The glass is a dry planet in her hand, bottom ringed with amber ice-melt and fingerprints.
The kitchen light hums.
The apartment retakes its shape and the bathroom tiles fold themselves back into the past where they belong and don't.
Her chest has a new gravity—thick, invisible, as if something sat on her sternum to see how long she could hold that weight without complaint. Breath sticks halfway; ribs argue; her pulse does a fast, tight dance in her throat.
She sets the empty down. It clicks the laminate and wobbles to a tired stop.
Sofia is a soft hill again on the bed, blanket risen to her nose, phone face-down like it's done lying.
Lucia stands in the doorway a second too long, caught between door and door, then picks a direction.
The hall smells like old carpet and someone's takeout that chose violence.
Bandage edges whisper under her shirt; the thigh wrap tugs, tricep throbbed to a hush. The meth keeps the lights on behind her eyes; the whiskey smears them.
Vision granular at the edges.
The world a little tilted—the building has a soft list and she walks it like a deckhand, hand to wall.
She locks the door and forgets if she did.
Checks it.
Checks it twice.
The third time her fingers are on the deadbolt without permission and she laughs once at herself because the sound needs somewhere to be.
— "Good job, genius," she tells the lock, because locks love praise.
The hallway staggers with her.
Exit sign glows moldy green.
A neighbor's doormat says WELCOME in a font that looks like it's lying.
Muffled TV leaks a canned laugh that doesn't understand the joke. She pays none of them.
The elevator button is a nickel-size moon under her thumb; she presses it with ceremony. The plastic gives a soft tick like a secret handshake.
Ribs ache under the meth's neat handwriting.
The chest weight sits in place, stubborn as a cat.
She swallows air and it arrives late.
Dehydration pulls at her tongue; she tastes the bottle's ghost, iodine's afterthought, the metal coin of memory.
Audio stretches—far car horns long and elastic; the building's plumbing a low whale in the walls.
The buzz in her jaw returns; she rolls her tongue against molars until they remember who's in charge.
She sways, steadies on the cinderblock paint. Stare at the carpet's pattern: diamonds that forgot geometry, coffee stains like tiny continents.
The hallway lengthens and shortens like it can't decide how much time to charge her.
Words unspool because drunk makes them automatic and high makes them crisp. They come out low, aimed at no one.
— "Fresh air. Just air. Not a big ask."
Her mouth keeps going, a lazy metronome of thoughts trying on voices.
— "Shoes tomorrow. Maybe. Maybe two pairs. Sixty bucks times who cares."
— "Stop thinking. Don't stop thinking. Pick one."
— "Mom can wait. Mom can—"
The elevator arrives with a hum and a shrug.
Doors part and reveal a small metal room that pretends to be a destination.
She steps in and the floor rises a half-inch to meet her late.
Hand hits the rail; fingers drum an unasked-for rhythm; the bat isn't here, but her palm remembers the weight anyway.
She catches her reflection in the brushed steel: a smear of helmet hair, tape at the collarbone, lips parted to negotiate with air.
She bares her teeth at herself to check for blood and sees nothing but a girl practicing wolf.
She jabs G with the precision of someone trying to prove they're not as drunk as they are.
The button glows like it believes her.
Doors close.
Gravity negotiates. The car drops and her stomach floats, then sticks, then floats again. Numbers change with a tired beep. She watches them like they're prophecy.
Her mind wanders because it's built that way: to the ledger with the column that says rent, to Sofia's shoes in a box she can picture exactly, to a gold canine winking under a pin-spot and then going dim, to a ring on a soap dish she will never stop seeing.
— "Breathe," she instructs the chest that refuses to.
The elevator makes its last mechanical shrug.
Cables hush.
Pulleys decide they've worked enough for tonight.
With a mild, balanced sigh, the car kisses the limit of its descent.
The doors open onto the ground floor.
The lobby greets her with a waxed shine and yesterday's flowers wilting in a too-clean vase.
Air-conditioning limps.
She misjudges the first step and catches herself on the mailroom wall, palm slapping paint, bandage rasping under cotton.
High plus whiskey gives the floor a tilt; she treats it like a boat—hand to railing, shoulder to column, fingertips grazing anything that'll hold her up for a second.
A sofa waits by the big window, tan vinyl pretending leather.
She drops into it like gravity just won an argument, spine sinking, ribs protesting, thigh wrap tugging.
The night outside is a black aquarium—streetlight fish drifting, a bus sighing along the curb.
Pocket dig.
Keys, chapstick, the old soft box she's been rationing: Le Rainard.
French script with a fox logo smudged to a ghost.
Her father's brand, from buttfuck nowhere and perfect for it—cheap, bright, no pretense. Off the market now.
He'd bought them by the brick when they still existed, stacks in the hall closet behind winter blankets Miami never needed.
Hoarding, maybe. Insurance, probably. A future where flavor didn't change.
She thumbs the cardboard out, takes a slim brown stick that remembers his breath.
The paper sleeve crackles.
Disposable lighter flares—blue tongue, then steady yellow.
The first draw claws her mouth and settles in the back of her throat like a dare.
Smoke rattles the ribs that got opinions tonight, then slides lower, turning bitter into a flavor she almost trusts.
She tastes him for half a second—guava pastry mornings and aftershave that lost the label—then the meth edge cuts it thin.
The cigar's cheapness shows its teeth: tannin, tar, a hint of something like wet cedar that wants to be classy and isn't.
Real fucking bitter. That's the point.
She leans back, head finding the sofa's hard seam, and lets the plume curl up, gray on gray, unraveling into the hum of the vents until it's just another stain the air will never admit.