The Night Everything Burned

The champagne flute smashed against the marble floor, crystal shattering just like my perfectly groomed existence.

"Isla, baby, just listen..."

"Don't." My voice was strangled, barely human. “You will not.”

Marcus was in the vestibule in the coatroom, staring at me, his bow tie undone, lipstick on his collar like a fucking cliché. Behind him, shivering in her tiny dress, was Vanessa. My cousin. My cousin.

Beyond the door, the engagement celebration roared its way into oblivion, two hundred guests toasting a wedding that would never be, all unaware of this explosion in here, right there in this cramped little cage.

“It didn’t mean anything,” Marcus said, and there was a defiance in that sentence that almost made me laugh. Nearly. “We were drunk, it was an accident.”

"How long?"

Silence.

"HOW LONG?" A scream of mine bounced off the confines of the walls.

Vanessa flinched. "Six months," she whispered.

Six months. Half a year of lies. Half a year of me planning a wedding, picking out flowers and tasting cakes, while in the meantime my fiancé got to fuck my cousin in what? his car? Our bed? My father’s office at his factory, where I had given him lunch just last week because I was so proud of the man I thought I was going to marry?

The room tilted. Or maybe I did.

Isla, your family needs this wedding.” Marcus was bold enough to take a step closer, his hand reaching out for me. “Your father’s company... they’re all counting on us merging. If you call this off..."

I slapped him. Hard enough that my palm stung, hard enough that his head popped to the right.

"Get out."

"Be reasonable."

"GET OUT!"

They skittered away, like the cockroaches they were, and I was left there. Finally, desperately alone, with the wreckage of my own life lying at my feet like shattered glass.

I leaned back against the concrete wall and sank to the ground, my designer dress (the one I’d put on my credit card to max it out) pooling around me. My phone buzzed in my clutch. Most likely Sophie, wondering where I’d run off to.

But it wasn't Sophie.

MOM: We need to talk. NOW. Come to the balcony.

Dread coiled in my stomach, familiar and cold. Because my mother did not have to talk about anything good. And she never, ever used “now” unless...

I managed to get up, forced my wobbly legs to take me back through the party. Smiling faces blurred past. Someone congratulated me. Someone else wanted to know where Marcus had gone. I muttered something, continued on, crashed through the French doors onto the balcony with its view of the Manhattan panorama.

My mother faced away from me, carrying a glass of champagne and stiffly straight.

"Mom?"

She didn't turn around. "Your father's in the hospital."

The world stopped.

"What?"

"Heart attack. Two hours ago," Her voice was flat, emotionless. "They said it was stress. The company's filing for bankruptcy next week. We're ruined, Isla. Completely ruined."

I took hold of the balcony railing, and in my shaking hand it drove me white. "Is he..."

"He's alive. Stable. For now." She looked around and finally turned, and I hardly recognized her. My mother, normally so perfectly controlled, was gaunt. Ancient. “There will be nothing left,” she said, “just from the medical expenses. And the other thing is, we wouldn’t have had any merger with Marcus’s family.”

"There is no merger," I said. "Marcus and I are done."

"Don't be dramatic. Anything he did, you’ll forgive him. You have to. This, this is what could save “the wedding.”

"He fucked Vanessa."

My mother's face went white. Then red. Then white again. "You're lying."

"I caught them. Twenty minutes ago. In the court room," I laughed, and even to me, it sounded unhinged. "So no, Mom. I won't be forgiving him. I won't be marrying him. And I won't be saving a goddamned thing."

She worked quickly and I never saw it coming. The slap stung through my face as it turned my head to the side.

"Selfish," she hissed. "You've always been selfish. Your father’s dying, and you care about your pride...”

"My pride?" I put my hand to the hot side and tasted blood where my teeth had cut into the inside of my mouth. “You want me to get married to a man who cheated on me, and save a company that’s already dead?”

“I want you to save your family!”

"By destroying myself?"

We looked at each other, two women who had never known each other, never even tried.

“If you don’t get this,” my mother murmured, “don’t take your ass to the hospital. Don't bother coming home."

She left me there, standing alone on the balcony, with the cold October wind slicing through my dress and the city lights blurring as they twinkled beyond my tears.

I should go back inside. I should find Sophie. I need to do something, anything, and not just stand here falling into pieces.

Instead, I took my trembling phone out of my pocket and did the only thing that felt logical.

I ran.

***

THREE HOURS LATER

It was the dive bar in Brooklyn that reeked of stale beer and shattered dreams, which meant it was perfect.

I was on my fourth—fifth? And a whiskey when he walked in.

I saw him at once because one could not help it. You'd sort of have to notice a man like that: six feet of dark, expensive danger swathed in a suit more expensive than my rent. He wasn’t one of them, off-key passengers in this sticky-floored sanctum for the city’s lost souls.

But he showed back over to the bar like he owned it, and everything else for that matter, and ordered something I didn’t catch.

"Rough night?" Sophie’s voice broke through my spiral. She finally found me, my best friend who never gave up when she should’ve.

“My fiancé’s fucking my cousin, my dad’s in the hospital, my mom disowned me and life is over. I drank the rest of my cocktail in a gulp. "So yeah. Rough."

"Jesus, Isla." She threw her arm around me, and I almost cracked once more. Almost. "What do you need?"

"A miracle. A time machine. A..."

"Another drink?"

The voice itself was dark velvet and smoke, and it came from right next to me. I turned, and there he was. Close up, it was a ruin of a face, hurricane eyes (too much seen), Parisian-riot cheekbones, a mouth that seemed to know exactly what to do in order to destroy you.

"I don't drink things from random people," I answered.

"Good. You shouldn't." He plopped down on the stool next to mine anyway, taking up space. “But you look like you’re drinking yourself through a disaster, and doing it by yourself is inefficient.”

"Who says I'm alone?"

His gaze darted towards Sophie and then back to me. "Your friend's worried about you. But whatever broke tonight, she can’t fix. Whiskey can’t either, for the record.”

"Are you always this presumptuous?"

"Yes," he signaled to the bartender. "Two whiskeys. Top shelf."

"I said I don't..."

"You will." I turned those storm eyes on me full force, and I could feel it like a caress. “Because I’m about to make you an offer, and you’re going to need the drink.”

Sirens blared in my head. This guy was a threat, I could sense it in my marrow. But I was way beyond caution, and danger was almost a relief.

"I'm listening," I said.