After Coral vanished, everything blurred together. My life became hanging up missing person’s posters. Hundreds of them, stapled to poles, taped to windows, handed out on street corners until my throat hurt from repeating her name.
I started showing up at precincts and representatives’ offices, talking to anyone who might listen. Begging the police to look harder. To ask the right questions. To look for the man in the red shirt.
They didn’t. They decided she’d run away, and that was that.
I told them she wouldn’t. Not like that. Not without saying goodbye. Not without her favorite sneakers or her charger or the jacket she stole from me and never gave back.
But they didn’t care. Not about what I had to say, and sure as shit not about Coral. At the tender age of seventeen, that’s the hard truth I learned: people don’t care the way you think they will. Most of the time, they don’t care at all.
It’s been three years, and Coral is still missing.
The only thing I have left of her is the bracelet on my wrist. Coral beads strung between amber ones. Corny as hell, but that’s just how we were. We’d bought them together from a street vendor, matching on purpose, like idiots. I’ve worn mine every day since. She disappeared wearing hers.
After she was gone, my parents aged all at once. Like someone flipped a switch. Their minds went soft around the edges. Dad stopped talking altogether, and Mom started forgetting things.
Grief does that. It eats holes where memories used to live.
I quit high school and started working full time, armed only with a fake ID and willing hands. Under the dim lights of a bar, I could look older and like I knew what I was doing, so that’s where I went. Besides, my parents needed me during the day. I learned fast, poured faster.
Then, when Mom and Dad became shadows of themselves, barely able to take care of themselves, I had to spring for specialized care. A home, but a good one, none of those Nurse Ratched places they talk on TV. This place is a little corner of heaven, and costs like one. I signed on the dotted line with a knot of anxiety in my throat but zero regrets, because I knew I was giving them the best.
I haven’t taken a night off work since.
The bills don’t care where the money comes from, so I hoard tips like a dragon and don’t feel bad about it. Every dollar counts. Every shift matters.
I roll my shoulders and drag myself back to the present.
“Rough night?” Izzy asks as she walks by with a tray of empty glasses tucked against her hip.
I give her a small smile, preparing my own tray of full glasses. “The usual.”
She snorts softly, because she knows exactly what that means.
It was Izzy who taught me the job. She’s head waitress now, which mostly means she does everything she used to do, plus the parts no one else wants.
Her gaze flicks toward the table in the corner, then back to me. “You’re on the mafia table again. Fun times.”
I roll my eyes. “They’re not mafia. They’re just well-dressed CEOs with more money than our organs are worth on the black market.”
“Possibly.” Izzy’s eyes twinkle with laughter. “But those tattoos don’t lie.”
“Lots of rich guys have tattoos now. It’s a thing.”
She hums, clearly not buying it, then steps aside to let me through. “Try not to flirt your way into a mafia wedding.”
“Please. I’m not their type.”
Izzy raises a brow like she doesn’t believe that either, that cocky smile of hers still in place, then disappears toward the kitchen.
I head for the corner table. Whiskey neat, blue label. Negroni sbagliato, with prosecco instead of gin. Bourbon on the rocks.
You can tell a lot about a man by what he drinks. I’ve been bartending for three years now, and it’s practically a creed. You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. But you absolutely can, and should, judge a man by his liquor.
The whiskey goes to the one with the calm eyes and the copper beard—Mr. Moretti, if I remember correctly. It's the kind of drink that gets passed down from father to son, taught not discovered. He nods once when I set it down, polite and distant.
The negroni sbagliato goes to the man with the sharp suit and sharper features. Mr. Neri, the oldest of the bunch. He thanks me with a curt nod, but I don't hold that against him. He never speaks a word more than he has to, if he can help it.
The bourbon is last.
