Juliet

Chapter 1

CHAPTER

ONE

Nine Months Later

Manhattan Safe Harbor

Manhattan, New York

LOVIE

Yesenia’s cubicle smells like lemon Pledge and mangú. Her wet curls dangle over her brows as she dusts a smattering of crumbs from her fingers onto a napkin.

Her cubicle is just a speck in a sea of other grey cubicles on the seventy-eighth floor of the Liberty Tower where Manhattan Safe Harbor shares a space with a tech startup and a temp agency.

A loud medley of accents and languages blend together even though Yesenia says only on-call staff work on Sundays.

I’ve passed the building occasionally while walking with AJ, but it never stood out because every building in Manhattan is just a dark slab of concrete towering over me.

But sometimes the people here are like bursts of light in a dark room when I catch a hint of a southern twang in one of their voices or a smell emanating from one of their bodies that reminds me of home.

Yesenia tilts to the side in her chair and looks over my shoulder before bending down to grab her Coach tote by its frayed leather handles. “You know I can lose my job if Sarah finds out I did this, right? We’re supposed to keep a paper trail of every client case we work on.”

“If it happens, it’ll be because you or Jodie said something. I think we covered our tracks,” I reply, wrapping an arm around my throbbing middle. “And didn’t we talk about paying that micromanaging heffa no mind when she’s being nosy?”

Yesenia giggles. “‘Heffa.’ I like when you talk Texas to me…and for your information, I don’t go around telling my business to anybody here.

It’s crawling with big-mouthed beckies who’re using this gig as a resume filler and for TikTok story time content.

And the only thing Jodie knows about football is that a bunch of grown men tackle each other with tights on.

To her, you’re just another poor, poor black girl who needs emergency saving on a weekend in between museum visits with her yuppie husband and three kids.

As far as she knows, I did all of my paperwork. ”

My tender side throbs through my silk shirt as she rambles. The heat makes me lean to the side in the hard chair and press my hand against my ribs.

I smile at the picture of her one-year-old sitting next to her empty Starbucks cup. “How was Paco’s thirteenth day of daycare on Friday?”

She chuckles, wiping her lips with a napkin. “You make me feel like a bad mom. Who the hell keeps count after the second day?”

“I count every day because I count silly things.”

Like the exact hours and minutes it takes AJ to get from Jersey to our front door, and the number of times he can swing his fist before his breathing grows shallow. They’re all stupid, silly things.

“Just because you can’t remember what day it is, doesn’t mean you aren’t a perfect mama,” I add.

Her almond eyes soften.

I’ve never met Paco or sat at their dining room table while Yesenia cooked us dinner, but in my head I have.

Somehow I know what her tiny apartment smells like, and I know what Paco sounds like when he’s excited, even though his mama and I have never existed outside of the train or her little shoebox of a cubicle.

“He likes this daycare better,” she mutters. “It’s worth the extra hundred dollars a month, and I don’t have to worry about Ramiro popping up anymore. So, thank you.”

I nod as if I understand what she means about not having to worry about her ex anymore, but I haven’t even made it far enough out of the city to utter those words.

I bumped into Yesenia on the train two months ago. I ran right into her chest after I stuck my arm through the doors to stop them from closing. Her Starbucks cup had tilted back and her coffee splattered right onto her sundress just as the doors sang that quintessential chime behind us.

“Aye, watch where the fuck you going,” she grumbled, frowning at the big brown stain I left across her chest.

Well, I didn’t purposely leave the stain. It was an accident. Breathing in the musty subway air after not inhaling it for so many days made me walk around with my nose in the air so much so that I stopped paying attention to the people around me.

Yesenia had looked me up and down as I stumbled inside the subway car in my Tom Fords, and her lip twitched like she wanted to curse me out until I smiled at her while pushing up my sunglasses.

Afterward, she pressed her free hand onto her awful, faded pink polyester dress that had been washed too many times and pursed her lips.

They didn’t relax until she narrowed her eyes at my body as if she saw each bruise I hid underneath my denim shorts and tank top.

“I have a Tide pen and some hand sanitizer,” I said, smiling and wrapping my hand around the grab pole as the train took off. “We can get it out before the next stop. I know a trick.”

It took three stops to convince her I wasn’t some “loony bitch with a Canal Street Chanel” (her words, not mine) and five train rides during her morning commute to figure out we’d fallen in love with the same type of man.

“So… how’s your first day going? How do you feel?” she asks, staring into my eyes for the first time since I walked into Manhattan Safe Harbor dressed in my best business casual getup because I’ve been living in Aritzia sweatsuits for the past two weeks.

“My first day of what?” I reply.

“Of the rest of your life, or whatever that corny saying is.”

Oh.

I jumped up at one this morning, gasping for air because our plan felt like carefully choreographed chaos.

Six hours later, I “woke up” and answered AJ’s first check-in call before he went to have breakfast with the team.

Two hours after that, I sat my phone on our kitchen island, left our apartment, and barreled down into the nearest subway entrance with nothing but a promise from Jodie that I had a same-day ticket waiting for me at United’s check-in counter.

I didn’t have time to breathe, let alone “feel.”

“Am I supposed to feel anything?” I ask.

“It’s your brain.” She taps her temple. “These stupid, stupid brains are so complex that they make us think we need another person’s permission to live…

or feel. It’s funny how easy it happens.

One minute, the motherfucker is giving you everything you never knew you needed, and the next he’s squeezing every ounce of life and emotion out of you, and you’re too in love to even realize it. ”

She sounds a lot like Aunt Faye—except for the casual use of “motherfucker.” That’s probably why I kept wandering onto the same train to “run into her.”

“Yeah, until one day your spirit wakes up,” I mutter, making her eyes perk as she nods.

“Righttttt,” she drawls. “And then your stupid brain tries to follow, but God, it takes so much time. But anyway…”

She smirks, then glances behind me before pushing her purse toward the middle of her cluttered desk. “What’s the plan when you get to Colorado? Jodie said the shelter there can only hold you for thirty days because they’re so overwhelmed.”

I slide my Chanel Flap from my shoulder and hand it to her. “I called Jodie on my way out this morning and told her I didn’t want to go to Colorado anymore. I figured she texted you.”

“Wait…what?” She frowns, pulling the bag from my fingers.

The words came out casually, although I lamented over my decision for days.

I weighed the pros and cons and thought about all the “what ifs” while doing my best not to pace around our living room just in case AJ was watching me through the cameras he had installed in our apartment after I left to go to Trader Joe’s one day without telling him.

“Jodie booked me a flight back home.”

“To Houston?” she asks.

I nod.

“I thought we talked about going anywhere but there.”

“We did, but…”

“But what?”

It was easy to fantasize about starting over in Colorado, but once the fog lifted from my brain and reality slapped me in my face, I knew I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t go. How dare I muster up excitement to go to another place where I’ll still have nothing?

Somebody shuffles past her cubicle.

“Sonia, wait! I’m coming with you to the deli,” another person squeals, power-walking behind them.

I curl my fingers into the palm of my hand and swallow the words as they barrel up my throat.

“He knows everything about home, Lovie,” Yesenia hisses. “Be for real right now. That’s the first place he’ll think of when he realizes what you’ve done. He’ll get his ass on the first thing smoking and come to Houston to drag you back to hell.”

“I know, but my spirit says to go home—”

“And sometimes that shit can be wrong too. Sometimes we just need to use our brains.”

I huff, glancing at my lap. “Didn’t you just wax poetic about our brains being so complex?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t say to stop using it.”

“You don’t understand.”

“That’s the thing—I do.”

“Moving to another borough isn’t the same as moving to another state. You still have family here. I don’t have anybody in Colorado. I need to go home. I need…I need to…”

I need to listen to Mama because she’s here, lurking in the hallway outside of Yesenia’s cubicle just like she’s been lurking in my ear ever since I agreed to go to Colorado.

Aunt Faye always told me if I listened close enough I could hear her in everything and everyone around me, but I can’t tell Yesenia I made such a hasty decision all because Mama’s ghost talks to me through people sometimes.

If I did, she’d really think I’m some loony bitch.

“I just need a foundation, and I have that at home.” I look up and find Yesenia staring at me with her lips tucked under her teeth.

She nods with a loud sigh. “I get it. I just want you to be—”

“Safe. I know.”

She glances at my Chanel Flap, running her fingers over the gold hardware.

I lean over in my chair to hide the gold double Cs as another one of her co-workers walks past her cubicle.

As soon as they’re out of earshot, I reach out and fling the purse open, digging the AirTag and my ID out of its hidden pocket.

“Toss this.” I push the AirTag toward her that AJ snuck into any purse I carried longer than a week. “And pawn the purse like I told you. It’s worth at least a few months of daycare. If I had money—”

“I wouldn’t take it.” She grabs the AirTag, studies its shiny body, then sticks it back into the purse. “I hope when he checks the last known location on this thing, he shits himself just a little.”

We raise our eyebrows at each other, then snicker at our last hurrah.

“And I’ll keep the phone on for the next month in case you…” she mutters.

“Want to call and listen to you bitch about Sarah…or to finish convincing you it’s genetically impossible for me to wear sneakers for too many days in a row because of my insanely high arches… or play who’s had the worst stint in therapy?”

We snort out low giggles that make a sharp pain shoot through my side.

She folds her lips under her teeth, nodding. “Yes, you beautiful psychopath…and I’m still signed into my Uber account on that phone, but keep it cute. I don’t got New York Knights money, heffa.”

I chuckle and she sighs, tilting her head and eyeing me as if she knows it’ll be a very long time before I can stomach anything that reminds me of New York again—even her.

“Go put yourself back together, Lovie. That’s what my stupid, blanquita therapist says I’m doing. It’s kind of like calling yourself a survivor instead of a victim. It’s supposed to unfuck your mind, I guess.”

“I thought we hated therapy speak?”

She laughs. “We do, but for some reason, when she told me that last week, I thought of you.”