Fatal Obsession

The ceramic mug shattered against the kitchen wall, coffee splashing across the white paint like abstract art. Heaven didn't flinch. She'd seen worse messes.

"Jesus Christ, Heaven!" Mario's voice cracked as he stared at the brown stain spreading down the wall. "Do you see what you make me do?"

She picked up her sketch pad from the counter, flipping it closed with deliberate calm. "I didn't make you do anything, Mario. You chose to throw that."

"Because talking to you is like-" He raked his hands through his disheveled hair, searching for words that would cut deep enough to reach her. "It's like trying to hug a fucking iceberg. There's nothing there. Nothing."

Heaven's fingers found the soft flesh of her inner arm, pinching just hard enough to feel the familiar sting. The pain was clean, simple. Unlike this conversation.

"Maybe you're just not equipped for the cold," she said, moving toward the living room where her jacket hung over the back of his leather couch.

Mario followed, his footsteps heavy on the hardwood. "Not equipped? Not equipped?" His laugh was bitter. "I've been trying to love you for eight months, Heaven. Eight months of feeling like I'm dating a ghost."

She slipped her arms into the jacket sleeves, the worn denim settling around her shoulders like armor. "Love." The word tasted foreign on her tongue. "Is that what you call those clumsy attempts at intimacy? Those conversations where you talk at me instead of with me?"

"I talk at you because you never fucking respond!" Mario's face flushed red, the vein in his forehead pulsing. "I tell you about my day, you nod. I ask about your paintings, you give me one-word answers. I try to touch you, and you go somewhere else entirely. Where do you go, Heaven? Where the hell do you go?"

Somewhere safe, she thought, but didn't say it. Instead, she adjusted the strap of her purse, checking for her keys and phone with mechanical precision.

"You want to know why I can't get through to you?" Mario's voice dropped to a harsh whisper. "Because you don't want to be gotten through to. You want to stay locked up in that pretty little head of yours, painting your weird fucking pictures and pretending the rest of us don't exist."

Heaven paused at the door, her hand on the handle. "My weird fucking pictures pay for half the dinners you complain I don't enjoy enough."

"That's not-" Mario started, then stopped, pressing the palms of his hands against his eyes. When he looked up, his expression had shifted from anger to something that looked almost like grief. "I love you. I know you don't believe that, but I do. And I keep thinking that if I just try harder, if I just find the right words or the right way to touch you, you'll... you'll come back."

"Come back from where?"

"From wherever you went when you decided to stop living."

The words hung in the air between them, sharp and true enough to make Heaven's chest tighten. She pinched her arm again, harder this time.

"The problem, Mario," she said, turning the handle, "is that you assume I was ever fully here to begin with."

She stepped into the hallway, closing the door behind her with a soft click that felt like punctuation at the end of a sentence she'd grown tired of reading.

The elevator descended in merciful silence, giving her a moment to breathe. Her phone buzzed against her palm--a text to Adaline that she'd composed and sent without conscious thought: *It's over with Mario.*

The response came within seconds, her phone vibrating with an incoming call.

"Finally!" Adaline's voice burst through the speaker, bright and slightly breathless. "I was wondering when you'd get tired of Mr. Missionary Position."

Despite everything, Heaven felt her mouth twitch upward. "That's a terrible thing to say."

"But accurate?"

"Disturbingly so."

Adaline laughed, the sound infectious even through the phone's tiny speaker. "Honey, Mario's problem isn't that he can't get through to you. It's that he's boring as hell and about as sexually adventurous as a golden retriever. You need a man who knows what to do with all that intensity you keep bottled up."

Heaven pushed through the lobby doors into the cool evening air. City Alto stretched out before her, all neon and possibility, the kind of urban landscape that promised anonymity and delivered loneliness.

"I don't have intensity, Ada. I have emptiness. There's a difference."

"Bullshit." The word came out sharp and definitive. "I've seen your paintings, remember? All that beautiful, twisted darkness doesn't come from emptiness. It comes from feeling too much and having nowhere to put it."

Heaven started walking, her feet carrying her automatically toward the main strip where the bars and restaurants clustered like mushrooms after rain. "Philosophical observations from someone who once tried to seduce her yoga instructor during savasana."

"Hey, that worked out great until his wife showed up. And don't change the subject. You just freed yourself from eight months of mediocre everything. We should celebrate."

"I don't really feel like celebrating."

"Which is exactly why you need to. Look, I'm stuck at the club for another hour-some rich asshole wants to extend his lesson and who am I to say no to time-and-a-half? But there's this little place called Meridian on Fifth Street. Dark corners, strong drinks, and the kind of men who don't bore you to tears with stories about their CrossFit routines."

Heaven found herself heading in that direction without deciding to. "I'm not looking for a rebound, Ada."

"I'm not talking about a rebound. I'm talking about reminding yourself that there are still surprises left in the world. Just... sit at the bar, have a drink, and see what happens. Sometimes the universe puts exactly what you need right in front of you."

"The universe," Heaven said dryly, "has a pretty shitty track record with me."

"Then maybe it's time to change that track record. Give it one hour, H. One drink. If nothing interesting happens, you can go home and paint angry pictures of Mario's mediocre dick."

Heaven stopped walking, surprised by the laugh that escaped her. "You're disgusting."

"I'm effective. Text me in an hour and tell me how wrong I was."

The line went dead, leaving Heaven standing on the sidewalk with the phone still pressed to her ear. Around her, the city hummed with its usual evening energy-couples hurrying to dinner reservations, groups of friends spilling out of bars, the lonely and the hopeful all mixed together in the urban soup of Friday night possibility.

Meridian turned out to be exactly what Adaline had promised: dim lighting, exposed brick walls, and the kind of atmosphere that suggested secrets were not only welcome but encouraged. Heaven found a corner table with a clear view of the room and ordered a whiskey neat, something that would burn enough to feel real.

The bartender was young and eager, the kind who probably practiced flair techniques at home and dreamed of opening his own place someday. He set down her drink with a flourish that she acknowledged with a nod, then retreated to polish glasses with studied nonchalance.

Heaven pulled out her sketch pad, flipping to a fresh page. Her hand moved without conscious direction, creating lines and shadows that gradually resolved into familiar forms-angular faces, twisted limbs, the kind of imagery that made gallery visitors uncomfortable and critics use words like "visceral" and "uncompromising."

She was halfway through sketching what might have been a figure in restraints when she felt eyes on her. The sensation was specific, different from the casual glances of other patrons. This was focused, deliberate.

Looking up, she found herself meeting the gaze of a man sitting alone at the far end of the bar. He was older than Mario, maybe early thirties, with the kind of bone structure that spoke of good genetics and better grooming. His dark hair was slicked back with precision, and behind wire-rimmed glasses, his eyes held an intelligence that seemed both analytical and predatory.

He was studying her the way she studied her subjects before painting them-looking for the story beneath the surface, the hidden truth that would make the portrait worth creating.

When their eyes met, he didn't look away. Instead, he raised his own glass-something amber and expensive-looking-in a subtle salute. The gesture was confident without being presumptuous, acknowledging the moment without demanding anything from it.

Heaven felt something stir in her chest, a flutter of... what? Interest? Curiosity? It was so unfamiliar that she almost didn't recognize it. She found herself studying him in return, noting the way his shoulders filled out his dark jacket, the careful grooming of his mustache, the slight smile that played at the corners of his mouth.

She didn't find him attractive–no that wasn't it.

It was intrigue. Yes. A tiny feeling that this one was somehow different.

He looked like the kind of man who understood that the most interesting conversations happened in the spaces between words. The kind who might actually know what to do with the darkness that lived behind her carefully constructed facade.

Without breaking eye contact, Heaven closed her sketch pad and picked up her whiskey. She took a slow sip, tasting smoke, honey and possibility, while across the room, the stranger with the piercing gaze continued to watch her with the patience of someone who knew that the best things were worth waiting for.