With you I remember I have a body.”
And what a body, holy hell. I down the wine in one go. I need red sugar straight to the vein. My jaw’s been crackling all day, my chest squeezed tight, my pussy confused. And the night isn’t over.
We kick off dinner and, look, peak peacocking.
Marina gets fancy and orders tartare—raw meat with aesthetics.
I put on my expert face and nod—sure, global palate—and I order a salad to act healthy, even though inside I’m begging for melted cheese and an entire family-size pizza, stuffed crust and all.
That green salad stares at me like it knows I’m going to let it die alone.
While she fusses with her fork, paying homage to her tartare, we entertain ourselves trash-talking judges with more misogyny than dandruff in their robes, her ex-girlfriend who’s now a dyke mom and whose kid’s stroller is probably vegan and speaks four languages, and her dream of a mansion in Menorca, ex–cartel queen vibes but with sea views and an infinity pool.
The conversation flows on its own, as always: lifelong-besties level, but with invoices in between.
The usual script: she thinks she’ll surprise me, but I already know the ending, elevator music and all.
And suddenly the laugh dies in my throat. Nat walks in. Not discreet—confident, head high. My back tenses before I can stop it. She’s with a woman who looks like an anime villain: stick-straight hair down to her waist, legs for days, and East Asian features.
My pulse goes haywire and my breathing stutters; nausea hits, and the chair feels too small.
In the movie in my head I stand up, throw my wine in her face, yell "traitor," and roll across the floor to the door; the whole restaurant applauds, her plus-one apologizes. But nobody stands up. Nobody looks at me. I stay still, alone, wine sticking to my dress, the floor cold, and I realize I’m still here, I haven’t moved, I have no legs.
Maybe I never had any. And I keep smiling, just in case someone claps anyway.
"Are you okay?" Marina asks, fork held aloft.
I just want to fuse with the chair and slide underneath. I try to smile; it comes out a weird grimace. I clear my throat, swallow wine out of obligation—shoddy anesthesia, but it works.
"Yeah, yeah, all good. Just me being dumb," I say, every hair on my ass on high alert. "Thought I saw a ghost. Maybe the wine’s hitting weird tonight."
Marina gives me that "not even you believe that, sweetie" face, but decides to punish me with professional indifference and launches into the latest from the courthouse—a judge spouting theories from some dark corner of the internet, a lawyer who wants applause just for breathing.
I nod, say "uh-huh," but my internal alarm is blaring full volume.
And while she goes on, I play the don’t-look, don’t-look—oh, shit, I already looked game. I’ve got my eye glued to Nat, who’s three fucking tables away, dead center in my line of sight.
She doesn’t say hi or even signal me; she doesn’t even do that little pout she uses to turn me to mush.
She’s chill as can be, chit-chatting with the underworld geisha she’s with; the two of them giggling—hee-hee, ha-ha.
Everything in me freezes. I want to start shouting, "Surprise—this isn’t funny anymore! " but I hold back.
I don’t get it. Okay, sure, I told her exactly which chair I’d be sitting in, yeah, but not even in my worst fever dreams (and trust me, I’ve got enough going on in my head to bang out a thriller) did I think she’d have the ovaries to show up here all casual…
and with a plus-one on top of it. Disney villain, low-rent neighborhood edition, ma’am.
The glass empties itself. Or that’s what I want to believe, because I’m three in and starting to realize this wine is a lying backstabber.
My face is frying and my tongue is sharpening to spit out nonsense at supersonic speed.
Marina—liver trained, poise intact no matter what—keeps toasting with me and it doesn’t touch her.
A drinking pro: a glass here, a sly dig there, queen of endurance.
Nat stays in her bubble, glued to the other one; they whisper, laugh now and then. I inhale and let it out loud; I fix my posture, tug my top into place, remind myself I’m wearing cute panties—useless detail, but it makes me feel safer.
"Another?" Marina asks, with a little eyebrow arch that says, "I know you’re about to implode, but play it cool, sweetheart."
"Yes, please." I flag the waiter—what I really need is a defibrillator and a bucket of ice for my face—and he nods and rushes back with another bottle.
Heat climbs my neck. But it’s not just the wine, not even close. My stomach is tight, my throat closes up; I’m furious and embarrassed for myself, all at once, special blend: Humiliated Alaska, vintage of the year.
What the hell was the point of Nat showing up?
Seriously. I told her where I’d be; I promised I wasn’t going to sleep with anyone, that it was a goodbye dinner—"thanks for the job, I’ll send the invoice, a hug, and home.
" Me, naive, thinking she’d trust me, that she’d get that not everything revolves around her little control kink. Hilarious. What a chump.
"Trust me?" says my saboteur brain. "Trust Alaska, the Malasana escort who plays switcheroo with her twin and charges by the hour? Textbook girlfriend material: zero. I’m the one you hide behind the door if your mom shows up with a casserole and a need to chat."
Why would she trust me? And still, the sucker who trusted was me.
I swallowed the story that she didn’t have others, that she wasn’t playing both sides, that I was the only plan.
I fell for those shark eyes she gives me; I believed in that arched eyebrow that leaves me soft and half an idiot.
Now look at me: parked with my glass, sweating inside and out.
She shows up here, discreet surveillance brought to you by her ego, and puts on a passive-aggressive jealousy act that reeks of stale bullshit; tanks my mood and leaves my pussy dry. I take another pull of wine. And another. And one more. I’ve lost count and, honestly, I don’t give a damn.
Marina watches me. But not with that flirty little “maybe I get lucky tonight” smile anymore. Now she’s focused, with the face of a sharp lawyer who can smell bullshit a mile away.
“What’s up, Alaska?” she asks, her voice serious.
I play tough, like a public school theater actress.
“Nothing.”
“Yeah. Then why do you have a face like someone just broke your soul?”