Bleeding in Couture

“The last time you said ‘trust me,’ we ended up locked in a cemetery with a drunk tarot reader.”

Cass scoffed from the bathroom doorway, eyeliner in one hand, looking offended. “That was Halloween.”

“It was March.”

“And didn’t you get a free reading out of it? She said you were destined for greatness.”

I gave her a look. “She also tried to baptize me with gin.”

We were in the shared living space of our fourth-floor walkup in New York’s East Village, the air hot and old, windows cracked but still losing the war against summer’s leftover humidity. The kind of apartment with exposed brick for aesthetic and rats for personality. The start of our last year at NYU was two days away. I hadn’t slept in three.

Cass was framed in the doorway like a war goddess with good credit. Her hair was up, gold hoops gleaming. Her dress—red, sharp, intentional—kissed her thighs like a warning sign. She looked like someone who always left with more than she arrived with.

Mina, half-dressed on the couch, had a foot on the coffee table and a hand around a glowing orange drink she probably made by accident. Black tank top, black cargo pants, black eyeliner sharp enough to require a license. Her braids were fresh, and she sat like she’d just remembered she was hot.

I, in contrast, looked like a sleep-deprived academic ghost. Oversized hoodie. Biker shorts. Hair in a claw clip that was losing the fight. My stylus clattered against the screen of my Wacom tablet as I leaned back in our creaky communal chair, staring down the sketch I’d been murdering for five hours.

It looked like a corpse on digital paper. Structure—wrong. Fabric flow—dead. Soul—missing.

My mentor at Christan Dior—Christian fucking Dior,crown jewel of the New York avant-garde fashion scene—had emailed back twenty minutes ago:Feels forced. Try again.

That was my fourth “try again” since Thursday.

My fingers hurt. My eye had been twitching since lunch. And now I had to listen to the bass-thump of my friends’ joy vibrating through the walls while the ghost of my confidence quietly suffocated in front of me.

“You need a break,” Cass said, slipping a second earring into place. Her perfume had already filled the apartment, smelling like money and well-aimed threats.

“I need them to stop erasing me,” I muttered. “Every sketch I send, they gut it. They want edge, they want softness, they want whatever I’m not the moment I give it.”

“They’re threatened. You’re too good.”

“I’mtoo nothing. That’s the problem.”

From the windowsill of the open kitchen I was in, Javi laughed. Low. Amused. It poured into the room like bourbon over ice.

He shouldn’t have been here.

Perched like a crow with gym shoulders, he was all casual menace and misleading warmth. Black jeans. Faded leather jacket. A forearm tattoo barely visible beneath his sleeve—inked in something that didn’t feel decorative. Cheery smile. Wolf eyes. The kind of guy who helped you carry groceries and picked pockets while doing it. He held his drink like he owned the room. Like healwaysowned the room.

Cass’s newest boyfriend. And mistake.

“You know,” he said, tipping his chin toward my screen, “if you angle that lamp differently, your shadows won’t flatten the folds so much.”

I didn’t look at him. “Thanks, stranger man who should not be in my kitchen.”

Cass snorted. “He’s just being nice.”

“He’s being observant. There’s a difference. Spies are observant.”

Javi grinned. “You always this paranoid, or just around me?”

“Both.”

“I like her,” he said to Cass. “Sharp tongue. Quiet type. Dangerous combo.”

“Don’t flirt with her,” Cass said, swiping mascara. “She’s in mourning.”

“For what?”

“Her creative spark,” I said. “It’s currently buried under a new unpaid internship and generational guilt.”

He blinked. “Damn.”

Mina, now upside down on the armrest, leg swinging, said, “Kat. Babe. You haven’t moved in three hours. I watched your posture decay in real time.”

“The meeting is tomorrow.”

“And you’re designing like a Victorian ghost trying to be polite about dying. You need this.”

“I need to finish this. This was supposed to be the one.”

I stared at the sketch. I wanted to want it.

Last night, it had felt like something. Flor de Sangre. Silk in revolt. A neckline inspired by a throat about to scream. But now, under the dying glow of our apartment’s ancient bulb, it looked like compromise in couture form. My confidence was a slowly bleeding wound, and all I had left was sarcasm and a flat battery.

My abuela used to say:If you don’t believe in the dress, it will betray you before the hem hits your ankles.

Cass walked over, leaned in close enough to read the defeat in my spine. “You’ve been hunched like a broken wing for a month. Come out. Just for a bit. Please.”

I eyed the sketch again, trying to look at it from another angle.

Mina stood and adjusted her top with the kind of confidence that said she had never been rejected at a bar. “C’mon. Javi’s got access to a thing. And you need air.”

“‘A thing’?”

Cass smiled. “It’s not a big thing. Just... some exclusive underground set. Javi’s driving. You get to wear something hot and pretend you’re not suffocating.”

I looked at him. He didn’t flinch. Just smiled wider, which somehow felt worse.

“You lied with your face just now,” I eyed him suspiciously.

“She needs a break,” Cass argued, turning me to face her. “You need a break. You’ve been spiraling for days. Your mom called this morning, and you almost bit your phone in half.”

“Don’t bring her into this.”

“Then come with us. Shake it off. Who knows? You might even find a muse.”

My grip on the tablet was pale-knuckled. My mother had told me I sounded “tired,” then pivoted to suggesting an opening at my cousin’s nail salon like it was some kind of lifeline. Like fashion was still aphase. Like I wasn’t already drowning.

“I don’t need a night out,” I said, voice flat. “I need—”

“To breathe,” Mina cut in smoothly. “To touch grass. Or sweat. Or something not grayscale.”

Javi raised a brow. “You scared of fun?”

“No.” I looked straight at him, my tone clipped and deliberate. “I’m scared of the kind of fun your girlfriend finds by accident and bleeds out of later.”

He blinked—then chuckled, as if that was the correct answer.

“But—”

“She’s coming,” Mina announced like a sports commentator.

Cass snapped her fingers and waved me off like a runway intern. “Go. Change. Boots. Hot dress. That tragic bun? Free it.”

I looked down, defensive. “These are my comfort clothes.”

“They look like your comfort died last week. Don’t make me pick your outfit.”

I huffed, standing. “Fine. But if a single man tonight smells like ‘Midnight Gunfight’ or whatever hell cologne Javi owns, I’m going back to bed.”

✦

The sidewalk was slick with heat. New York hadn’t cooled yet, and it clung to us like sweat. Taxi horns, heat curling off asphalt, perfume and cigarette smoke layered like bad decisions in the air.

Javi led. Of course he did. Leather jacket open, hand in his pocket, the other occasionally hovering near Cass’s back but never touching. Not possessive. Just—aware. Subtle things: his eyes scanned corners, watched shadows. Cass didn’t. Or pretended not to. Mina didn’t care.

Cass walked like a red warning light, hips like punctuation, but didn’t flirt once on the way there. Not even when a Wall Street clone tried to offer her a compliment wrapped in dollar bills. She just blinked at him like a lion blinked at meat. Mina? Mina laughed. Said, “We don’t carry cash, babe,” and kept walking.

I noticed Javi gave a nod to someone outside the third bar we passed. Not a bro-nod. A transaction-nod. Quiet. Calculated.

I said nothing. Just watched. Logged it.

He led us down an alley that smelled like spilled gin, up metal stairs, into a side door of a club I’d never even seen. The bass didn’t hit you here. It dragged you by the throat.

Javi tapped twice, paused, then three more. Mafia shit.

The door creaked open. The bouncer didn’t check ID. Just eyed us.

His gaze paused too long on my neckline.

Javi stepped forward. Gave a name to the guy at the door, something quiet. Not his. Then added.

“They’re with us.”

The man nodded. Cass didn’t blink. Mina winked. I grew uneasy.

Inside: smoke and steel and synth bass so low it felt like being punched in the lungs. We moved through velvet curtains into a labyrinth of chrome and shadow, bodies writhing in corners, light pulsing from the floor like blood pressure. A club. Before I could sigh in relief, Javi led us through a back door. Then another. Down a stairwell with peeling walls and that stale damp smell of places not meant to exist. Every step echoed like a countdown.

“Where the hell are we going?” I asked.

“Trust the process,” Javi said without turning.

“That’s how cult documentaries start.”

Cass didn’t laugh. She was quiet now. Alert. Her silence said more than anything.

Another door. A man with an earpiece. A clipboard. Javi handed something over—not cash, not ID. A small silver token, glinting like a secret.

We were waved in.

It hit all at once.

It wasn’t a club. It wasn’t even close.

It was a fucking arena.

Massive. Circular. Underground like a ruin and buzzing like it was alive. The center held a ring—not boxing. Not UFC. Something else. No ropes. No rules.

Men lined the edge, betting slips in one hand, drinks in the other. Women with dresses like warpaint. Most sat in rows up high, dressed in cashmere and cruelty. Velvet ropes. Private booths. Old money dressed like sin. Someone was smoking a cigar that cost more than my tuition. And on the floor? Blood that hadn’t dried.

“Holy shit,” Mina whispered, her lips curling in appreciation.

Cass didn’t look shocked. Not even slightly.

That pissed me off more than anything.

I tugged my dress down. It was tight. Black silk. Low neck. A slit at the side. I’d picked it to shut them up, not draw attention. But now, everyone stared when we walked in. Not subtle glances—*stared.*

Three girls in heels. One man leading. I felt it in my molars. That click of danger. I wanted to leave.

Someone muttered behind us. “Damn. Pick of the night, huh?”

I stopped walking.

Javi turned smoothly. Not aggressive. Just enough edge to his voice: “You got something to say?”

The guy held up his hands. Smirked. Shut up.

Cass kept walking like the air wasn’t thick with testosterone and violence, tugging me along. Mina chewed her gum slow like she was waiting for someone to earn a slap.

Eyes followed. A few lingered too long. One man whispered to another and laughed.

“Ignore it,” Cass said, low. “They always stare. Just don’t blink.”

We descended to the third row—close enough to smell blood, not close enough to be splattered by it.

Mina leaned over. “You good?”

I nodded. But my skin didn’t believe me. They were telling me to find inspirationhere?

Javi sat at the end of our row. His hand draped over the back of Cass’s chair, but he wasn’t watching her.

He was watching the ring.

“This is where the real shit starts,” he said quietly.

And then the lights changed.

The crowd stilled.

________________________________________

That twist in Kat’s stomach? Yeah, it’s him.

See you in Chapter Two. Bring snacks and holy water.