7 - Isa #2
"You know," Juliet says, swirling the ice in her water glass, "Adrian looked ready to murder that guy earlier. He left early too. That never happens."
My hand pauses on the bar. "He overreacted."
"Maybe." She tilts her head, studying me with those warm hazel eyes that see too much. "Or maybe he's been half in love with you for years and finally snapped a little."
"Adrian's not…" I stop, because I don't actually know what Adrian is anymore.
The image surfaces unbidden: something he mentioned once, years ago, when a customer was complaining about their family.
Just a fragment. How his grandmother's apartment in Little Havana always smelled like café and flowers, how Friday dinners meant too much noise and never enough space.
He'd smiled when he said it, then changed the subject when I'd looked at him too long, deflecting with a joke about the customer like he always does when things get too personal.
That's the Adrian I thought I knew. The one who lets tiny pieces slip through but never the whole picture. Not the one who pinned me to a bar with something possessive in his eyes.
"See?" Juliet grins. "You're defending him. We’re chatting about boys. This is basically a friendship. We're making progress."
"We're not friends."
"We could be." She leans forward, earnest now. "I know you think I'm this naive woman who doesn't understand how the world works, but I get it more than you think. I get what it's like to keep people at arm's length because letting them close feels too dangerous."
Behind her, I catch snippets of Spanish from the kitchen staff closing down.
The familiar rhythm of Miami's heartbeat.
She's right. She's exactly right, and that makes it worse.
But there's something about her warmth that doesn't feel like a threat.
Maybe because we're too different for real friendship.
The sparkly trust fund girl and the bartender with a knife in her boot.
We're so incompatible that letting her close feels safe.
Like playing with fire when you know it's actually just clever lighting. It can't become real enough to hurt.
"Fine," I hear myself say. "We can be… whatever this is."
Her smile could light up the whole club. "'Whatever this is' is perfect. I'll take it."
She stays while I finish closing duties, chattering about nothing and everything.
About her sister Eleanor. About missing New York but being glad to escape it.
About how Miami feels like a fresh start even though she's technically here on family business and is due back to New York any day now. Overdue, really, she tells me.
I find myself responding more than I mean to.
Actually engaging instead of just nodding.
Telling her about a customer who tried to pay in cryptocurrency last week.
About the best empanadas three blocks over that nobody knows about.
Small things, safe things, but still more than I usually give anyone.
After she's gone, I stand alone in the empty bar wondering why I let that happen.
Why I'm letting her slip past defenses I've spent years building.
But I know the answer. Because real friendship between us is impossible.
Too much distance, too much difference. She's safe to let close because she can never get close enough to matter.
The empty bar presses in around me, too quiet now that Juliet's warmth has left with her.
The expensive bottles behind the bar gleam like jewels in their lit shelves.
All this luxury built on blood money, and somehow that feels appropriate tonight.
I've been standing here for ten minutes, just staring at the clean surfaces and trying to understand what happened tonight.
Two fronts. That's what my control failed on. Two completely different battles, and I lost them both.
First, Adrian. My body wanting what I’ve never once let it ask for.
Surrender. Submission. The opposite of everything I've built myself to be.
The knife should have ended it, but instead I'm standing here still feeling the ghost of his hands on either side of me, my panties still wet from what I did alone in that storage alcove. A lock I’ve kept oiled for years slipped tonight, and what got through was need. Need for exactly the wrong thing.
Second, Juliet. Somehow worse because I made the choice consciously. I let her in, told her things, acted like we could be friends. The same lock, slipping twice in one night. This time what got through was loneliness. The exhausting weight of keeping everyone at a distance finally winning a round.
I've spent years perfecting this control. Keep everyone at arm's length. Never let anyone close enough to hurt. Never be the variable that gets someone killed. It's worked. It's kept me functional, kept me safe, kept me from destroying anyone else the way I destroyed…
No. Not tonight. I can't do Meiling tonight on top of everything else.
The point is, my armor is failing from the inside. Not from external threats or memories of the dead, but from my own body's betrayal. Want and loneliness, the two things I thought I'd surgically removed from my life.