I never expected to end the night here, under the neon glow of a bar half a heartbeat from breaking, half a breath from collapse.
But then again, life these days had become a blur of expectations, failures, and messy edges and tonight, I just wanted to feel something sharp.
I flagged down Mara as soon as i saw her at the corner table, amber drink glowing in her hand under neon lights.
She looked up, eyes soft and knowing.
"You okay?" she asked, voice low against the murmur.
I picked up a second glass from the attendant, ignoring the sting of the bourbon as it burned its way through my throat.
"Perfect," I lied, my voice hollow even to my own ears. "Just… needed this."
We toasted.
She studied me and gave me that friend's patience that always made me both loved and rooted.
We were at least ten years in a shared silence that didn't need explanation.
But tonight, I needed words.
Felt like i might choke otherwise.
I told her everything.
Every electric flicker of anger i felt at Lorenzo, the way he'd stared me down today like i'm a disappointment, not just him.
The grit of his reprimands still lodged in my chest.
He'd said, "Reflect, Gutierrez," with that calm finality, as though i'd arrived empty, like a hollow shell meant to be reshaped.
Like my heart wasn't throbbing beneath, beating, bleeding, alive.
I spilled it all, quiet sobs hidden under laughter, rage dredged up in the sweet burn of whiskey.
Mara let me go on.
She didn't try to stop the words the tide of my loneliness, the ache of being constantly overlooked.
I didn't just say i wanted his respect.
I shouted how i deserved it.
How i needed to matter to someone besides a damn piece of machinery.
After the third whiskey, we felt tipsy warm, untethered, almost gleeful in the way grief sometimes feels when it's just you left to hold it.
Mara called me onto the small dance floor.
We swayed to a slow song.
I closed my eyes.
For once, there was no training schedule.
No mansion.
No endless demand to prove something.
She laughed, and I laughed, delirious.
I knew i looked messy.
My hair was damp, my jacket half-draped.
I didn't care.
They say in bars, there's always a man hovering.
Tonight, sure enough, his hand slid onto my waist.
I froze, then tilted away, pressing into Mara.
Soft apologies, polite rebuffs but he came back.
I yanked my hand off Mara's shoulder and stepped back.
He followed.
I spun around and interrupted his forward motion with a sharp glare.
"Not tonight," I whispered, voice cracking.
But then something warm rolled over the crowd.
The music shifted and behind me, I heard it:
A low growl.
His boots on concrete.
The rustle of tailored fabric.
I turned, but knew before i did.
Lorenzo stood there.
Chest tight in an expensive shirt.
Masked in shadow and lamp glow.
Hesitation burned through his posture, his jaw.
He didn't speak.
He just reached…,silent authority and tugged my arm.
I was stunned.
"Get in. Now."
Everything slowed.
The bartender shut off lights.
Music paused.
Mara's own gaze flicked between us a live wire of tension.
Lorenzo said it again, softer this time: "Go."
And so, against my muscle memory, I followed. I moved.
There were murmurs, camera flashes.
People whispered names.
I stumbled past bar tables, heart pounding, trying to process what was about to happen.
We made it outside.
He yanked open the driver's door of his car even though i could've driven myself blind and in seconds, we were moving.
Engines growled.
Bars receded.
My stomach spun.
Inside, the air was violent: between us, the tension practically burned.
"Stop inebriating yourself," he hissed. "You're not thirteen."
I flinched.
Words snarled inside me.
I turned to him, half scream, half cry. "Maybe i just want to feel something. Maybe i'm sick of being invisible, at least here… people review me. Judge me. Notice me."
He went silent.
Car hummed between stops.
He clenched his jaw.
"Hotel," he said after a long pause. "I'm taking you to a safe place."
"Fine."
Portal doors.
Elevator doors.
Room doors.
The carpet swallowed our footsteps.
It smelled like lilies—cheap, sterile.
I slumped on the edge of the bed, jacket half off. He stood at the doorway.
"Are you going to be okay?"
I looked up at him, then down at my hands.
"Yes," I said, voice small. "Thank you." I wasn't lying.
Kind of.
He vanished for a moment.
Came back with water.
We ended up on the balcony, warm night air against our skin.
Neither of us wanted silence, but neither wanted to break it.
Then something inside me broke.
I walked up to him, head tipped forward, heavy-lidded, whiskey-soft.
"Lorenzo."
He looked down.
I closed the gap.
Kissed him.
Soft at first.
Then urgent, desperate, the kind of kiss that carried days of hurt and longing and too much pride colliding in one thing.
He froze.
Gave back one thin line of response.
It wasn't tender.
It was broken.
And real.
We collapsed together on the bed, no sweet foreplay, no warm build-up.
Just need and hurt and heat.
In that haze, I stumbled into him again.
We fell apart at the same time we coalesced.
Bodies crashed against each other with a bruised urgency.
-
When the dawn came, I woke against him, face buried in his shoulder.
He was still tucked behind me, arm curled around my waist.
I almost cried.
He didn't wake.
I lay there another minute.
Shallow breaths.
The fire inside me dulled but it lingered, an ember.
I moved carefully.
Pulled on jeans and hoodie i found on the floor.
Tiptoed to the bathroom, washed my face.
Applied no makeup.., felt too raw, too real.
I looked at my reflection.
My eyes ringed in red, cheeks hollow, lips swollen from crying or kissing or both.
I would face him later.
Say what i needed.
But for now—my body ached.
And my heart still smoldered.