Page 23 of 10 Days to Ruin

I turn toward the exit, my coat slicing the air behind me. “She will.”

Ariel’s scent clings to my jacket as I leave—peaches and panic. Even as the cold winter air of Manhattan rakes its talons over me, that summer smell lingers.

I shouldn’t have touched her. Shouldn’t have tasted her. Shouldn’t have let her crawl under my skin like a fucking parasite.

But when she looked up at me in that bathroom, all fury and fear and fight, I sawJasmine. Saw the girl I smuggled onto a cargo ship fifteen years ago, her delirious laughter echoing over the Brooklyn docks.Thank you, she’d whispered.

I didn’t bother to reply.

A text lights up my phone. Feliks.Serbian problem handled. What next?

I stare at the text, then at the glittering Met.Next, I type,I play prince charming.

Ariel wants a fairy tale? Fine.

I’ll give her a goddamn epic.

9

ARIEL

The fluorescent lights inThe Gazette’sbreak room are doing their best impression of a medieval torture device. Honestly, hats off to them; they’re really killing it.

Killing me, too.

I woke up with the hangover from hell after Gina drank me under the table last night. The blissful darkness of the drunken abyss was nice for a little while, as were the first few moments when I woke up in my own bed.

I blinked, grainy-eyed, as I stared up at the ceiling. Same old mold patches. Same old water stains. Same old popcorn ceiling that looks vaguely like Richard Gere if you squint just right.

Then I remembered.

Or else what?

What’s coming next, Baba?

So break it,koukla.Break it all.

The weight of it all pinned me to the mattress. I was torn between screaming or sinking into denial, pretending I made it all up. I went with option three: I got up, got dressed, and went to work.

Now, I’m here, feeling like the wrong end of the Grim Reaper’s GI tract, wondering if death might just be the cleanest solution to all my problems.

The coffee machine gurgles merrily. I lean in close to it and whisper, “If you give me decaf, I will end you.”

“Talking to inanimate objects doesn’t scream ‘flourishing mental health.’” Gina sashays into the room. Unlike me, she looks infuriatingly put-together, per usual. Even now that we’re in our thirties, she can drink half the bar and wake up looking like she’s fresh out of a dermaplane facial.

“Very little in my life is flourishing right now, Gee.”

“Do tell.”

I turn to scowl at her. “Ididtell. Last night. Do you really not remember?”

“Oh, yeah. Right. I remember.” She licks PopTart frosting off her thumb. “But I also blacked out after the third shot, so just in case… tell me the whole thing again one more time?”

Before I can strangle her, our coworker Lora floats into the room like the rootless, carefree dandelion seed she is. Her polka-dot dress is inside-out, her hair defies gravity, and she’s clutching a mug labeled#1 Cat Aunt.

I’ve never envied someone more.

“Good morning, ladies!” she chirps at a pitch and decibel that might very well summon every dog in the borough.

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