Chapter 2 – MIRA
“Ms. Volpe,” my driver says as he opens the door. I slide out, knees together like my mama taught me. The line to get into the club winds around the block, and I wouldn’t want to flash everyone my chocha.
Gianna and the guys exit the car after me. My date, Alex, tries to take his place by my side, but Gianna beats him to it, giggling as she winds her arm through mine. She’s already two glasses of champagne—and who knows what else—deep. It’s her birthday, after all. She can do what she wants to.
That’s why we’re here at Tonic, Pyle’s newest, hottest club. Even I’ve heard of it, and I never go out. It’s the week before Christmas, so the velvet rope has been strung with colored lights, and the bouncer is wearing a Santa hat.
I follow one of my bodyguards toward the head of the line. The bouncer has the rope unhooked before we get there.
“I love going out with you.” Gianna sighs. “It’s like you’re famous.”
The folks waiting to get in murmur, wondering who I am, and a few snap pictures with their phones. Good luck to them; my men are very good at blocking lines of sight.
The party people are destined for disappointment anyway. I’m no one. Just some rich girl. Take away the car and the bodyguards, the Balenciaga dress and the Hermes bag, and what would you have?
Not much.
I plaster a smile on my face. Gianna is one of the few friends from school that I have left. I’m only twenty-six, but most of the girls I hung out with at Saint Celestine’s are married with kids already.
It’s not unusual to settle down young in our circle, but I see women my age on social media who are dating and job hopping and self-diagnosing and changing their minds, and I wish I knew people like that. People who don’t already have everything they’ve always wanted.
Gianna has nothing figured out, and that’s ninety-nine percent of what I like about her. Her date for tonight, Nico, isn’t even on her roster. He’s a guy from the gym, and she’d never even talked to him until he asked for her number a few days ago. I don’t think she’s been home to her own condo since. I don’t blame her. He’s hot, even though he’s pale as a fish belly. He’s not an Italian Nico; he’s some other kind.
His friend, Alex, is hot, too. Sharp cheekbones and a sharp haircut. Talks too much. Asks a lot of questions. Not my type, but fine for an evening out.
“Are you actually going to try to have fun tonight?” Gianna stage-whispers as my bodyguard throws open the nondescript, windowless door and a wall of thumping bass hits us in the face.
I cup a hand around my ear, mouth I can’t hear you , and strut into the cold, clammy darkness.
I don’t have fun. I work. I have Sunday dinner with my parents. I go shopping with my mom. Every so often, I let Gianna drag me places so I don’t grow moss.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. I was supposed to be the one bitching about never having time to myself and sharing recipes online for Chocolate Sin Cake and Better Than Sex Chicken and pictures of myself in ass-lifting yoga pants with the caption “keeping it tight for my man.”
Wyatt was supposed to be the man.
I curl my hands into fists and stride more briskly toward the VIP section, my bodyguard a few paces ahead, clearing the way. He’s a new guy—Morris? Mikey?
Dad usually has one of the people from his own team on my detail, but he took Mom to Santorini for their anniversary, and Marco is working for the organization now, so the guys Dad likes are on a Greek beach and the ones he doesn’t are babysitting my little brother.
Dad was freaking out in his very Dad-like way—which can get disturbing if you’re not used to it—but after I pointed out to him for the hundredth time that watching me hang out at home did not require advanced skills and training, he chilled out.
Tonight was kind of spontaneous. Gianna had been on me to come out, but I wasn’t going to until she called crying that Olivia canceled on her because her kids have hand, foot, and mouth disease, which is apparently something human children get.
That is the kind of thing I should know about. I should have gross little grubbers of my own with my very own annoying husband who drives me nuts with his weaponized incompetence and then makes me forget my own name with his huge cock. That’s what I was promised, what I never doubted that I would have, not since Wyatt beat the snot out of all three Henderson boys when they messed with me on the playground.
Blame my overconfidence on my dad’s genes. He thinks the world is designed for his pleasure, too.
I stalk up the three carpeted steps to VIP, drop into a suede upholstered booth, and scan for the bottle service girl. I need a drink.
Gianna and the guys follow, crowding into the curved bench. Alex ends up pressed flush against my side. He shoots a wry smile down at me. He’s a tall one, and he knows it.
Wyatt was average height. Taller than me, but no more than five nine or five ten. He might have kept growing in college—Marco sure did—but at first, it hurt too bad to see him, so I made a point not to look, not at his socials, not at his parents’ house in case he happened to be visiting.
He was done with me, so I was going to be done with him forever.
After he left, his younger sister walked the dog for a while. When the first wave of burn-the-world-down rage subsided, I timed my walks so I’d run into her, like I did with Wyatt in the beginning. She always had her earbuds in, though, filming videos or doing lives, so I could never make friends with her and ask her how Wyatt was doing. If he’d picked a major. If he had a girlfriend. If he missed me like I missed him.
Like a phantom limb.
Then, one day, his sister got a serious boyfriend, and there were no more walks. They probably rehomed him. Wyatt was the only one in that family with a heart big enough to love an animal.
I tried to get over him. I’m not stupid. Dad would never tell me what happened down in the basement, but I can imagine. Shit went down, and Wyatt decided he wanted out.
My brain doesn’t blame him.
My heart wants to tear his out and throw it on the ground and mash it into pulp just like he did with mine.
For a few years, I starved myself of him. I cultivated my playlists so I’d never hear a song that we listened to together or see one of our shows. I was going to move on. A husky gamer with a C average who never made varsity? He was replaceable; I would replace him.
But I never did. Because I didn’t want someone else. I wanted Wyatt Foster. I want what he felt for me.
“Champagne?” A pretty woman in a short dress interrupts my private walk down memory lane. She’s holding up bottles in both hands.
I nod, she pours, and I focus on calming my breath. Do other people still think of their exes a dozen times a day, eight years later?
Sometimes I think I’m not even remembering it right. Love couldn’t possibly have really felt like that. Nothing in life feels that good. I’ve mixed up reality with a dream or a hallucination from the trip I went on that time I mixed up a fifteen-milligram gummy with a thirty and got too high.
No heart can be that full. No one can be that happy.
Alex clinks his glass with mine, startling me back into the moment. His shoulder is pressing mine, and he’s leaning in. His breath is astringent and hits me full in the face when he shouts over the music. “So, Gianna says you’re a day trader?”
“Something like that,” I shout back. Day trader or stockbroker is close enough to my real job that I can talk about it, if I want, which I don’t. I want to go back home and rot on the couch. This space is too big, the ceilings are too high, the lights are flashing too quickly, the walls and floors and booths are too black. How much grime is the paint hiding? A lot, I bet.
“Got any hot tips?” He smirks, revealing sharp incisors and very expensive veneers. He has the slightest accent. I can’t quite place it, but I’m not interested enough to ask.
“Buy low. Sell high.”
He smiles wider, as if he’s genuinely amused, as if I’ve said something actually amusing. I’m so bored. Men like these turn it on and off like lamps. That’s fine when I’m ovulating, but I’m on week one of my birth control this week.
I sip more champagne and survey the dance floor so I don’t have to think of something to say. It’s a young scene. I’m not quite too old for the crowd, but I’m pushing it.
The DJ crossfades from one song to another that sounds exactly the same. The dance floor rises up and down in drunken waves. Huge, shimmering snowflakes hang from the rafters, dusting the people below with glitter.
I yawn.
“Keeping you up?” Alex asks, still smiling.
I wish he wouldn’t. It’s so fake. This is all so fake—the sea of lip filler, the bleached smiles and BBLs, the smoldering looks that make promises no one intends on keeping much past closing time. I had a man who looked at me like that once, but he meant it, for all that it mattered in the end.
For the millionth time since that last night in high school, my heart adjusts to the disappointment. I don’t get to fall in love in a club at Christmas under spinning silver snowflakes. I fell in love already, and lucky me, it stuck.
I pretend that I didn’t hear Alex and survey the room as if I’m fascinated by other people having fun. I scan half the room before my gaze is drawn to a cluster of finance bros gathered around a high top by the bar.
They must not have stopped home after work because they’re still in their khaki slacks, collared shirts, and power vests, each holding a beer, hands on hips and slightly stretching their lower backs in the most casual way as they listen to the head bro animatedly regale the group about something or other. They’re absolutely generic. A dime a dozen.
I can’t look away from the one in a navy-blue vest. Well, they’re all wearing navy-blue vests. I can’t look away from the one with his back to me, stocky, medium height, brown hair. He’s standing like the others, but there’s something about his stance. A familiar sullenness. I’d recognize it anywhere.
The man takes a hand from his pocket and rubs the back of his neck. I know that hand. Didn’t I hold it for three years straight in high school?
Everything inside me bottoms out—my stomach, my heart, whatever air had been circulating in my lungs. I straighten my spine. I feel called on. Called out.
But no one’s paying attention to me except Alex.
“See someone you know?” he asks.
I want to click him off. X out of his tab. I can’t be in the same room with Wyatt Foster for the first time in eight years and pay attention to this guy at the same time. I especially can’t talk. I can hardly breathe.
Without conscious thought, I rise to my feet.
“Mira?” Alex grabs my arm to get my attention.
I yank it free, already walking away, down the steps to the dance floor. I skirt the edges, heading for the bar. I have zombie feet.
What am I going to say?
I’ve imagined this moment a hundred times, and I’m always with a hot guy—my rich, powerful husband—and I cling to this new love of my life so that my huge diamond ring shows, and Wyatt sees it, his face falls, and he says my name— Mira —like he still loves me with every cell in his body, just like he used to say my name before he abandoned me like the leftovers from a bad meal.
My feet deliver me to the finance bros before I’ve figured anything out, and for a few seconds, I stand there, mouth working like a fish, like that’ll pull out the words choking my throat.
“Hey, there,” the head bro says, noticing me first. “How are you this evening?”
He was really into his story, but I’m not bragging when I say I stop traffic. Cars stop all the time. I’ve got the porn star package—blonde hair, killer rack, and toned ass that says “pilates” but was actually a gift from my mother.
Wyatt turns to see who his bro is talking to, and we’re face to face.
I clutch the ruched side seams of my silver lamé dress because I have to hold onto something.
He’s taller than he was when he left. And bigger in general. He’s mostly muscle—it’s clear he works out—but he’s also got a little paunch. Not much. Just enough that the fabric of his navy checked shirt pulls across his stomach.
I want to rub his belly. Squeeze the biceps that also strain the fabric of his shirt. Throw my arms around his neck and burst into tears.
I’ve missed him.
He doesn’t seem to feel the same.
He looks like he’s run into a bear on a trail, and he’s trying with every ounce of his being not to show fear. His eyes flick over my shoulder, and he tenses. I don’t have to turn around. I know it’s one of my men, come to loom a discreet distance away. I can smell the Acqua di Giò. They all wear Acqua di Giò.
“Go back to the table,” I toss over my shoulder without taking my eyes off Wyatt. When he runs away from me this time, I’m going to watch him do it.
“You gonna introduce us to your friend, Foster?” the head bro asks, circling the table, grinning widely.
Wyatt says nothing. He stares at me, teeth clenched, brooding brown eyes flicking from part to part of my body like a skipping stone—eyes, nose, lips, tits, legs, hair, hands. The lamé is getting damp, wadded in my fists.
“I’m all here and accounted for,” I say to him.
He swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing. He still has a strong, thick neck, and I see he still nicks himself shaving. He always had shit hand-eye coordination.
“What are you now?” I ask. “An accountant?”
“Foster here is our Director of Strategic Analytics, and if he keeps making deals like he did today, I say you might be looking at the youngest VP in company history,” the head bro says, slinging an arm around Wyatt’s shoulder. The move looks about as easy and casual as slinging an arm around a refrigerator.
“What’s a Director of Strategic Analytics?” I ask Wyatt.
The head bro and the others laugh. Wyatt keeps staring.
“Good question. Wish we knew.” The head bro cracks himself up. “And who are you, darling?”
Wyatt’s jaw tics.
“No one important. Right, Wyatt?” I stare him down—right back—and the blood that sank to my feet reverses course, like a swimmer kicking off a wall, flooding my head, pounding in my ears, and ballooning in my brain.
I want to snatch the beer bottle that he’s holding on to for dear life out of his hand and smash it over his head.
I want to stab him with a jagged shard until his heart is ground meat, too.
“Mira,” he says, his voice gruff and raw and lost. My name in his mouth sounds exactly like it used to—like he still loves me with every cell in his body. Like he’s still the same big, fat liar, or I’m the same deluded idiot.
“No!” I step forward and slap his chest. I was aiming for his face, but my visual spatial skills must be on the fritz along with my pride. I feel eighteen again, reckless and hormonal, like my skin doesn’t fit, and my rage is a mushroom cloud, and my heart is as fragile as a robin’s egg.
He’s mine , but he’s a stranger. He became some whole other person without me .
I let my hands fly again, but he grabs my wrists and pins them to his chest, dragging me close, bending to press his forehead firmly against mine.
“It’s okay, Mira,” he says, which is a joke and a lie and he knows it.
Thank the Lord, head bro and company decide this is private and back off, leaving us alone on this side of the high-top table.
Wyatt gently lowers my arms to my side, keeping a grip on my wrists to hold me close. His belly bumps mine when he breathes. His shaved cheek rasps against my forehead as he lifts his nose to subtly sniff my shampoo. He used to do that all the time, and I thought little things like that meant everything, but they didn’t.
“Let me go,” I snarl.