I still couldn’t pull myself together.
It had been three days since the loan sharks cornered me in the rain, and their words kept looping in my head.
I called Colin every hour to make sure he was still alive, still whole. But I might have managed to only get him worried and suspicious that something was wrong.
How was I supposed to get a hundred thousand dollars in ninety days?
I’d done the math approximately seven thousand times. Even if I saved every cent from three jobs, didn’t pay rent, didn’t eat, didn’t exist, I’d still be seventy thousand short. The numbers didn’t work no matter how many times I rearranged them. There was no scenario where this ended well.
“Order up!”
I grabbed the plates from the window and tried to remember which table ordered the salmon. My brain felt wrapped in cotton, everything taking twice as long to process.
My father had died two years ago in a single-vehicle collision. The police said he was drunk, and I wasn’t surprised. What surprised me was feeling nothing when they told me, no grief, no relief, just a dull sort of acknowledgment that he couldn’t hurt us anymore.
Except he could. Even dead, he found ways.
The loan sharks showed up two weeks after his funeral and knocked on my door at seven in the morning like they were delivering a package. They told me my father owed them money, a lot of money, and that debt didn’t die with the debtor.
I’d laughed in their faces and told them that wasn’t how it worked. Told them to sue his estate or leave me alone.
They didn’t leave.
They cornered Colin in the street several times, beating him until he could barely walk home.
So I paid.
When Colin got the scholarship to London, he didn’t want to go. He’d already packed his bags twice and unpacked them twice, insisting he couldn’t leave me alone with “those men.” He wanted to defer for a year, stay home, work part-time, and help me figure out things together.
But I couldn’t let him do that. He’d earned that scholarship. He deserved a life that wasn’t shaped by our father’s mistakes.
So I lied.
I told him the debt was almost gone. Told him I’d worked out a deal, that the worst was behind us. And because the loan sharks had gone quiet for a few weeks—thanks to the first chunk of money I scraped together—he believed me. He hugged me at the airport, promised to call every night, and boarded the plane, thinking the nightmare was over.
He had no idea it was only quiet because I’d emptied my savings, sold half of my furniture and taken every shift I could just to keep them off his back long enough for him to leave the country.
He’d been in London for months by the time I met Hector and I took the job in the penthouse.
And when that first paycheck hit my account—more money than I’d ever seen at once—I didn’t even hesitate. I sent almost all of it straight to the loan sharks. Every cent after that, too. For two years, I paid and paid and paid while Colin lived across the ocean, blissfully unaware that the only reason he was safe was because I was drowning myself to keep him that way.
He thought I was finally saving for my certification.
He thought I was finally getting ahead.
He didn’t know that every time he called from his tiny dorm room, excited about a new class or a new friend or a new opportunity, I was standing in line at Western Union, sending away the money that should’ve been building my future.
And last month, when I made what I thought was the final transfer, I cried in my bathroom for twenty minutes straight. Not because I was free, but because I could finally start saving for myself. For my exam. For a life that wasn’t built on fear.
Except I wasn’t free.
Not even close.
“Excuse me?” A woman’s voice pulled me back. “Miss?”
I blinked and looked down. I’d been standing at table eight with their food for who knew how long, holding it like a statue.
“Sorry.” I set the plates down too hard and silverware rattled. “Sorry. Enjoy.”
