17. Amiyah
Chapter seventeen
Amiyah
The bar doesn't just play music; it pounds it through the floorboards until the liquid in my glass ripples in concentric, anxious circles.
Neon pulses through the fogged front window—a dirty magenta, then electric cobalt, then a sickly green that paints the teeth of everyone around me in shades of enamel rot.
I drag my thumb along the rim of my glass. It sticks, pulling away with a faint, tacky snap. A single rag hasn't touched this laminate since happy hour started, but I’m not here to critique the sanitation. I’m here to occupy space.
Our table was built for two. There are five of us, which turns sitting here into an ongoing, silent war of elbows.
I’ve carved out roughly eleven inches of territory, anchored on the left by a sodden napkin and on the right by the rigid angle of my forearm.
My vodka soda sits at two o’clock. The ice melted twenty minutes ago into a flat, lukewarm haze.
I haven't taken more than three micro-sips.
The glass isn't a drink; it's an anchor.
A prop to keep my hands busy so nobody asks why they aren't moving.
“Girl,” says the girl with the waterfall braids. She pitches her body forward, dropping her voice to the conspiratorial register reserved for state secrets. “If Professor Chen pulls another cold call on fiduciary duty, I am actually going to catch a charge.”
The table vibrates with performative panic.
Eyeballs roll toward the ceiling; manicured hands slam against the sticky wood.
I throw my head back on beat, releasing a laugh dialed to the exact frequency of effortless camaraderie.
My facial muscles flex with the mechanical accuracy of a trap spring.
Nobody looks closely enough to see the tension around my eyes.
“You think that’s bad?” Straw Flick Girl chews on her plastic mixer, her eyes wide. “I had to pitch the Uniform Commercial Code off the cuff. My slides looked like a cry for help.”
More collective shrieking. I tip the glass to my lips, letting the dead soda wet my tongue without swallowing. Keep the glass at chest height. Keep the smile neutral. Keep the boundary line drawn.
The conversation drifts through the standard Thursday night script: a house party in Silver Lake, who’s dropping out of Law Review, who’s sleeping with their seminar TA.
I know their majors, their hometowns, and which ones use self-deprecation to mask the terror of being average.
Especially Highlight Girl. Three layers of strobing powder catch the neon along her cheekbones, bright as a runway strip.
She possesses the unbothered posture of someone who has never had a bank card declined or a boundary enforced.
She taps her acrylics against her phone screen, a sharp, rhythmic clack-clack-clack that makes the base of my skull ache.
“So,” she purrs, leaning down into the center of the table. The rest of them drop like dominoes, drawn into her orbit. “Has anyone actually talked to the new exchange student in Legal Environment?”
My thumb freezes against the sticky glass. My pulse doesn't spike—it drops. Cold and slow.
“Oh my god,” Waterfall Braids exhales, clutching her collarbone. “The tall one.”
“Korean,” Highlight Girl says, lingering on the vowels like she’s placing an order at a boutique hotel. “Broad shoulders. And his hands? Have you guys looked at his hands?” She spreads her fingers, curving them into the air.
A low, collective groan ripples across the table.
I take another microscopic sip of flat vodka. The liquid tastes like cheap alcohol and melted tap water.
“I would let him ruin my life,” Highlight Girl says, and she’s grinning now, teeth flashing green under the window neon, soaking in the rapt attention of the table.
“Like, actually. Full permission. Take the wheel, buddy.
Wreck the car. I'd let him absolutely demolish my pussy,” she says, “and then I'd say thank you after and offer him a glass of water.”
The table explodes. Squeals, hands slapped over open mouths, chairs scraping against the floorboards as they recoil in performative shock.
My mouth remains curved at the edges, fixed, like a porcelain fitting on a display doll.
Underneath my ribs, something shifts—a silent, heavy click, like a deadbolt sliding home.
It isn't green-eyed jealousy. It isn't hot rage. It’s a sudden, dry clarity.
I look at the thick layer of poreless foundation masking her cheeks, the wet gleam of her lip gloss, the effortless entitlement of her wide, laughing mouth, and a very specific image blooms behind my eyes:
A sheet of eighty-grit sandpaper. The coarse, gray grit pressed firm against her cheekbone. Dragged down, slowly, past the contour line, taking the cheek-tint and the top three layers of epidermis with it until the skin underneath bleeds bright and raw.
Not fast. No sudden impact. Just sustained, deliberate pressure until the polish is gone.
I don't blink. I don't move a muscle.
The pink neon sweeps back across her face, lighting up her features, rendering her pretty again. Beauty is a shield; it softens the world around people like her. It keeps them safe from the things happening in the dark behind other people’s eyes.
I set my glass down. The bottom strikes the laminate with a dull, flat thud.
“Did anyone actually finish the Crim Pro briefing?” I ask.
My voice isn't loud, but it has a low, dense weight that cuts straight through the lingering giggles.
“Bauer is going to tear us open on Monday if we can’t trace the fourth amendment exceptions. I’m setting up a review group Sunday if anyone needs the outline.”
The air at the table shifts instantly. The sexual fantasy evaporates, replaced by the cold, familiar panic of academic failure. They snap back to reality, arguing about search warrants and traffic stops, oblivious to the lever I just pulled.
They don't notice the sudden pivot. They don't notice that my hands are completely still. They don't see that for four seconds, I sat three feet away from them and methodically peeled the skin off a girl's face in my mind.
This is the work. Managing the temperature of the room. I’ve done it since I was sixteen, turning smiles into barricades and eye contact into a distraction. It isn't a personality trait. It’s armor.
My phone vibrates against my thigh. I pull it out under the edge of the table.
CALENDAR ALERT: Library / Ethics Project. 10:00 PM.
I glance at my watch: 9:17 PM.
“Hey,” I say, gathering my leather tote from the back of the chair in one smooth, practiced motion. “I’m cutting out. If I don't get two hours of quiet reading in tonight, Monday is going to be a bloodbath.”
The protest is instant, lazy, and entirely expected.
“Already?”
“Stay for the pitcher.”
I flash the warm smile. The apologetic one that signals high standards rather than rejection.
“Duty calls. Next time.” I say.
I leave two crisp tens on the table—enough to cover my untouched soda and a tip big enough to ensure no one remembers my face—and slide through the crowded floor toward the exit. The air inside the doorway feels thick, choked with cheap perfume and warm beer.
When I push through the glass doors, the Los Angeles night air hits me—cool, dry, smelling faintly of exhaust and eucalyptus. I grip my car keys until the brass edges bite into the meat of my palm, driving out the lingering buzz of the bass.
Eighty-grit. Enough to leave a texture you'd feel for a week.
I turn the ignition, let the radio drown out the quiet, and head toward Thornfield Hall, keeping both hands locked at ten and two.
My apartment door locks behind me with a sound that feels like punctuation.
The bar clothes come off in the order they were designed to be removed: top first, then the shoes, then the skirt that was chosen for its ability to make my ass look like it was sculpted by God herself.
They hit the laundry basket with a soft thud.
The good jeans go on next. Wide-legged, high-waisted, the denim a deep indigo that has softened at the knees and inner thighs from too many washes into something closer to a second skin.
They hug my hips the way water curls around stone—smooth, effortless, and perfectly following every curve.
The cream ribbed top follows—the one with the wide scoop neck and the hem that hits exactly one inch below the waistband.
I tuck the front in, smooth it flat with two fingers, and leave the back to fall where it wants.
The pink bow is next. My hair is still in the soft waves from this morning, and I gather a section at the crown, twist it twice with my fingers, and secure it with the small elastic band. I put the silk bow over the knot and adjust it so it sits perfectly straight and centered.
My collection of perfume lives in the top drawer of my dresser. I pick the heavy glass bottle to the right—the one that has hints of plum, vanilla, and jasmine.
I check the mirror one final time, my frosty, pale, blue eyes studying my reflection. The girl staring back at me looks soft. Approachable. Like someone who spends her evenings baking cookies and watching rom-coms, not someone who murders people for a living.
I spray the perfume twice—once at the base of my throat, once on my wrists, and rub them together.
“Not for him,” I tell the glass.
The reflection doesn't look convinced.
Oh, well.
I tried.
A few moments later, I’m grabbing my handbag, and I’m out the door, piling into my Tesla for the twenty-minute drive.
My watch ticks to 10:00 PM as I round the corner. Precisely on time.
Jae is already installed in the alcove. His long legs are stretched under the narrow table, one ankle hooked over the other.
His cold iced Americano sits sweating beside his laptop, resting against a massive VetMed textbook on veterinary pharmacology.
Jae is taking a couple of upper-level legal electives this semester so he doesn't get utterly taken advantage of when he eventually opens his own practice.
His manga—Shonen Jump—is open on top of his casebook.
I pull out my chair and sit down.
Jae looks up from his page, his eyes tracking up to where the pink silk sits tucked into my hair. A slow, lazy smirk touches the corner of his mouth.
“Cute bow,” he says softly.
“It’s functional,” I reply, unzipping my binder with a clean, crisp slide. “It keeps my hair back while I salvage our grade.”
“Right. Because I’m just taking electives for the scenery.” He leans back, tapping his pen against his knee. “Did you read the supplemental on professional ethics codes, or are you going to keep pretending duty-of-care is identical in every field?”
“The legal framework is identical when you're structuring an ethical defense,” I say, tabbing to the highlighted section in our project outline. “If you want our Ethics presentation to survive Chen’s grilling, you need to understand that systemic duty is defined by procedural mandate, not warm feelings.”
“And if you ignore the practical reality of professional obligations, your framework is useless,” he says, leaning forward and resting his elbows on the wood.
“A prosecutor’s ethical breach is buried in administrative discretion.
In my world, an ethical breach on informed consent means an animal dies on the table. The failure modes aren't the same.”
“They are when the underlying duty is breached,” I counter, leaning across the table.
“Whether it's a prosecutor withholding exculpatory evidence or a clinician failing to disclose procedural risk, the ethical breakdown happens the second you substitute your own judgment for the client's or the court's.”
We go like this for twenty minutes. The rhythm is fast, sharp, familiar. Jae approaches ethics with the clinical, practical mind of someone who plans on saving living things for a living, while I pick at procedural technicalities and rule structures until something snaps.
He leans over to point at a clause on my draft. His hand lands on the paper, inches from mine, and his shoulder presses against mine through the fabric of my sweater.
It stays there.
The contact is warm. Solid. The heavy, dense muscle of his arm rests firmly against mine, and neither of us moves.
He keeps talking about professional standard-of-care and codes of conduct, and I pretend like the warmth of his arm isn’t doing something catastrophic to my ability to form coherent sentences.
My breathing stays steady—outwardly, at least—but my heartbeat is a wild panther locked in my chest, clawing at the bars and my skin feels like it’s been struck by a thousand tiny sparks.
His shoulder doesn't move.
Mine doesn't either.
The fiction of complete professional focus stretches between us like thin glass that could shatter at any given moment.
When we finally pack up at 11:15 PM, his hand brushes mine as he passes over a set of printed board ethics regulations. The contact lasts half a second. My entire nervous system registers it instantly.
“Sunday,” he says, slinging his heavy backpack over his shoulder. “Ten o’clock?”
“Ten o’clock,” I confirm, keeping my voice entirely level.
He gives me a quick, sharp smile—gone before I can fully dissect it—and heads toward the stairs.
I wait until his footsteps fade into the carpeted quiet before I let out the breath I’ve been holding in my chest.
I walk out to my car under the cold parking lot lights. The night air is crisp, biting against my cheeks, and as I sit in the driver's seat and turn the key, a wave of profound relief washes over me.
Finals are in a few weeks. Which means the semester is almost over. Which means these late-night study sessions in dark library alcoves, and the ruinous torture of sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with the man pulling me apart without even trying, will finally end.
I pull the pink bow out of my hair, toss it onto the passenger seat, and wrap both hands tightly around the wheel. Just a few more weeks, and I get my distance back. I get my composure back. I am in complete control.
I repeat the lie out loud to the empty car until it almost sounds true.