1
ZOLA
The coffee shop on South Street has the kind of worn-in charm that makes tourists pull out their phones and locals ignore it completely. Nialyn and I claim our usual corner booth, the vinyl seats patched with duct tape that's been there so long it's become part of the aesthetic. She slides a latte across the scarred wood table, the foam art already collapsing into something vaguely obscene.
"Your barista boyfriend needs more practice." I wrap my hands around the cup, letting the warmth seep into my fingers.
"He's not my boyfriend, and he's trying." Nialyn's dark coils catch the afternoon light streaming through the grimy windows. She's got her business textbook open, margins already filled with her neat handwriting. "Some of us appreciate effort."
The jab lands exactly where she intends it. I take a sip of coffee that's too hot and tastes like burned ambition. "We talking about foam art or something else?"
"Both." She doesn't look up from her notes, pen tapping against the page. "Maybe neither. How's your program going?"
"Fine." I shift in my seat, the duct tape catching on my jeans. "Better than fine, actually. I think I could be some kindof nurse." Right now, I'm just undeclared and at the local community college, trying to figure my life out.
"Of course you could." Now she looks at me, those warm brown eyes sharp with the kind of certainty I've never been able to muster about my own future. "You'd be incredible. You're smart and kind and could go so far. Maybe farther than the community college. "
"That costs money I don't have." The coffee burns down my throat. "I can just get the associates and work at the hospital or something.
It's clean money, honest work, the kind of thing Mom would've been proud of. Would've been. Past tense. Three years since cancer took her, since I stood in that cemetery in my only black dress and felt the city stretch out around me, vast and indifferent.
Nialyn reaches across the table, her hand covering mine. We don't need to say it. She was there that day, holding my other hand, the only family I had left that mattered.
"The bookstore's going to happen." She squeezes my fingers before pulling back. "Two more years, I finish the business program, and we're golden. I've already got location ideas. That spot on Passyunk that used to be the record store? Perfect."
"You've been saying that since we were sixteen." But I'm smiling, because Nialyn's dreams are the kind that actually come true. She's got the vision, the work ethic, the stubborn optimism that refuses to acknowledge obstacles until she's already climbed over them.
"And you've been saying you'd help me run it." She flips a page in her textbook, highlighting something about market analysis. "Children's section in the back, cozy reading nooks, space for community events. We could do author readings, book clubs?—"
"I know the pitch." I do. I've heard it a hundred times, refined and polished until it gleams. "You'll make it happen."
"We'll make it happen." She looks at me over the rim of her own cup. "Sisters, remember?"
Sisters. Not by blood—my mom was it for blood family—but by choice, which counts for more. We grew up three blocks apart, spent every summer running through fire hydrant spray, every winter huddled in one apartment or the other depending on whose heat was working. When Mom got sick, Nialyn's family made sure I wasn't alone. When Mom died, Nialyn made sure I didn't disappear into the grief.
"I remember." My phone buzzes against the table. I don't need to look to know who it is.
But Nialyn does. Her expression shifts, warmth cooling into something more complicated. "He texting you again?"
"He texts me every day." I flip the phone face-down without checking. "That's what people do when they're?—"
"In love?" The word comes out flat. "Is that what we're calling it?"
My jaw tightens. "Don't start."
"I'm not starting anything." She closes her textbook with more force than necessary. "I'm continuing a conversation we've been having for two years. Since you finally stopped running from him and started running toward whatever this is."
Three years since I met Declan Wolfe at a party I had no business being at, in a house that probably cost more than every building on my block combined. He'd looked at me like I was the only person in the room worth seeing, and I'd looked back at him like he was trouble I couldn't afford.
Turns out I was right about the trouble part.
"You know what he is, Z." Nialyn's voice drops lower. The couple at the next table doesn't need to hear this. "You know what his family does. What he does."
"I know." The coffee's gone cold in my hands. "You think I don't know?"
"Then I don't understand why you're still—" She cuts herself off, frustration etched in the line of her shoulders. "You know my uncle's in the life. Adjacent to the Wolfes, different crew, but close enough. I've seen what it does. The fear, the violence, the way it swallows people whole."
"Declan's not your uncle." But even as I say it, I know how weak it sounds.
