“Look, thanks for covering last month. I’ll pay you back,” I said as I made my way for the front door.
“Valentina—” Isabel reached for my arm, but I pulled away, my fingers trembling as I grabbed the doorknob.
“I said I’ll figure it out.” I slammed the door shut behind me, leaving before I got the chance to wish my niece a happy birthday.
CHAPTER 2
VALENTINA
OCTOBER 19
“Blackberry wine,” I rasped, clearing my throat like a woman who hadn’t seen a glass of water—or her dignity—in a while. “Yeah, two boxes. Oh, and a pack of Marlboros.Red.The long ones.”
José’s dark brown eyes locked onto mine. I took him in, eyebrows raised, silently judging his latest Hawaiian shirt: bright orange, loud enough to offend even the blind, stretched tight over the beer belly he’d cultivated from years of loyalty to Corona. He wasn’t tall—barely taller than me, really—but he walked around as if he were six foot, which I respected. Confidence made up for a lot, even if it couldn’t hide his receding hairline.
He sighed my name. “What’re you doing?”
WhatwasI doing?
I was having the existential crisis of the century, right there in the fluorescent glare of José’s bodega, but I wasn’t about to wax poetic about my spiral to the man who sold me Cheetos on credit.
“Por favor, José,” I found myself pleading, digging my heel into the floor. Fatigue scraped its nails down my throat. “I thought we had an agreement.”
Our agreement: I paid on credit since I didn’t have money of my own. It wasn’t formal—nothing written, nothing signed—but it worked.
Or at least it used to.
José had a soft spot for people like me. The “hard-luck cases,” he called us, as if we were scratched-off lottery tickets scattered on his floor, worthless but still worth a second glance, just in case. As long as I eventually showed up with a fistful of crumpled bills or a pocketful of change, he figured we were square.
“That was before Max got involved.”
“Max?” I complained. “What about him?”
“He wants you sober.”
That two-timing son of a bitch.I’d pay good money—money I definitely didn’t have—to see the look on his face if someone ripped that precious Macallan 18 out of his grip.
Max and his rules. Max and his god complex. He’d probably shrivel up and die if someone dared tell him no for once in his entitled life. Sobriety was easy to preach when his liquor cabinet cost more than my electric bill, and even easier when he got off on controlling everyone else’s misery.
Max had his claws in everything now, including the bodegas. Word had gotten out about me, and apparently, my wine-and-cigarette habit was just another casualty of his control.
“I am perfectly sober. I’m just trying to enjoy a drink here and there.”
“Do you know it’s nine in the morning?” José asked.
Yeah, I knew.
But time didn’t mean much when your life was a mess. The only thing that mattered was finding something, anything.
Nine in the morning, nine at night—what difference did it make? All I wanted was a little peace, even if it came at the bottom of a bottle.
“Do you think Hemingway checked the clock before pouring himself a drink?” I argued, though I knew full well José wasn’t the type to appreciate literary excuses for bad habits.
Still, a girl had to try.
“But you’re not Hemingway,” he said flatly. “Hemingway’s dead.”
“Listen,” I tried again, softening my tone because I was running out of gas and pride in equal measure. “I just need to get through today, okay? Tomorrow, I-I-I’ll be a new woman. I’ll drink water. I’ll eat a vegetable. Hell, I’ll start meditating. But right now I need you to give me a break.”
