Mireya sat with her knees drawn up on the hospital bed, the gown loose around her shoulders, the cotton thin enough that the cold from the room pressed through it and sat against her skin. The hoodie was gone. Someone had taken it while she was being moved, folded it into a bag with her leggings and set the bag on a chair by the window.
Her hair hung in her face. She held a fistful of balled tissues in one hand, the edges damp and starting to pill where she'd been pressing them against her nose and the skin under her eyes.
She stared at the wall across from the bed, beige and bare except for a whiteboard with a nurse’s name written in blue marker and a smiley face drawn next to it. The sitter in the corner shifted in her chair, the vinyl seat cover squeaking once under her weight. Mireya kept her eyes on the whiteboard, on the loop of the Y in the nurse's name, on the dot of the smiley face's left eye. Her jaw ached from clenching. The taste in her mouth was still sour, still metallic at the back of her tongue, and the water they'd given her sat untouched on the tray beside the bed.
The door opened and a woman stepped in, mid-forties, dark hair pulled back, lanyard hanging from her neck with a badge clipped to it. She crossed the room to the sitter and leaned down, her hand touching the sitter's shoulder as she whispered something close to her ear. The sitter nodded and stood, gathering a magazine from her lap, and slipped out of the room without looking at Mireya.
The woman came around to the side of the bed. She had a clipboard tucked under one arm and her hands were clasped in front of her, loose. "Hi, Mireya. My name's Stephanie. I'm a social worker here. The nurse asked me to come check in because she said you had a rough time earlier. Is it okay if I sit with you for a few minutes?"
Mireya shrugged, one shoulder lifting and dropping, her eyes still on the wall. Stephanie pulled a stool from under the counter by the sink, lowered the seat with both hands until it was beneath the bed, and sat down. She set the clipboard on her thigh and folded her hands over it.
"It sounds like you got some pretty shocking news in the middle of the night. I can see why you'd get upset. Can you tell me what was going through your mind?"
Mireya's fingers tightened on the tissues. The paper made a small sound as it compressed in her fist. Her voice came out strained, scraped thin. "I just wasn't expecting it. I thought I couldn't get pregnant. That's it."
Stephanie let the words sit, her hands still, her eyes steady on Mireya's face. The clock on the wall above the whiteboard ticked twice before she spoke again. "Is there someone at home right now, or someone you'd want to call?"
"I need to call my daughter's grandmother." Mireya's thumb pressed into the tissue in her palm, working the damp paper in a slow circle.
"How old is your daughter?" Stephanie asked.
"Four." The word came out with no air behind it.
Stephanie waited a beat. “What’s her name?”
Mireya rubbed her hand under her nose, her knuckles dragging against the skin, and looked down at her hands in her lap. The tissues sat crushed between her fingers, damp and formless. "Camila."
"That's a pretty name. Do you want to call now and let her know where you are?"
Mireya nodded.
“Can I sit with you while you call?”
Mireya nodded again, and Stephanie reached across to the tray beside the bed, picked up Mireya's phone, and held it out to her.
Mireya took it. The screen lit against her face when she tapped it, the blue light catching the swelling under her eyes. She scrolled with her thumb, found the name, and pressed call. She tapped the speaker icon and set the phone on the mattress between her knees. The ring came through twice. Sara answered on the third, her voice alert and awake.
Mireya spoke before Sara could say anything. "Hola. Soy yo."
Sara was silent for a beat, a breath, and then she came back in Spanish, her voice lower, careful. "¿Vienes del trabajo, mija?"
"Estoy en el hospital." Mireya's hand found the edge of the gown at her knee and pulled at a loose thread. "Me resbalé en el trabajo y me golpeé la cabeza. Me van a tener aquí toda la noche para asegurarse de que no tengo una conmoción cerebral. Iré a recoger a Camila en cuanto me den el alta." The thread came free between her fingers. She rolled it against her thumb.
"Vale." Sara's voice was steady, controlled. "Estaremos aquí. Por favor, llámame pronto. Te amo, mija."
"Y yo a ti." Mireya reached down and ended the call. She picked the phone up off the mattress and held it out toward Stephanie without looking at her.
Stephanie took it and set it on the tray, placing it down carefully, gently, giving the object back to the space around Mireya. She settled her hands back on the clipboard. "You said that was your daughter's grandmother. Was that your mother?"
Mireya shook her head. "My daughter's father's mother."
"Is he still in the picture? Is he the father of the child you found out you're pregnant with tonight?"
Mireya's throat moved. She swallowed once and her eyes went to the window, where the blinds were drawn but a thin line of light from the parking lot cut through at the bottom. "He's still in the picture. Camila loves him so much. So so much." She stopped. Her hand pressed flat against her thigh, fingers splayed wide over the thin gown. "I don't know if he is."
Stephanie stayed where she was. "That's okay. You don't have to have all the answers tonight."
The fluorescent light above the bed hummed at a frequency that sat just below hearing, more felt than heard, a vibration in the teeth. Mireya's hand stayed flat on her thigh, pressing harder, the tendons rising along the backs of her fingers.
"When you were that upset, did you have any thoughts of hurting yourself? Or of not wanting to be here anymore?"
Mireya shook her head.
"Any thoughts of hurting the baby, or of ending the pregnancy in a way that would hurt you?"
“No.”
"Any history of thoughts like that? Before tonight?"
“No.”
"Do you have anything at home that could hurt you? Weapons, medications? Anything like that?"
"No. I keep my apartment safe for my daughter."
The questions kept coming. Stephanie's voice stayed even, the cadence practiced but not mechanical, each question landing with enough space before the next for Mireya to fill the silence if she wanted to.
She asked about ideation again, phrasing it differently. She asked about Mireya's living situation, who was around, how often. She asked about her support systems, whether she had people she could talk to, whether she felt safe at home. She circled back to what had happened in the ER, to the vomiting, to the sound the nurse had described, and asked Mireya to walk her through it one more time.
Mireya answered each question with as few words as the question would allow. Her voice stayed flat and low and her eyes moved between the wall and her hands and the strip of light at the bottom of the blinds.
Stephanie uncrossed her ankles and shifted on the stool. She glanced down at the clipboard, made a small mark with her pen, and looked back up.
"So, I'm going to tell you what's going to happen next now. We're going to hold you for a few more hours through the night for observation. Someone will check on you periodically, make sure you have anything you may need. A doctor will come check on you in the morning and I'll come talk with you again. If everything looks good, we'll get you an OB appointment scheduled and give you a number to call if you have any thoughts of hurting yourself. Then we'll let you go home to Camila. Does that sound okay?"
Mireya nodded.
Stephanie pressed her lips together, a small sad pull at the corners of her mouth. "Thank you for letting me talk with you, Mireya."
She stood, and the stool rolled back an inch on the tile as her weight came off it. She picked up her clipboard, tucked it under her arm the same way she'd carried it coming in, and walked to the door. She pulled it open, stepped through, and let it close behind her.
Mireya looked at the door. Her eyes traced the seam where it met the frame, the small rectangle of the window set into the upper half where the hallway light came through muted and gray.
She stayed there for a moment. Then she turned her head back to the wall and pulled her knees tighter against her chest, the gown bunching at her hips, the tissues still balled in her fist. The smiley face on the whiteboard was still there across the room, blue ink on white.
She stared past it, at the beige, at nothing.
~~~
Caine sat in front of the window with the plate balanced on his thigh, his back against the arm of the sectional, one leg stretched across the cushion and the other foot flat on the hardwood. The eggs were scrambled loose, still warm, the bacon crisp enough that it cracked when he bent a strip between his fingers.
He ate with a plastic fork from a takeout bag he'd kept on the counter for a few days, the tines thin and slightly warped from being pressed against the styrofoam lid it came with. The drawer beside the stove had silverware in it, a full set that came with the place, but the plastic fork was already in his hand when he'd plated the food and it stayed there.
The city spread below the glass in every direction, the buildings downtown catching the first light as it reached over the mountains and swept across Los Angeles in a slow crawl. The tops of the high-rises went gold first, then the light dropped lower, pressing into the streets, filling the gaps between buildings, pulling color out of surfaces that had been gray a few minutes before. The 110 was already moving, headlights fading against the brightening asphalt, brake lights pulsing in clusters where the on-ramps fed in. A crane hung motionless over a construction site three blocks south, its arm locked at an angle against the sky.
Caine chewed a piece of bacon and watched the light work its way west toward the ocean, the haze on the horizon thinning as the sun climbed higher behind him.
Footsteps came from the hallway behind him, bare feet on hardwood, the sound soft and unhurried. He turned his head. Morgan walked out of the hall from the bedroom in one of his t-shirts, the hem hitting her mid-thigh, her hair pushed over one shoulder.
She came around the end of the sectional and leaned down, her lips pressing against the side of his neck, warm, then moving up to the hinge of his jaw before she found his mouth. "Good morning, baby."
He nodded, his fork resting against the edge of the plate. "What's good? You sleep alright?"
Morgan straightened up and crossed her arms loosely over her chest, her weight shifting to one hip. "Asking me if I slept alright in a bed with 1,500 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets is crazy." She dropped her arms and reached across him, her fingers closing around a slice of bacon from his plate before he could move it. She bit into it and spoke around the piece in her mouth. "I could get used to living like this. Need a woman cooking you breakfast every morning?"
Caine watched the bacon leave his plate and shook his head, a laugh pulling through his nose. "Fortunately, I been knowing how to cook for a lil' minute so I think I'll be alright."
"Just because you know how doesn't mean you should be doing it." Morgan sat down on the cushion beside his outstretched leg, tucking one foot under her, the stolen bacon disappearing in two more bites. She licked her thumb and forefinger, her eyes on him. "A man like you? You need to be waited on. You're bringing the money home. You need a woman who knows her place is to make sure that you're fed and getting head."
Caine's eyebrow went up. "Oh yeah?"
Morgan leaned forward and kissed him again, her hand resting on his chest for a second before she pulled back. "Yeah. I'm in cosmetology school so I got plenty of time to spend on my man."
Caine rubbed his chin with the back of his hand, his thumb dragging along the line of his jaw. He set the fork down on the plate and let his eyes move across her face, taking his time with it. "Look, I'm gonna keep it a buck with you. I just got out of something serious back when I was living in Georgia. I don't know if I want to be jumping into something else so quick. Wouldn't be fair to you."
Morgan searched his face. Her eyes moved between his, then down to his mouth, then back up. She smiled, and her shoulders lifted and dropped in a shrug. "That's fine. I'm okay with taking things slow until you ready."
Caine nodded once. "If you like it, I love it."
Morgan kissed him again, softer this time, her hand coming up to the side of his face. She pulled back just enough to speak. "Yeah?"
He nodded. "Yeah."
She kissed him twice more, the second one lingering, her fingers sliding from his jaw to the back of his neck. His hand found her waist through the cotton of the t-shirt, and for a beat the morning and the city below the glass and the cooling eggs on the plate all fell to the periphery. Then she pulled away, her palm flat against his chest, pushing off gently. "You got some more bacon and eggs?"
Caine laughed. He gestured toward the kitchen with his fork hand, the plastic tines pointing past the island. "In there. If I don't, let me know and I'll get some shit ordered for you."
Morgan stood up from the sectional and walked toward the kitchen.
Caine turned back to the window. A plane was climbing over downtown, rising at an angle above the buildings, its fuselage catching the morning sun as it banked slightly and leveled off, headed northeast toward the desert, toward Las Vegas. He watched it until it shrank to a point against the brightening sky, then picked up another piece of bacon and ate it.
~~~
Autumn set her mimosa down on the table and pulled a piece of French toast apart with her fingers, the bread tearing soft where the egg had soaked through. The patio was half-full, tables spaced close enough that conversations bled into each other, silverware scraping against plates, a woman two tables over laughing loud enough that the people near the door kept glancing back.
The sun pressed through the canvas awning overhead and threw a warm stripe across the plates and glasses between the three of them. Jade had a waffle with strawberries cut into thin fans across the top. Simone was working through a plate of eggs Benedict, her fork cutting slow, deliberate circles around the hollandaise pooling at the edge.
Jade pointed at Autumn with her mimosa glass, the pulp clinging to the inside of the rim. "Girl, it's about time you let that boy Miles hit how he's following behind you waiting for whatever little drops of pussy you leave behind for him."
Autumn rolled her eyes, her head tipping back with the motion. She put the piece of French toast in her mouth, chewed, swallowed, and wiped her fingers on her napkin before she answered. "You're acting like I didn't date him for like two years back in high school. That boy needs to move on because ain't no spinning the block over here."
Jade shrugged, her fork turning a strawberry over on the waffle. "A nigga like that will trick his whole paycheck on you, though."
Autumn sucked her teeth. "That nigga doesn't make any money. What am I going to do with $65,000 a year? There's a reason he lives in Alhambra. We can't be broke together. That's not my culture."
Jade's laugh came fast, her shoulders pulling forward, and Simone covered her mouth with the back of her hand as she shook her head. "Damn, girl. Your daddy robbing that nigga if that's all he's paying him."
Autumn lifted her chin. "That's set by the party. He can go be the token negro for the GOP if he wants to make more money." She pulled another strip of French toast free and held it between her fingers. "They're going to put all the rapes their sons commit on him, though."
Simone shook her head, her fork pausing over her plate. "Nasty work."
Autumn nodded, putting the bread in her mouth. "Absolutely."
Simone set her fork down and leaned back in her chair, crossing one leg over the other, her sandal dangling off her toes. "But what you're not telling Jade is that you been sniffing around that dude from Louisiana, the tall one with the dreads."
Jade's head snapped toward Autumn, her eyes going wide, a grin already spreading before she got the words out. "Oh really, now? Bitch, why ain't you tell nobody?" She leaned forward on her elbows, the table rocking slightly under her weight. "He kinda fine on some shit."
Autumn rolled her eyes again, slower this time, her lashes sweeping down and back up. "There's nothing to tell. I see him around and we talk. That's it."
Simone tilted her head, one eyebrow lifting. "So, you wouldn't let him fuck?"
"I'm saying that there's nothing to tell. He's just some guy that I see around campus."
Jade leaned across the table toward Simone, her voice dropping into a conspiratorial register that was still loud enough for Autumn and the tables on either side of them to hear. "She gonna let him beat that pussy up."
Autumn sucked her teeth and waved the comment off, her hand cutting through the air between them. "He looks like he only likes white girls."
Simone's fork came back up, pointing at Autumn. "Based on what?"
Autumn shrugged, both shoulders lifting and falling as she picked up her mimosa and brought it to her lips. "He got that look about him."
Jade dropped her fork onto her plate with a clatter that made the woman at the next table glance over. "Bitch, if you don't go somewhere with that shit. Even if he do, what difference it make if he dicks you down?"
Autumn shook her head and took a long sip of her mimosa, the glass tilting until the pulp slid toward her mouth. She set it down, ran her tongue across her bottom lip, and looked between the two of them. "Y'all vote for financial secretary yet?"
~~~
Tyree sat on the couch with his head tilted back against the cushion, his eyes on the ceiling. The plaster had a hairline crack running from the light fixture toward the wall, thin enough to miss unless there was nothing else to look at. His breathing was still coming down, his chest rising and falling in long pulls that stretched his shirt tight across his ribs each time. He turned his head to the side. A wooden cross hung over the threshold between the kitchen and the living room, small, dark-stained, mounted with a single nail. He looked at it for a second. Then he took a deep breath through his nose, held it until his lungs pressed against his ribs, and let it go slow through his mouth.
Paz pushed up from her knees between his legs, one hand bracing against his thigh as she straightened. She rubbed the corners of her mouth with the back of her hand, first one side, then the other, her jaw working once before she swallowed. She dropped onto the cushion beside him and tucked her legs underneath her.
Tyree pulled his jeans up from where they'd ridden down around his thighs, his thumbs hooking the waistband and tugging until the button sat at his waist. He fastened them, adjusted his belt, and laughed. "Girl, you getting good at that. You been cheating on me?"
Paz rolled her eyes, her head falling sideways against the back of the couch, so she was looking at him. "How can I be cheating on you if we're not together?"
Tyree shook his head. "I'm a modern man. Them labels don't matter. You mine because I say you mine."
Paz sucked her teeth and leaned back into the cushions, reaching for her phone on the armrest. She unlocked it with her thumb and started scrolling, her free hand resting on her stomach, her attention already moving somewhere else.
Tyree leaned over, close enough that his shoulder pressed into hers, and tilted his head toward her screen. "Hey, when your girl Angie getting back?"
Paz looked up from the phone. "Nobody calls her that."
Tyree shrugged, one shoulder lifting and dropping. "Someone got to start before it catch on."
"Why you wanna know?" Paz asked, her thumb pausing on the screen.
Tyree leaned back and spread his arms across the top of the couch, one of them landing behind Paz's head. He sucked his teeth once. "Because I been fucking with you for a little minute and I'm seeing how fine she been getting."
Paz's phone lowered to her lap. Her neck turned slow. "You've been checking out my fucking best friend?"
Tyree held a hand up. "Ain't nothing wrong with looking. We all got eyes. Fine is fine. You saying you ain't never checked out a nigga's homeboy?"
Paz's mouth tightened into a line and she leaned further into the cushions, her arms crossing over her chest, the phone pressed flat against her bicep.
Tyree dropped his hand and let the silence sit for two beats before he spoke again. "I'm trying to set something up. The three of us."
Paz's jaw shifted. "You want a threesome."
Tyree nodded, his chin dipping once, his mouth pulling into a grin. "They got enough of me to go around."
"That's fucking disgusting." Paz's arms tightened across her chest. "I'm not trying to see some other girl's fucking pussy."
"Ain't like you ain't never seen her pussy before," Tyree said.
"Not when she was getting fucked. That's different." Paz's voice came harder now. "If you want that, I'm sure you still hang out with Caine, go ask Mireya. She's a fucking dyke."
Tyree's grin dropped. His hands came off the back of the couch, his weight shifting forward. "Whoa now. Chill on them. We were just getting back to good terms, me and you."
"Well, you shouldn't have asked me that." Paz turned her head away from him, her chin lifting toward the window where the morning light came through the blinds in thin horizontal bars. "You know I'm not a slut."
Tyree scooted across the cushion toward her. His hand landed on her thigh, his fingers resting just above her knee, and his other arm slid behind her along the back of the couch until his hand hung near her far shoulder. He ducked his head, trying to catch her eyes. "Alright, my bad. You forgive me?"
Paz looked at him. Her jaw was still set, her arms still folded, her body angled away from him. She held the look for a long few seconds, his hand warm on her leg, his face close enough that she could smell the gum he'd been chewing earlier.
"If you get me something to eat."
~~~
Caine sat in the bleachers with his elbows on his knees, his water bottle cap twisted off and resting on his thigh. The seat was midfield, a couple rows up from the pitch, close enough to hear the players calling to each other in Spanish and English when the crowd dipped between possessions.
He'd found the ticket on StubHub an hour before kickoff, $350 for a single seat that someone had listed and forgotten about, and he'd bought it because the penthouse was too big for a Sunday afternoon and he'd already been through every channel twice. The sun pressed down on the stadium from a sky that held no clouds, the light flat and white against the black and gold of the seats around him.
An LAFC player collected the ball near the top of Real Salt Lake's penalty area, his first touch pulling it across his body before he laid it off short to a teammate at the edge of the box. He kept running, cutting behind the midfielder who'd stepped toward the ball, and his teammate found him again on the other side with a pass that split two defenders.
He took it in stride, the ball glued to his left foot as he drove toward the byline, chopping his steps once, twice, drawing the keeper off his line. The keeper came out, body spreading wide, arms low. The LAFC player opened his body and chipped the ball with the inside of his foot, a soft stroke that lifted it over the keeper's outstretched hand. It hung in the air for a beat, spinning backward, then dropped just past the line and trickled into the net.
The crowd surged upward. The section around Caine erupted, arms raised, drinks sloshing, a man three seats over grabbing the stranger next to him by the shoulders. The noise climbed into the steel and concrete of the stadium and bounced back amplified, layered with horns and drums from the supporters' section at the north end.
Caine stayed seated. He nodded once and clapped, his palms meeting flat and deliberate, then glanced up at the scoreboard above the far stand to check the time. He pushed up from the bleacher seat and turned sideways down the row, his knees brushing against the people still standing as he made his way to the aisle.
The concourse was cooler, the sun blocked by the overhang, the concrete underfoot sticky with spilled beer and soda. He walked past a merchandise stand, past a line for tacos that stretched fifteen deep, and stopped at a kiosk where a woman in a visor was handing a pretzel to a kid in a jersey. He waited until she looked at him.
"Can I get a bottle of water?"
She reached into the cooler behind her, pulled one out, and set it on the counter. "It's $23."
Caine sucked his teeth. "This shit expensive for no reason." He pulled his phone from his pocket and tapped it against the scanner. The machine beeped. "I don't need the receipt."
He cracked the cap and took a drink as he walked off, the water cold enough to make his teeth ache. He wandered over to a table set up near the entrance to the section, team gear laid out in rows, scarves and hats and shirts folded in stacks by size. He picked up a black shirt with the LAFC crest on the chest and turned it over in his hands, checking the material between his thumb and forefinger.
"Hey, aren't you Caine Guerra?"
The voice came from behind him, pitched high, a kid's voice that had already decided it was right before it finished asking. Caine turned around. A boy stood a few feet back, eleven or twelve, wearing a USC hoodie that was a size too big for him, the sleeves pushed up past his wrists. His father was beside him, a tall man in a polo and sunglasses pushed up onto his forehead, a half-eaten hot dog in one hand.
Caine nodded. "Yeah, that's me."
The kid's face opened up. "Number one quarterback in the transfer portal. I watched all your highlights when you committed to USC."
Caine smiled. "Appreciate that, little man."
The father turned fully toward Caine, hearing the exchange, his eyes moving from his son to Caine and back. He shifted the hot dog to his other hand and wiped his fingers on a napkin he'd been holding balled in his fist. "He's a big Trojans fan. His grandpa played for the team back in the 50s."
Caine nodded. "That's what's up. Hopefully, I don't make myself look too bad out there in the fall."
The kid stepped forward, his hands clasped together in front of him. "Can I get a picture with you? My pawpaw always makes the funniest jokes whenever I run into someone from the team off campus."
The father looked at Caine with that expression parents use when they're ready to pull their kid back. "It's fine if you're in a rush."
Caine shook his head. "Nah. It's cool. Last thing I want to do is have a bunch of pissed off former players on the sidelines calling for my head."
He held his hand out toward the father. The man passed his phone over, the screen already open to the camera. Caine crouched down next to the kid, one knee dropping low so they were close to the same height.
The kid threw up the V for Victory with two fingers and Caine matched it, both of them holding the sign toward the phone. Caine lifted the phone, angled it until they were both centered, and tapped the shutter. He stood and handed the phone back, then stepped beside the father for a second picture, the two of them shoulder to shoulder, the concourse traffic flowing around them.
The father took his phone back and checked the screen. He nodded, satisfied, and extended his hand. Caine shook it. "Thanks, man. Good luck in the fall."
The kid was already bouncing on his toes, his fist pumping once at his side. "Yeah, we're gonna win the Big 10!"
Caine laughed. "Hopefully so."
They turned and walked off toward their section, the kid talking fast with his hands, the father's hand resting on the back of his son's neck as they merged into the flow of people moving along the concourse.
Caine watched them go for a second, then turned back to the table of team gear. He picked up the shirt he'd set down and held it by the shoulders, looking at the crest again.
~~~
Mireya walked out of the hospital through the automatic doors, the glass parting in front of her and the air outside hitting warm and thick against her face after hours of recirculated cold. The sun sat high and hard overhead, the light pressing into the concrete and the cars and the chrome of the bike rack near the entrance.
She squinted. The lot was full now, packed in a way it hadn't been when she'd pulled in at two in the morning, every space taken, a line of cars circling the first level of the parking garage looking for an opening.
She carried a plastic bag in one hand, the handles twisted around her fingers, the hoodie inside it balled up and heavy. The New Orleans Saints t-shirt she'd bought from the gift shop on the way out hung loose on her frame, the fabric stiff and unwashed, the tag still scratching at the back of her neck where she hadn't torn it off all the way.
She crossed the drive and walked into the garage, her sneakers scuffing the painted concrete, and pressed the button for the elevator. She stepped in, hit 5, and stood facing forward. The doors closed. The elevator climbed. She watched the numbers change above the door, each one lighting and going dark, and her face gave back nothing.
The doors opened on the fifth floor. She walked out and turned left, following the wall toward the far side of the garage where she'd parked hours ago in the dark when the level was nearly empty. Her car was alone in a stretch of open spaces near the outer wall, the concrete barrier at waist height, the city visible beyond it in a sprawl of rooftops and power lines.
She pressed the fob. The locks clicked. She opened the back door and tossed the plastic bag onto the seat, the hoodie landing with a soft thud against the upholstery. She closed the door and opened the driver's side, dropped into the seat, and pulled the door shut.
She looked at the wall in front of her. Gray concrete, a painted number on the column to her right, a crack running diagonally through the surface where water had stained the stone a darker shade. She looked at it. Her hands rested on her thighs. Her chest rose once, held, and then her mouth opened and the scream came out of her like something being torn from the center of her body, raw and shapeless, filling the car and bouncing off the glass and the plastic and the metal until the air inside was nothing but the sound of her.
She punched the steering wheel with her right fist, the heel of her hand connecting with the center pad, then again with her left, the horn blaring twice in short blasts. She reached up and grabbed the sun visor with both hands and ripped it from the ceiling, the plastic clips snapping, the fabric tearing, and threw it at the windshield. It hit the glass and the impact left a chip in the lower corner, a white starburst in the tinted surface, before the visor fell onto the dashboard.
The tears came without her calling them and ran down her face in lines that caught at her jaw and dripped onto the Saints shirt, darkening the gray fabric in spots. She kept screaming, her voice cracking and rebuilding and cracking again, her fists coming down on the center console, the armrest, the radio panel where the plastic housing split under her knuckle and a piece of the tuning dial broke free and fell into the cupholder.
Her hand swept across the rearview mirror and caught the small statue of the Virgin Mary that had been hanging from it for years, the thin cord wrapped around the mirror stem. The cord snapped. The statue hit the console and broke in two, the head separating from the body at the neck, the painted face rolling into the gap between the seat and the center divider. The body landed on the passenger seat, a headless figure in blue and white ceramic, and lay still.
Mireya stopped and her arms dropped to her sides. Her breathing came in halts, each inhale catching in her throat before it could fill her lungs, each exhale shuddering out of her in a push that left her emptier than the one before. Her heart beat against her sternum so hard she could feel it in her ears, in her teeth, in the tips of her fingers where they rested against the seat.
She reached across to the glovebox. Her fingers found the latch and pulled it open. The Birkin sat inside, folded in on itself to fit the compartment, the leather soft and creased where it had been compressed. She pulled it out and set it on the passenger seat. She unclasped it and turned it upside down, shaking once, and the contents spilled across the seat and into the foot well. Condoms in gold and black wrappers. A tube of lip gloss, the cap cracked. A compact mirror. Makeup in small plastic cases. Two vibrators, one purple, one black, both in zippered pouches. The switchblade, its handle catching the light from the windshield.
And the gun.
It landed last, heavier than everything else, its weight pulling it to the lowest point of the seat where it settled against the seam. Mireya picked it up. The grip was cold in her palm, the metal dark, the barrel short. She turned it over and looked at it the same way she had looked at it when Caine had put it in her hands for the first time, the same weight, the same shape, the same object that was supposed to give her power back.
She brought it closer. Her hand found the slide and she pulled it back, the action snapping forward with a sound that punched through the car and left a ringing in the closed space. No safety, he'd said. Just point and pull the trigger.
Her breathing slowed. The ragged halting rhythm of it smoothed into something longer, deeper. Her heartbeat dropped. The pounding in her ears receded and left behind the low, steady thrum of blood moving through her at a pace that no longer matched the emergency her body had been in seconds before.
She raised the gun. Her hand was steady. She opened her mouth and put the barrel in, the metal pressing against her tongue, the taste of oil and steel sitting flat and chemical against her palate. Her teeth closed lightly around the barrel. Her finger curled around the trigger, the pad of it resting against the curved metal, not pulling, not yet, just there.
She closed her eyes.
Camila would be better off. Sara would raise her. Sara would braid her hair and feed her and walk her to school and tell her that her mother loved her, and Camila would grow up in a house where no one disappeared for days and came back smelling like strangers. Camila would grow up without the weight of a mother who broke under the pressure the world placed on her. Camila would grow up clean.
The gun was still in her mouth. The oil taste spread across her tongue and mixed with the salt from the tears that had run into the corners of her lips. She breathed through her nose, slow, each breath pulling the smell of the metal deeper. The sound of the highway came through the concrete walls of the garage, a low continuous wash of tires and engines and distance that had no beginning and no end. Her finger stayed on the trigger. The pressure of the barrel against the roof of her mouth was firm and constant and she could feel the front sight pressing into the soft tissue behind her teeth.
She sat like that. Her eyes stayed closed. The highway sound continued, unchanged, indifferent, a city moving around a woman in a parked car on the fifth floor of a garage with a gun in her mouth and no one who knew she was there.
Her breathing settled into a rhythm that matched the pulse in her wrist, slow and even, the two of them synchronized in a way that made everything else fall away until there was only the breath and the pulse and the weight of the barrel and the pressure of her finger on the trigger.
Minutes passed.
The sun moved across the concrete wall in front of her car and the shadow of the column shifted by inches that she could not see with her eyes closed. Her jaw ached from holding the barrel. The taste of the oil had gone from sharp to flat to something her tongue no longer registered.
Her finger started to curl. The trigger moved. The slack came out of it in a slow compression that she felt in the joint of her index finger, the metal traveling backward a fraction of an inch, then another, the spring inside the mechanism pushing back against her, the resistance building in proportion to the distance her finger traveled.
The trigger moved further. The resistance increased. The mechanism inside the gun was doing what it was designed to do, moving toward the point where the sear would release and the firing pin would drop and the primer would ignite and the round would leave the barrel at a velocity that would end everything.
A car horn honked.
Her eyes opened. They went to the rearview mirror, the one she'd hit but not broken, still angled from where her hand had caught it. In the reflection, Camila's car seat was in the back. Pink fabric. The buckle hanging loose where it had been unbuckled the last time she'd lifted her daughter out of it. A Cheerio lodged in the crease where the padding met the frame.
She pulled the gun out of her mouth. The barrel came free with a sound, metal against teeth, and then she screamed again, the sound different now, lower, broken in places the first screams hadn't been, carrying something in it that made the air inside the car feel like it couldn't hold any more. She curled onto the seat, pulling her knees up, her body folding sideways until her head pressed against the center console and her feet were on the driver's side door panel. The gun was still in her hand, her fingers wrapped around the grip, her knuckle white against the trigger guard. She sobbed into the seat fabric, her mouth open, her eyes open, the sounds coming out of her in waves that crested and fell and crested again, each one pulling something out of her that left less behind. The sobs turned to cries that turned to sounds that had no name, and she kept making them until her throat closed around them, her body went heavy and her eyes stopped seeing the seat fabric in front of her face.
Her body gave out. Her breathing dropped to almost nothing. Her hand loosened on the grip. The gun slid from her fingers onto the passenger seat, landing among the condoms and the lip gloss and the vibrators and the broken pieces of the Virgin Mary, and her body went still.
…
Mireya opened her eyes. The car was dark. The concrete wall in front of her was lit only by the yellow glow of the garage's overhead fixtures, the fluorescent tubes humming in their housings, casting everything in a flat wash that turned the colors in the car to versions of themselves. She pushed herself up from the seat, her neck stiff, her arms heavy, the side of her face creased from the fabric of the seat. The gun lay on the passenger seat among the spilled contents of the Birkin. She looked at it for a second, then reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone.
Dozens of notifications filled the lock screen, texts and missed calls stacked on top of each other, the preview lines blurring together.
She looked through the windshield, then through the side window. The sun was gone. The sky past the open wall of the garage was dark, the city lit in scattered points of orange and white, the highway still moving below.
She pulled her keys from her pocket and pushed them into the ignition. The engine turned over. She picked up her phone, opened Waze, and typed Sara's address into the search bar with her thumb. The route loaded, a blue line on a white map, and the automated voice told her to proceed to the highlighted route. She dropped the phone into the cupholder, checked her mirrors, and put the car in reverse.
She backed out of the spot, the tires rolling over the smooth concrete, and turned toward the exit ramp. The garage lights passed over the hood of the car in slow intervals as she descended, level by level, until the gate arm lifted and the city opened up in front of her.
Lighter on standby, just let a nigga know.
