Toxico

The Velvet Note always smelled like heartbreak and Hennessy.

That’s where Bobbi met him — under cheap red lights, with a mic in one hand and rent in the other. She wasn’t even supposed to sing that night. Someone had dropped out. She stepped in. Just another Thursday.

She sang anyway.

He was in the back, slouched in a booth with three empty glasses and a stare that could peel back skin.

Gianni Castillo. A one-hit wonder with a memory longer than his momentum. The kind of man who wore his regret like cologne — heavy, expensive, and always lingering.

She didn’t know his name until after. But she remembered the way he looked at her — not like a girl with a tray, but like a sound he hadn’t heard in years.

“You’re it,” he told her just loud enough to be felt. “You’re the reason I came in here tonight.”

She laughed.

“You come here every Thursday.”

He grinned.

“Yeah, but tonight… you showed up.”

That was a year ago.

Now Bobbi sat cross-legged on the cold marble floor of Gianni’s unkempt mansion. Knees pulled to her chest. Breath fogging the rim of a chipped wine glass.

The piano loop he’d been mixing earlier still played. It started soft and sweet. Then it twisted — unresolved, haunting.

Kind of like him.

She looked at her phone.

Gianni: “I’m sorry, B. Come lay down. I hate when we fight.”

Her thumb hovered.

He always said sorry. Sometimes he meant it. Most of the time, he just didn’t want to be alone with himself.

The last fight started over rehearsal. If you could even call it that.

Gianni lost it when Bobbi didn’t hit a note exactly how he imagined it. Said she was lazy. Said she didn’t want it enough. Said he should’ve worked with that girl from Baton Rouge instead —

“At least she had fire.”

Bobbi didn’t yell. She didn’t cry. She just stared at him.

And the silence hit him harder than any comeback ever could.

So he shoved the mic stand. Called her voice overrated. Walked out the door.

That was ten hours ago.

She checked the time. 12:08 AM.

The silence felt strange. Usually by now, he’d come back with liquor on his breath and roses in his hand, like both could fix something broken.

But tonight? Nothing.

She stood and walked to the mirror by the front door.

Her reflection stared back at her — thinner, sharper. Still beautiful, but no longer soft.

She wore her pain like liner. Sharp and precise.

She could still smell him in the hallway. That blend of sandalwood and sorrow. She hated that she missed it.

They used to dream here.

Back when the piano wasn’t mostly dust. Back when kisses outnumbered arguments. Back when the liquor flowed during celebrations, not recoveries.

“We’re building something, B,” he used to whisper. “It’s slow, but it’s coming.”

She believed him. Until all she saw on the calendar were dive bars and beer festivals. Until she realized he was using her sets to network for himself. Until the “we” in their story started sounding more like “me.”

But then came Nova.

A real venue. Good lights. A crowd that listened.

He booked it last-minute. Called it her “warm-up set.”

She wore the dress she’d been saving for something that mattered. And when she sang, the whole room stopped breathing.

That’s when he saw her— Marcus. At the bar. Eyes locked. Head tilted like he was hearing something rare.

After the show, he approached. Calm. Sharp suit. Quiet voice.

“You’ve got something real,” he said. “Call me if you want more than this.”

Gianni barely glanced at the card. Bobbi kept it.

Back at the house, she picked the mic up off the floor. The same one he’d thrown earlier when she didn’t “sing it like she meant it.”

Her fingers curled around it slowly, like she was reclaiming something she almost lost.

She whispered a hook she wrote last week.

“If love was a drug, then you’re the pill I prayed I’d drop.”

She recorded it.

It sounded like her. Not him.

Her phone buzzed again.

Gianni: “B. Don’t make me beg. I’m outside.”

She didn’t look through the window. Didn’t move.

Instead, she turned off the track. Stood up. Walked into the bathroom.

“This is the last time I let sorry sing me back to sleep.”

Then she took a breath.

And stayed quiet.