Eventually, my body made the decision my mind couldn't.
I stood up. I walked to the subway. I got on a train.
And somehow, I ended up home.
The apartment was dark when I unlocked the door. Mira wasn't there—she had a shift tonight, wouldn't be home for hours. I was alone.
Good.
I needed to be alone.
I stepped inside, closed the door behind me, and leaned against it.
The silence pressed in. Heavy. Suffocating.
You're fired.
His voice echoed in my head, cold and final.
You're fired.
I slid down the door until I was sitting on the floor, my back against the wood, my knees pulled up to my chest.
You're fired.
And that's when I broke.
The first sob came out strangled, like my body was fighting it even as it escaped. The second was louder. The third cracked something open inside me, and then I couldn't stop—I was crying, really crying, the kind of ugly, gasping sobs that hurt your chest and steal your breath.
I cried for the job I'd lost.
I cried for the six weeks I'd wasted.
I cried for the money I wouldn't have, the rent I couldn't pay, the future that had just crumbled to dust in my hands.
But underneath all of that—buried so deep I'd almost convinced myself it didn't exist—I cried for something else.
I cried for him.
For the stupid, pathetic, absolutely humiliating crush I'd been carrying around like a wound. For every time his eyes had passed over me and I'd felt it in my chest. For every cold word that had somehow made me want him more.
What was wrong with me?
He'd humiliated me. Destroyed me. Thrown me away like I was nothing.
And I still—
God, I still—
I pressed my face into my knees and screamed.
It came out muffled, swallowed by the fabric of my skirt, but it felt good. It felt like releasing something poisonous, something that had been building inside me for weeks. Maybe years.
When was the last time I'd let myself fall apart like this?
The answer came unbidden: the night Nana Ruth died.
I'd been sixteen. She was the only foster parent who'd ever felt like family—a tiny woman with silver hair and warm hands who called me "sweetheart" and taught me how to make pie crust from scratch. When the cancer took her, I'd sat on the floor of my room in the group home they'd shipped me back to, and I'd cried until I couldn't breathe.
That was eight years ago.
Eight years of holding it together. Of being strong. Of surviving.
And now, here I was again. On the floor. Broken.
Some things never changed.
I don't know how long I sat there.
Long enough for my tears to dry up. Long enough for the sobs to fade into hiccups, then silence. Long enough for the numbness to creep in, soft and seductive, promising that if I just stopped feeling, it wouldn't hurt anymore.
I was considering staying on that floor forever when the door opened behind me.
I scrambled to my feet, nearly tripping over myself.
Mira stood in the doorway, keys in hand, still wearing her bartender uniform. Her eyes went wide as she took in the scene—me, mascara streaked down my face, eyes swollen, looking like something that had crawled out of a horror movie.
"Elena? What the hell—I thought you were at work, I came back to grab my—" She stopped. Really looked at me. "Oh my God. What happened?"
I opened my mouth to say I was fine.
What came out was: "He fired me."
Mira's face went through about seven emotions in two seconds. Confusion. Shock. Disbelief. And then, finally, settling on something that looked a lot like murder.
"He what?"
"He fired me." The words felt strange in my mouth, like they belonged to someone else. "I snapped at him in front of the executives and he fired me and I—I don't—"
My voice cracked.
Mira crossed the room in three strides and pulled me into her arms.
She was shorter than me by about four inches, but somehow, she made me feel small. Safe. Like I was a kid again and someone else was in charge for once.
"That bastard," she said into my hair. "That absolute piece of garbage, soulless, demon-spawn bastard."
A wet laugh escaped me. "Tell me how you really feel."
"I'm going to kill him." She pulled back, her hands on my shoulders, her eyes blazing. "I'm serious, Elena. I'm going to march into that fancy office of his and I'm going to—"
"Mira."
"—shove his hundred-dollar tie down his throat until he chokes on it, and then I'm going to—"
"Mira."
She stopped, breathing hard.
"It's done," I said. "It's over. There's nothing to do."
"There's plenty to do. Starting with revenge and ending with arson."
"That's illegal."
"Worth it."
Despite everything, a small smile tugged at my lips. This was why Mira was my person. Not because she always knew the right thing to say, but because she was always, always on my side.
"Come on." She tugged me toward the couch, pushing me down onto the cushions. "Sit. I'm calling out of work."
"You can't do that. You need the tips."
"I need my best friend more." She was already pulling out her phone. "Don't argue with me. You won't win."
I didn't argue.
I sat on that couch, wrapped in a blanket Mira produced from somewhere, and listened to her lie to her manager about a family emergency. When she hung up, she disappeared into the kitchen and came back with two things: a box of tissues and a bottle of cheap wine.
"Talk," she said, settling next to me. "From the beginning. Tell me everything."
So I did.
And then, because the wine was flowing and my defenses were down, I told her the thing I'd never said out loud.
"I liked him."
Mira's hand froze, the wine glass halfway to her lips. "What?"
"Damien." His name felt forbidden on my tongue. "I liked him. I had a—a crush on him, like some stupid teenage girl, and I knew it was pathetic and unprofessional and could never go anywhere, but I—" I laughed, and it came out bitter. "I couldn't help it."
Mira set down her glass. "Elena..."
"I know." I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes. "I know. He's my boss. Was my boss. He's cold and cruel and he treated me like garbage. But there was just something—the way he looked at me sometimes, or the way he'd say my name, and I'd think maybe—"
I stopped.
God, I was pathetic.
"You're not pathetic," Mira said, reading my mind like she always did. "You're human. You spent twelve hours a day with the man. It makes sense that you'd develop feelings."
"It doesn't make sense. Nothing about this makes sense." I grabbed the wine bottle and took a long drink straight from the neck. Classy. "He hated me, Mira. He made my life hell. And I just kept coming back, kept trying to please him, like some—some—"
"Like someone who's spent her whole life trying to earn love that should've been given freely?"
The words hit me like a truck.
I stared at her.
"Sorry." Mira winced. "Too real?"
"Way too real." I took another drink. "When did you become a therapist?"
"I bartend, babe. It's basically the same thing." She reached over and squeezed my hand. "Look, I know tonight sucks. I know you're hurting. But you know what? Screw him. Screw that job. You're going to find something better, someone better, and Damien Russo is going to spend the rest of his miserable life alone with his money and his stupid suits."
"His suits aren't stupid," I muttered. "They're actually really well-tailored."
Mira threw a pillow at me.
"We're going out," she announced.
"What? No."
"Yes." She was already standing, pulling me to my feet. "We're going to a bar. We're going to drink something stronger than this gas station wine. And we're going to forget that Damien Russo ever existed."
"Mira, I don't want to—"
"I don't care what you want." She pushed me toward the bathroom. "Shower. Change. We leave in thirty minutes."
"I'm not going to—"
"Thirty minutes, Elena."
She closed the bathroom door in my face.
I stood there for a moment, staring at my reflection in the mirror.
I looked like a disaster.
Maybe Mira was right. Maybe I needed to forget.
I turned on the shower.
Two hours later, I was drunk.
Really, truly, spectacularly drunk.
The bar Mira had chosen was loud and crowded and exactly the kind of place I usually avoided. But the drinks were strong and the music was louder than my thoughts, and somewhere around drink number four, I'd stopped caring about anything.
"He has these eyes," I was saying, leaning heavily on the bar counter. "These grey eyes, Mira. Like—like storms. Like hurricanes. Like—"
"Like the eyes of a man who fired you for no reason and deserves to rot?"
"Yes. Exactly. Beautiful, rotting, hurricane eyes."
Mira snorted into her drink. "You're so drunk."
"I'm so drunk." I nodded sagely. "And you know what else? His cologne. It's—" I made a gesture that was supposed to convey incredible but probably looked like I was having a seizure. "It's like—wood. And spice. And something else. Something that makes you want to—"
"Elena. Stop."
"—bury your face in his neck and just live there—"
"Oh my God."
"—but I can't do that because he's evil. Evil but so pretty. Why are the pretty ones always evil, Mira?"
Mira set down her drink and studied me with a look that was half concern, half amusement. "Okay, I think you've had enough. Let me close out the tab and we'll get you home."
"I don't want to go home."
"Too bad."
She slid off her barstool and headed toward the other end of the bar where the register was.
I watched her go, my head swimming pleasantly.
Home. Right. The apartment where I'd have to wake up tomorrow and face reality. The job applications. The rejection emails. The slow, inevitable slide back into the poverty I'd spent my whole life clawing my way out of.
I didn't want to face that.
I didn't want to face any of it.
My hand drifted to my purse, and I felt something in the side pocket. Something small and plastic.
I pulled it out.
Damien's key card. The one that let me into his building, his penthouse,. I'd meant to return it—it was company property, technically—but I'd forgotten.
I stared at it.
His penthouse. Where he probably was right now, in his perfect apartment with his perfect life, not thinking about me at all.
A thought crept into my drunk brain. A terrible, wonderful, absolutely insane thought.
I still had his spare key too. The one he'd given me for emergencies, when I needed to drop off documents or pick up dry cleaning.
I could go there.
I could tell him—tell him exactly what I thought of him. Tell him he'd made a mistake. Tell him—
Tell him something. Anything. Everything.
Before I could think better of it—before my sober brain could scream at me to stop —I was sliding off my barstool and heading for the door.
Mira's back was still turned.
She wouldn't notice. Not for a few minutes, at least.
A few minutes was all I needed.
I pushed through the crowd, out into the cold night air, and raised my hand to hail a cab.
"Upper East Side," I told the driver as I climbed in. "Russo Tower. The penthouse building."
The cab pulled away from the curb.
And drunk, stupid, heartbroken Elena rode off toward the worst decision of her life.