Chapter 1: Chapter 1
The bass from the speakers wasn’t just sound, it was a physical presence, a throb in the teeth and the ribs. The air in the old Colonial house was thick with sweat and cheap beer and the cloying sweetness of someone’s watermelon vape. Maddy stood by the keg, her plastic cup warm, and watched her ex-boyfriend try to break her.
It had been two weeks. Fourteen days of silence and staring at her ceiling and deleting paragraphs of texts she’d never send. And now here he was, in the middle of Jared Cohen’s sticky-floored living room, with some girl in a sequined tube top.
He wasn’t just dancing with her. It was a performance. A demolition. His hands were on her hips, pulling her back against him in a slow, grinding rhythm that was too deliberate to be about fun. His chin was hooked over her shoulder, his eyes fixed across the crowd. Fixed on Maddy.
Every shift, every laugh he fake-whispered into the girl’s hair, was a telegram. See this? You’re nothing. You’re replaced.