Page 2 of Ruin
"Where are you going, anyway? You've been weird all day."
"Just out. Meeting someone."
"Someone as in a date-someone?"
"Something like that."
She appears in the bathroom doorway, blonde bob and blue eyes and the look of concern she's been wearing since I was sixteen. "You look... intense. Are you okay?"
"I'm good, Em."
"You'd tell me if you weren't?"
"I'd tell you."
She studies me for a moment. Her eyes drop to the collar the way they always do—she's never asked about it directly, just accepted my vague explanation about it being a gift, something personal, something I don't want to talk about.
Emilia is good at not pushing. It's one of the things I love most about her, and one of the things that will eventually make it impossible to keep her close.
"Be safe," she says.
"Always."
I grab my jacket and leave before she can ask anything else.
Purgatory at nightis exactly the way I remember it and yet the polar opposite at the same time.
The bass hits me before I'm through the door.
Deep, heavy, the kind of sound you feel in your teeth and your chest and the base of your spine.
Caged dancers overhead, amber light, bodies moving in the dark like something choreographed by instinct rather than thought.
The air tastes like expensive perfume and sweat. People come here to feel something they can't get anywhere else.
I felt it the first time I walked in here. The pull. The sense that the ordinary world had a door in it and I'd just stepped through it.
I feel it now, but differently. Not like a girl falling into something unknown. Like a woman returning to something she chose.
The bar is black marble, same as before. I find a seat at the far end and order a glass of Malbec. The irony isn't lost on me—the last glass of Malbec I held, I threw at David's wall.
That was a lifetime ago. A different woman's tantrum.
The wine arrives and I take a sip and let the room wash over me.
I'm early. Deliberately.
He said one year. He didn't say what time, which means he's testing whether I'll show up at dawn like a desperate thing, or at a civilized hour like a woman with options.
I chose nine o'clock. Late enough to prove I wasn't counting the minutes. Early enough to prove I was counting the days.
A woman at the other end of the bar catches my eye. Dark hair cut sharp at the jaw, cheekbones that look like they could open letters.
She's not drinking, not dancing. Working. Her eyes track the room with the kind of attention that looks casual until you notice it never stops.
When her gaze lands on me, it stays.
She looks at the collar first, then my face, then back at the collar.
