I’m a case number, not a person.
A problem to be solved, not a human to be seen.
A bed that needs to be vacated for someone whose suffering has been deemed more worthy by whatever metric they’re using this week.
And now… a ticking clock.
Fabulous.
I’ve got twenty-three days to rewrite my life.
The city bus lurches forward like a drunk hippo. I grab the pole, then hiss as my damaged finger brushes against cold metal. Standing room only—of course—because public transportation exists primarily to remind the working class that comfort is a luxury reserved for people with functioning vehicles and intact lives.
I’m still damp from what the shelter generously calls a “shower”—three minutes of lukewarm water pressure that fluctuates between “gentle mist” and “fire hose assault.” My hairis doing that thing where it’s neither wet enough to be sleek nor dry enough to be presentable.
Humidity-chic, I call it.
Very on-trend for the “recently homeless” fall collection.
Late summer rain slides down the windows like the universe is crying about my life choices. The cold and blustery day a warning that winter is a miserable affair no one escapes in these parts. The glass fogs with collective breath, creating a canvas for my reflection—blurry, indistinct, appropriately metaphorical.
Twelve minutes. The bus was twelve minutes late, which means I’ll be seven minutes late to Sweet Dreams, which means Marge will sigh with that particular brand of martyrdom she’s perfected, like my tardiness is a personal attack on her ancestral baking legacy.
Never mind that I was up at dawn, or that I’m working with an infected finger, or that I’m mentally calculating how many centuries of minimum wage it will take to pay off $980 worth of crystal champagne flutes.
That’s 122.5 hours of work, by the way. Just for breaking something I never wanted to touch in the first place.
I should have business cards made: Emmaleen Rourke, Professional Disaster. Or maybe: Miss Lost Opportunity. Formerly known as BookishEmma_leen, currently known as Bleed-for-Minimum-Wage Girl. Available for your next catastrophe.
The bus wheezes to a stop two blocks from Sweet Dreams. I sprint through puddles, my secondhand boots providing all the water protection of tissue paper. Cold seeps through my socks, between my toes, up my ankles. The wind finds every hole in my coat sleeves with the precision of a sadistic acupuncturist.
I round the corner toward the alley between Sweet Dreams and Bavga’s Restaurant—and stop dead.
Three men stand outside Bavga’s employee entrance. Dark suits, hands in pockets, shoulders squared, exuding the casual menace of apex predators lounging at a watering hole. Two of them glance my way with the clinical interest of butchers assessing a particularly unimpressive cut of meat.
The third man has his back to me. Broad shoulders, razor-sharp haircut, a stance that commands the very molecules of air around him to arrange themselves according to his preference.
He turns.
Oh.
Oh fuck.
It’s him. Hotel Guy. Lambo Man. Mob Boss. The human black hole who absorbed all sound and light at the gala.
Mr. Bavga. Italian name, expensive watch, eyes that cataloged my every movement as I walked out of the event, defeated and newly jobless.
He’s somehow worse in the daylight. More precise. More intentional. His suit isn’t just tailored—it’s a second skin. No tie today, just an open collar that somehow makes him look more dangerous, not less. Like he’s one step closer to whatever violence lives beneath the designer fabric.
I force my feet forward. Chin up, eyes ahead, playing the invisibility game that every woman learns by age twelve. I am nothing. I am no one. I’m just trying to get to work, sir, please don’t notice me.
My hand reaches for the bakery door handle—and I look.
I shouldn’t, but I do.
His eyes narrow slightly.
Assessing. Calculating.