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I’m only still standing here because I cannot afford not to be. If the choice were mine, I would never breathe the same air as either of them again.

Because now I finally understand why she spent months warning me that Maksim made a terrible partner. She was never protecting me. She wanted him for herself the whole time. I came home early one afternoon and found the two of them tangled in my own bed, both wearing the exact faces of people who thought they were clever. That was the bed Maksim spent five months complaining I would not properly share. I wanted to wait. He found someone who wouldn’t make him.

So, I ended it. I stormed out. The next morning came the text.

Vanessa

Delaney!! sweetie don’t make this weird, you’re my best friend in the whole world

Sooo Maksim and I are ENGAGED, be nice when you finally see us okayyy

I didn’t answer. I didn’t have to. The city is small and cruel, and five months later it seated them in station four regardless.

“Two of the Sazeracs,” Maksim says. “And whatever’s cheapest for the effort of walking over.”

The guests at the next booth laugh. My face stays exactly where I left it.

I think about my little brother, eight years old and asleep on the far side of town with the sitter who costs me an hour’s tips a night. I think about the debt my parents left folded into their absence, the number that doesn’t shrink no matter how many trays I carry. I’ve never once been the person anyone calls in a real crisis. That loneliness is exactly why the only name saved in my phone as an emergency contact is a man I swore off five months ago, a vow I’ve broken exactly once, drunk, at one in the morning.

So, I swallow the venom rising in my throat. I can’t afford to fail tonight of all days.

“Coming right up,” I say, and I turn to go.

“Wait.” Vanessa catches my wrist, her nails a soft, cruel pressure. “Sit with us a second. For old times.”

“I’m working, Vanessa.”

“She’s shy,” Vanessa says it to the booth beside us, to the whole room, her voice suddenly a stage voice. “So insecure, bless her. No real friends, no social life. Honestly, it breaks my heart.”

Maksim leans back and folds both hands over an imaginary belly, rounding his arms out wide. “God, I don’t know how I stood being near her for so long,” he says, and the tone lands worse than I braced for. “You know she cried once because a dress didn’t fit? A dress.”

The laughter spreads now, table to table, the way a spill spreads.

I fight to breathe evenly. Am I really that much? The question claws up before I can shove it down. I turn to leave with what’s left of me.

That’s when his foot comes out.

I feel the tray go before I understand why. My ankle catches on the leg he slid into the aisle, and forty dollars of cocktail per glass launches straight down the front of my white uniform shirt, ice and gin and syrup soaking me sheer to the skin in one cold shock. My shoe hits the puddle. My balance leaves me all at once.

I go down fast and graceless. My hip and then my temple crack against the marble edge of the booth table, and for one sick heartbeat the chandelier light doubles overhead.

A sharp cry tears out of me. I can’t stop the fall in time.

I look up. The soaked shirt has gone translucent, plastered to my chest, the red of my bra glowing bright. Of every morning to reach for red, I picked this exact one.

“Oh no.” Vanessa’s hand flies to her mouth. “You poor thing. Somebody should really have warned them a girl your size can’t move quick around furniture.”

Whispers ripple out. Camera flashes pop like tiny bursts of lightning—phones already up, already filming. I try to cover myself with both arms, which only folds me smaller and makes me look more pitiful than before.

I’ve become an unforgettable joke tonight. People will retell this for years. The waitress who went down soaked and bloody in station four while the bride-to-be laughed. Some of them will laugh again in the retelling.

My head grows heavy and thick. The ache in my temple pulses in time with every whisper. Wet warmth slides toward my jaw, and when I touch it my fingers come away red.

The busboy drops to a crouch beside me, young and pale. “Ma’am—ma’am, you’re bleeding.” He’s already digging my phone out of the apron pocket. “Someone needs to come for you. Whom do I call?”

“Don’t—“ I start, but the room is tilting.

My lock screen shows a Medical ID with one single emergency contact. He dials it before my dazed brain can object. I haven’t let myself think about whose number lives in there since the night I drunk-texted it.