Page 78 of Ruin
The mimosa pitchers are bottomless, which is the actual draw and the reason Emilia has been obsessed with this spot since we were twenty-one and thought day-drinking was a personality trait.
She's already at our usual table when I arrive.
Blonde bob freshly cut, blue eyes bright, wearing a sundress that probably cost forty dollars and looks better on her than anything in my designer closet looks on me.
She waves with both hands like I might miss her in a half-empty restaurant.
"You came!" She's on her feet and hugging me before I can sit down, squeezing hard enough to make my ribs hurt. She smellslike vanilla perfume and fabric softener and normalcy. "I was so going to drive to your apartment and drag you here by your hair."
"I said I'd come."
"You said that last Saturday too. And the Saturday before that." She pulls back, holds me at arm's length, studies my face with the unsubtle scrutiny of someone who has known me since I was sixteen and grief-stricken and sleeping in her guest room. "You look tired."
"Thanks."
"I meanreallytired. Like, haven't-slept-in-days tired. Are you eating? You look thinner."
"I'm eating." Another lie. They're stacking up. "Work has been intense."
"Work." She says it the same way she's been saying it for weeks, with a little eyebrow lift that means she doesn't believe me but won't push. Not yet. "Okay. Fine. Work. But you're here now, and this pitcher has our names on it."
She pours me a mimosa and launches into the latest Tyler saga before I've taken my first sip.
Tyler wants a destination wedding. Tyler's mother wants a cathedral. Tyler's sister has opinions about bridesmaid dresses that Emilia describes as "aggressively pastel."
The waitress brings avocado toast and eggs Benedict, and Emilia attacks her plate.
The details wash over me, warm and inconsequential, and I let them.
I let Emilia's voice fill the space in my head that's been occupied by surveillance footage and autopsy reports and the sound of Cassius saying "I eliminated the threat" like he was discussing a line item in a budget.
Like it didn’t matter to him at all, when they were my entire world.
The restaurant fills around us.
Couples splitting pancakes, girlfriends splitting gossip, a toddler two tables over smearing yogurt into his own hair while his mother pretends not to notice.
Normal people living normal lives, and I sit among them with champagne and orange juice in my glass and a crime lord's collar tucked beneath my sweater and a loaded gun waiting for me at home.
"So I told her, Margaret, if you put me in peach taffeta I will set the church on fire. And she laughed, but I don't think she understood that I was serious."
"You were not serious."
"I was partially serious. The taffeta part was non-negotiable." She tops off my mimosa. "Okay, your turn. Tell me something. Anything. I feel like I haven't actually talked to you in weeks."
Because you haven't.
Because the woman you've been talking to is a performance, and the real one is sitting across from you right now with a locked collar under her sweater and her father's blood on her lover's hands.
"I told you. Work stuff. The transition back from Boston has been a lot. New responsibilities."
"Right, the private sector thing. The consulting firm." She air-quotes it. She's never fully bought the cover story, but Emilia's particular brand of loyalty means she trusts me enough not to dig. "Are you at least happy? Like, does the work make you happy?"
The question is so earnest it almost cracks me open.
"It's challenging," I say. "That's enough for now."
"Enough is not happy, Sel."
