The weight of him above me. My wrists pinned in his hands. The moment when his eyes dropped to my mouth and I knew, Iknewhe was going to kiss me. And then—nothing. Cold air where his body should have been. The slam of his door.
"I wouldn't have minded. If nothing had become something."
I said that. Out loud. To his closed door. Like some pathetic, desperate fool.
I bury my face in my pillow and scream until my throat burns.
The rejection sits on my chest like a weight, making each breath feel like drowning in reverse. I've been rejected before. By my mother's dying words praising Gabriel, by my father's disappointment, by family abandonment. But this is different. This is physical. This is me on the floor offering everything and him choosing nothing.
No. Stop.
I sit up, pushing hair out of my face. So what if he rejected me? Men don't reject Marisol Delgado. They beg for my attention, buy bottles just to sit near me, follow me around La Sirena like lost puppies. Clearly something is wrong withhim.
I'll just be normal. Breezy. The human equivalent of champagne bubbles. Light, effervescent, impossible to ignore. He'll see what he's missing and feel terrible.
This is fine. Everything is fine.
I shower, letting the hot water wash away the memory of his hands on my wrists. Do my makeup, subtle but flawless. Choose a sundress that's cute but not trying too hard, yellow like the fire because that's what I am. A fire that attracts moths. Not a girl who lies on floors wanting tactical bananas to kiss her.
Deep breath. Time to pretend nothing happened because, according to him, nothing did.
I emerge from my room like a woman who definitely didn't spend the morning screaming into fabric.
He's in the kitchen.
Shirtless.
My brain stops working. He's doing something with a protein shake, his back to me, and I can see every muscle moving under his skin. The tattoos on his right arm, dates and symbols I don't understand. Scars that tell stories he'll never share. The way his shoulders flex as he pours powder into a shaker bottle.
His phone buzzes on the counter. He grabs it, tension rippling through his shoulders as he reads. His free hand moves to where his gun would be, an unconscious tell I've learned means danger.
He turns. Sees me. His face goes completely blank, like I'm a threat assessment he's already dismissed.
But for just a second, half a heartbeat, his eyes drop to where my dress has slipped off one shoulder. His jaw tightens. His grip on the phone turns his knuckles white.
Then he reaches for a shirt hanging on the back of a chair and pulls it on. Fast. Efficient. Like my seeing his body is a problem that needs immediate solving.
The rejection hits fresh, even as I note that moment of want he couldn't quite hide.
"Morning, Horse Man!" My voice comes out too bright, manic at the edges. "I see you're doing your whole…" I gesture vaguely at him. "Protein situation. Very healthy. Very boring.Ten out of ten nutritionists would approve while simultaneously dying of boredom."
He grunts. Doesn't look at me. Goes back to shaking his terrible chalk water. But I notice the way he grips the shaker, too tight, like he's imagining it's something else. Maybe his own throat for almost looking at me like that.
"I was thinking we could—"
"I have calls to make." He's already moving toward the door, but he pauses at the threshold. For a second, I think he might turn around. His shoulders bunch like he's fighting something.
Then he walks out, leaving me with the scent of cinnamon and gun oil.
"Oh. Okay. Well, I'll just… exist here then."
I stand alone in my designer kitchen, my breezy opener dead on arrival, wondering how someone can make putting on a shirt feel like such a thorough dismissal. Even when their hands shake just a little while doing it.
Every interaction for the rest of the morning is worse than the last.
I make coffee. Not my usual champagne-for-breakfast approach, but his terrible military coffee, black and bitter. The way he drinks it when he bothers to drink anything that isn't protein sludge.
I set the mug near him while he types on his laptop at the dining table. His shoulders are rigid, and he's checking his phone every thirty seconds. Something's wrong. Something beyond his rejection of me.
