18

Marianna.

I make it all the way back to the guest room before the tears come.

I don't cry pretty. Some girls cry like they're starring in a high-end perfume commercial—single, crystalline tears sliding gracefully down flawless porcelain cheeks, maybe accompanied by an artistic sniffle or a delicate dab of a tissue. Very dignified. Very aesthetic.

I cry like I'm exorcising centuries-old demons.

It hits me the second the heavy bedroom door clicks shut, a full-body wave of humiliation and grief that buckles my knees. I collapse onto the edge of the mattress, my shoulders heaving with violent, guttural sobs that make my chest physically ache. My nose runs. My eyes burn. My face instantly turns that specific, blotchy shade of red that takes approximately forty-seven hours to fade. It's disgusting. It's primal. It's the kind of crying that comes from somewhere deeper than temporary sadness, welling up from a subterranean cavern of inadequacy that doesn't even have a proper name.

I bury my face in the grey pillow—his pillow, in his guest room, in his impossibly expensive apartment where I'm apparently living as his pathetic little charity case—and let myself completely fall apart.

You're not my type.

That letter you wrote? I felt sorry for you.

That's all.

The words bounce around the inside of my skull, sharp and jagged. It's not like I didn't know this. Some rational, self-preserving part of my brain has always known this.

The fourteen-year-old girl who writes sparkly gel-pen love letters to her brother's untouchable best friend isn't the girl who ends up with the three-time Formula 1 world champion. She's the punchline. The comedic relief. The cautionary tale. The "before" picture in someone else's glamorous transformation story.

I'm not Alina Lindqvist. I'm not six feet tall with cheekbones that could cut glass and legs that belong on a Parisian runway. I'm not beautiful in the heart-stopping way that makes powerful men cross crowded rooms.

I'm cute, maybe, on a good day. Approachable. The kind of face you forget five minutes after meeting. I'm the girl that guys settle for when they can't get the girl they actually want, and the one they leave when someone better inevitably comes along.

But hearing him say it—You're not my type, you never have been—is so much worse than just knowing it. It’s a confirmation of every terrifying fear I've ever harbored about myself.

And the worst part? The absolute, most humiliating part of this entire disaster? I let him do this to me. Twice. Three times now.

My mind violently drags me back to those two catastrophic confessions, playing them side-by-side on a split screen of regret.

At fourteen, when Marco found that stupid, mortifying letter and handed it over to Duane like a joke, I was devastated. When Duane told me to focus on passing algebra before romance, I thought I would literally die of shame.

But I survived it by comforting myself with lies. I spent weeks staring at my ceiling, rationalizing the humiliation away. I’m just a kid, I told myself. It’s just puberty. Hormones. It’s a total cliché to fall for your brother’s older, brooding best friend. He’s just protecting me. Someday, when I’m in my twenties, we’ll laugh about this over drinks.

I forgave him, and more importantly, I forgave myself, because fourteen-year-olds are allowed to be absolute idiots.

But I have no excuse for what I did at eighteen.

The memory of the dock, the smell of the rum, the pulsing bass of the party next door—it makes me want to rip my own skin off. I wasn’t a naive child anymore. I was a legal adult. And yet, I still laid my heart bare on those wooden planks. I spilled my guts to him, telling him I had loved him my whole life, begging the universe for a movie moment that was never going to happen.

You’re Marco’s sister. That’s all. That’s all it will ever be.

The morning after that rejection, nursing a vicious hangover and a shattered ego, I had desperately tried to comfort myself again. I wrapped myself in a blanket of delusional justifications. I was just drunk, I whispered to the bathroom mirror. It was the rum talking. Or no—I was being brave. I was being the bold protagonist of my own life.

God, I was so pathetic.

I cry harder into the pillow, my fingers twisting into the expensive grey fabric. The truth is, he didn’t reject me because of Marco, or his career, or his noble sense of duty. He rejected me because he didn't want me. He has never wanted me.

Why did I give him the power to break me over and over again? Why did I allow myself to get tangled back up in his orbit, letting his scent and his proximity and his stupid, bruised shoulders trick my body into hoping for something impossible?

Suddenly, the grief curdles into something else. Something hot and sharp and bright.

Anger.

I sit up, throwing the tear-soaked pillow across the room where it hits the wall with a satisfying, muffled thump. I wipe the back of my trembling hand across my running nose, my chest heaving as I glare at the closed bedroom door.

I am done.

I am so completely, fundamentally done with Duane Richter. I don't want his pity. I don't want his charity. And I sure as hell don't want him.

I make a vow right then and there, my nails digging into the mattress. I am going to excise this man from my life like a tumor. I want him gone. Out of my head, out of my heart, out of my orbit entirely.

Get away from me, I project the thought at the bedroom door, imagining it piercing straight through the walls to wherever he is standing. Get as far away from me as humanly possible. Stay in your Bugattis and your penthouses and your toxic, exhausting relationships with Swedish supermodels. I am evicting you from my mind.

I will build a wall so high he will never be able to look down on me again. I will scrub my very DNA of this nine-year pathetic crush until there is absolutely nothing left but cold, hard indifference.

I take a deep, shuddering breath. My eyes are swollen shut and my throat feels like it’s been lined with sandpaper, but the suffocating weight in my chest has fractured, letting in a sliver of oxygen.

What now?

I can't stay here. That much is obvious. I can't spend two more days breathing the same recycled air as Duane Richter, eating his food, wearing his overpriced hoodies, pretending I don't feel anything when clearly I feel way too much.

But I have exactly fourteen dollars and twenty-seven cents in my bank account. A credit card that's practically smoking from being maxed out. No job, no luggage, and a cracked iPhone that belongs to the man I just swore to cut out of my life.

I reach for the phone on the nightstand. I open my email app, staring blankly at the screen.

Nothing from Kinetic Performance Institute. Of course. Why would there be? I probably bombed the entire interview by sprinting out of the conference room mid-sentence, looking like a deranged lunatic just to chase after the news of a man who ultimately couldn't care less about me.

But wait—

My thumb hovers over the screen. There's something else. An email I missed earlier, buried under a pile of promotional garbage and spam.

From: [e-mail]

Subject: RE: Interview Follow-Up - Sports Performance Specialist Position

Date: Sunday, May 5th, 2024, 6:47 PM

Dear Ms. Reyes,

Thank you for taking the time to interview with us today. We understand that circumstances required you to leave early, and we appreciate the unique pressures of race week.

After reviewing your qualifications and our conversation, we would like to invite you for a second interview with our clinical team. Please contact our office at your earliest convenience to schedule.

Best regards,

Dr. Margot Lindholm

Clinical Director

Kinetic Performance Institute

I read it three times.

Then a fourth, just to make sure the words aren't hallucinating themselves onto the cracked glass.

A second interview. They want to see me again. Despite my disastrous, unprofessional exit. Despite the cheap Target blazer and the bleeding blisters and the absolute chaos of my existence.

Something profound shifts in my chest. It isn't hope, exactly—I've learned the hard way not to trust hope—but it’s something adjacent to it. A fierce, tiny flame igniting in all that suffocating darkness. A lifeline.

Okay, I think, my grip tightening on the phone. Okay.

This is how I survive Miami. This is how I survive him.

Not by relying on Duane Richter, or his reluctant charity, or his grey apartment full of emotional landmines. I am going to survive by building something of my own. Something he can't touch. Something that belongs entirely to me.

I stand up on shaking legs. I walk over to the mirror hanging above the dresser. I look at myself—blotchy, swollen, wearing a t-shirt that drowns my frame, looking absolutely wrecked by a man who isn't even in the room.

I stare into my own bloodshot eyes.

"You're not his type?" I whisper to my reflection, the words raspy and hard. "Fine. He's not yours either."

I wipe the last tear off my cheek.

"Now get to work."