32. Mike
MIKE
The gun sits in her hand, heavy and wrong against her skin, but she holds it steady.
Her thumb moves once along the grip, finds the safety without her looking down.
She checks it like her hands remember what the rest of her is still trying to believe.
I watch her face for anger, fear, anything I can use to know where I stand with her, but she gives me nothing.
I've seen Janet angry. I've seen her scared.
I've never seen her like this: still, quiet, already somewhere I can't reach.
The same woman who once looked at me in this room like she wanted me closer now sits three feet away with a loaded gun, and some sick part of me almost wants her to raise it.
Like that would make sense. Like that would be fair.
I don't move.
Her hand shakes. It's pointed in my direction, not aiming, but bad for me if it went off.
"Be careful with that thing," I say. "You don't want it to go off by accident. It happens."
She doesn't answer. Doesn't lower it either.
I watch her decide something, some calculation but it doesn’t look she’s deciding whether to shoot me.
"Unblock my number," I say. "If I call, answer."
She doesn't say yes. Doesn't say no.
"You leave Wednesday," I say. "Do you need cash?"
"I'll figure it out."
"Let me help."
"I don't want your money."
"Janet."
"I don't want anything from you." Her voice wavers on it this time, thinner than before.
I want to go to her. I don't.
"You said you loved me." Her voice cracks on the last word and she hates that it does, I can see her hate it.
"After you knew about Joe. After you'd already gone through my laptop, my files, everything.
Everything you said to me was a lie. And now you want to help me?
What, you think you're some kind of hero now? "
I don't answer. There's no answer that doesn't sound like an excuse.
"I let you touch me," she says. "I let you do things to me. I told you things about him I've never told anyone. And the whole time?—"
She stops. Presses her lips together like she can keep the rest of it in.
"I'm sorry."
"Don't." The word comes out low, almost a warning. "Don't dare apologize to me."
"It wasn't all a lie. I want you to know that."
"You think I won't shoot you?"
I know telling her I love her right now will get me killed.
I almost risk it.
The gun is steady in her hands, but the wound is the way she looks through me. I would take the bullet before I let those words stay buried inside me.
But me getting killed right now wouldn’t save her.
"Janet—"
"I don't ever want to see you again," she says.
It hits like a round to the chest.
No blood. No sound. The impact, the hollow spreading behind my ribs, the part of me that was still standing going down hard.
I nod because there's nothing else I can offer her.
She thumbs the safety back on and drops the gun into her purse. Just like that, it's gone from between us, and somehow the room feels more dangerous without it, not less.
We step to the elevator. Her whole body is shaking now, not her hand, and I can see it in the way she holds her own arms crossed over her chest, like she's the one holding herself together.
The doors close and we ride down in silence.
The elevator keeps dropping, and she keeps breathing beside me, jagged but alive.
The doors open to the noise of the club floor. A woman in a white silk dress laughs loudly. Champagne pops and Janet's body jerks. A bachelorette party lifts their glasses. The bass moves through the floor, soft and steady.
Nico rises from the booth when he sees me.
Rosemary is up before Janet crosses the floor, out of the booth, arms already open. Janet walks into them and for a second the two of them stand there, holding on, and I watch a version of Janet I only ever got in pieces.
“You okay?” Janet asks.
“No,” Rosemary says. She slaps me hard across the face.
I take it.
“Don’t you ever touch me again.”
She looks at Janet. “Now I’m okay.”
They walk to the exit.
"She good?" he says.
"She's going to disappear.”
"That's not what I asked."
I don't have an answer for that either.
Janet says something I can't hear and Rosemary nods, fast, like she'd agree to anything right now to get her friend out the door in one piece.
Janet doesn't look back at me.
She walks out into the street with Rosemary's arm looped through hers, and the door swings shut behind them, and that's it.
I move through the room because standing still isn't an option. Preston catches my arm near the bar, already three drinks in, asking if I can comp a bottle for a client flying in from London. I say sure.
Dane says something about a bet on the Knicks. I nod at the wrong point in the sentence.
None of it lands. All of it happens somewhere outside the glass I'm standing behind.
Nico finds me by the service hallway.
"Rosemary's kind of cute," he says.
I look at him.
"I'm just saying." He shrugs.
"Good luck with that," I say.
He almost smiles, doesn't, reading whatever's left on my face. He drops it. For a second we stand there in the noise with the front door still settling on its hinge.
The door opens again, and Ryan walks in.
He's grinning, loose in the shoulders in a way I haven't seen since before Coxsackie, and he claps a hand on my back.
"Buy your brother a drink," he says.
Nico's jaw goes tight but he doesn't move. “You have a little white stuff on your nose.”
“Oh shit, my bad,” Ryan wipes the residue of cocaine off his nose. “But at least I'm not selling it.”
Ryan waves the bartender down before I can, orders three shots like it's a celebration. He's happy. Genuinely, uncomplicated, dangerously happy.
Ryan says to Nico, not quite looking at him. "About the bathroom. I apologize. No hard feelings."
Nico says nothing.
Ryan's mouth curves, easy, almost warm. "You held your own. Could've ended differently for you if Mikey didn't step in."
He locks eyes with Nico.
He turns back to the bar, already calling for another round.
"You work on the thing with what's her name?”