I didn’t just cry—I broke in half, right there between the clink of glasses and the hiss of the kitchen doors, four hundred dollars lighter and one more disaster deeper. The manager’s voice blurred into the roar in my ears as I signed away money I didn’t have for a couple I’d never see again, a punishment for trusting faces I’d mistaken for kind. I walked home with my mother’s missing posters in my bag and my apron still damp, certain the universe had made itself clear: it would take and take until there was nothing left of me to noti… Continues…
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