The Vigilante's Renascence

1. Chapter 1

Chapter one

Lucy

“Damn it!” I blinked at my own reflection in the chipped mirror. My eyes watered as I set down the mascara wand on the edge of the sink, a streak of black trailing down my cheek.

I hated when this happened. The makeup gods cursed me and that’s why I rarely decided to put in the effort.

I’d already spent the past twenty minutes trying to perfect my look in the mirror before my jittery hand decided to stab myself directly in the eyeball.

I stepped away from the sink, reaching for a tissue from the box perched on the lid of the toilet in the tiny bathroom.

“What’s wrong?” My roommate and best friend Tara’s voice sounded from the other side of our small studio apartment. A few seconds later, she pushed through the door and stood behind me in the mirror as I dabbed tissue against my skin.

“Ugh…nothing,” I said as I wiped the black ink from my face. “Are you sure we should be doing this? It’s your last night in town and I think Ben and Jerry might be the hot double date we really need.”

Tara frowned at me before licking her finger and swiping it across the rogue makeup on my cheekbone.

“What are you talking about? You look like a fucking bombshell. You can’t waste an outfit like that on ice cream and true crime.

” Her gaze shot to the dress I wore. It was my favorite one; a vintage black silk number that hugged my curves in all the right places and fell just below my knees.

She glanced up at the little mirror that hung in front of us and flicked her wispy blonde bangs.

“Me, on the other hand, I knew I should’ve dyed my hair last night. ”

Tara changed her hair color like a chameleon in a kaleidoscope.

It had been her New Year’s resolution to let it grow out for a while, but it was barely June and my job as her best friend was to keep her from breaking that promise to herself.

She had a habit of changing it with every new phase of life, so I knew this had been coming for a while.

After all, a year from now we’d both have graduated from college and who the hell knew what would happen after that?

She was about to fly home to the East Coast to spend the summer with her family tomorrow, and for some reason she had the brilliant idea of dragging me to a double date with a guy she met online and his buddy.

It’s the last hurrah of our year before the year that we graduate, she’d told me.

I really didn’t want to go. I was about to be stuck in San Francisco alone for the first time since I’d moved here, and I really would have preferred a girl’s night before she left me alone in our studio apartment above the Haight.

Every summer before this, I’d gone home to see my family in Iowa too.

My parents somehow had won a grandiose vacation to Europe on a radio contest this year.

This meant I could either be alone in the hot, boring humidity of the Midwest, or I could stay here and try to find a job for the summer. I chose the latter.

Honestly, I was okay with it for the most part.

After our senior year at San Francisco University of Design was over, I had no idea where the world was going to take me next.

I needed to start applying for internships; my career in architecture wasn’t going to hand itself to me.

My seasonal job at the on-campus bookstore had ended concurrently with the semester, and I planned on finding a little gig to make some extra cash while I worked on my portfolio for the next couple months.

“You’re not allowed to dye your hair again until you–”

“Finish my manuscript. I know.” Tara blew a swish of air up toward her bangs before rolling her eyes and moving back toward the door. “Let’s leave in five, babes.” She blew me a kiss and headed back into our small living space.

I had no interest in spending our last night together with a couple of random guys from the internet.

Since living in California, my dating life had become something of a joke. Not that I’d put much effort into it. Sure, I hooked up with guys I’d meet at parties and went on dates once in a while, just to feel something, but it never went much farther than that for one reason or another.

It didn’t matter to me. I had more important things to focus on, and love could come later–if ever.

Tara, on the other hand, she was a romantic.

At least, I guess you could say that. There was always a trail of guys pining after her, and she’d string them along one-by-one until she got bored.

Then it was on to the next poor sucker who was charmed by her long legs and flirty banter.

She wanted to find the kind of guy who lived up to the men in the stories she wrote. She wanted to find the one.

I admired that about her. Her love of love. And I loved her so much I was willing to subject myself to another meaningless night of small talk with strangers to help her pursue it.

Once I managed to reapply my mascara without gouging out my eye, I unclipped my too-thick brown hair from a claw clip and gave my head a shake. It fell around my shoulders in a wave that wasn’t put together, but not so terrible I felt the need to wrangle it back in.

That was as good as it was going to get.

I followed Tara out the door of our apartment, into the old, narrow hallway and down the creaky staircase.

The building was a large home when it was built in the late 1800s, but it had been converted to a series of small units in the 1960s.

It hadn’t been updated much since then, but I found charm in its faded wallpaper and the musty scent that alluded to years of stories lived within it.

A foreboding sense of melancholy flooded through me as I trailed her into the small lobby–we only had another year in this place before our lives would likely take us in different directions.

Even though the apartment was cramped between the two of us, the past couple of years living with her had been some of the happiest of my life.

Outside, the steep sidewalk unveiled the bustle of our Haight-Ashbury neighborhood.

We paced down the street toward the bus stop, our high heels clicking against the pavement.

Psychedelic murals graced the sides of buildings, weathered with graffiti and the salty air of the city.

What was once known as the hippie mecca of America had changed over the years, but it still evoked the colorful nostalgia of the free love movement that happened long before my own time.

When we finally reached the Muni station, Tara dropped onto the bench with a dramatic sigh. “We’d be halfway there by now if you’d just let me call an Uber once in a while.”

“True,” I said, perching beside her. “But then we wouldn’t get to enjoy all the culture the city has to offer.”

Right on cue, a nearly naked man stumbled down the sidewalk, shouting obscenities and waving a rubber chicken. We both tried to hold it in, then dissolved into laughter as he scampered by.

The bus arrived a few minutes later. We climbed aboard and rode through the hilly streets of the city.

It was so unlike the flat terrain and miles of cornfields I grew up surrounded by.

Multihued, intricately designed buildings lined the streets, a portrait of eccentricity and imagination.

The sun was beginning to set into a melt of fog, casting a golden glow across each edifice we passed by.

Tara furiously tapped on her phone while I stared out the window.

She wasn’t nearly as enchanted by the city as I was; she came from a wealthy family and had done a ton of traveling throughout her childhood.

It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate the world around us, but sometimes I thought she’d rather be somewhere in the fictional worlds she wrote about.

Twenty minutes later, we reached our stop.

After gathering our things and thanking the driver, we stepped onto a street that was lit by the glow of string lights hung between buildings.

North Beach sparked with energy, the sounds of laughter, music, and the clatter of dishes echoed from different restaurants and residences.

The faint smell of fresh-baked bread filled my nostrils and my stomach grumbled.

Tara stopped beneath the awning of a closed bookstore, face lit blue by her phone as she tapped in the restaurant’s address. It was a stark reminder I had no idea what I was about to walk into, and a nervous pulse dropped through my stomach.

It’s gonna be fine, Lucy. Get through the next couple hours and then you’ll be back at home with your damned ice cream.

“This way,” she said, tightening her purse around her shoulder and leading us down the sidewalk.

We passed more bistros and shops, each one smelling better than the last. Eventually, she slowed as we approached a busy-looking restaurant with an elegant sign that read Ristorante Bellissima.

A line of at least fifteen people snaked from the front door, stretching down the sidewalk.

Tables spilled out onto the pavement, lit by candles and occupied by couples and families laughing over cocktails and shared plates.

As Tara pulled out her phone, I stepped back to take it all in. The warmth. The chatter. The comfortable intimacy everyone seemed to exude as they took sips and bites between their conversations.

My eyes caught on an elderly couple sitting near the edge of the patio. They leaned close, hands clasped on the table between them. The woman reached up and brushed a lock of the man’s gray hair from his face, and he tilted his head to kiss her fingers.

Something stirred in me. Was it…longing? No. Tara was the one who chased after love. I was the reasonable, grounded one. Though I had to admit that whatever they were eating looked fucking delicious.

“Hey!” Tara yelled into her phone, snapping me out of my thoughts. “We just got here, and there’s a huge line! Where are you guys?”