The poster is for the New York City Ballet, advertising one of their performances. The entirety of it is occupied by a woman wearing a wedding dress and standing on pointe. A veil covers her face, but it’s transparent enough to distinguish the sadness, the harshness, the…despair.

‘Giselle’ is written in script over her head. At the bottom are the names of the director and the prima ballerina, Hannah Max, as well as the other ballerinas participating in the show.

I blink once, and for a second, I can see my reflection in the glass. My coat swallows my small frame and my oversized high-top sneakers resemble clown shoes. My faux fur winter hat covers my ears, and my blonde hair is disheveled and greasy, its ends hidden inside my coat. My hat is pushed back a little, revealing my dark roots. Feeling somehow subconscious, I pull the hood of my coat over my head, allowing it to shadow my face.

Now I look like a serial killer.

Ha. I’d laugh if I could. A serial killer is smart enough to not end up on the streets. They’re smart enough to not drown so much in alcohol that sustaining a job becomes impossible.

I blink again and the poster returns to view. Giselle. Ballet. Prima ballerina.

A sudden urge to gouge the woman’s eyes out overwhelms me. I inhale, then exhale. I shouldn’t have such a strong reaction toward a stranger.

I hate her. I hate Hannah Max and Giselle and ballet.

Spinning around, I leave before I’m tempted to smash the poster to the ground.

I crumple the can and toss it in a nearby trash can. This change of mood isn’t good—at all.

It’s because of the lack of alcohol in my system. I haven’t had enough beer today to get drunk in the daylight. The cold becomes more tolerable when my mind is numb. My thoughts aren’t as loud and I don’t get murderous feelings over a harmless ballet poster.

I absentmindedly cross the street like I do every day. It’s become my routine, and I don’t even pay attention to it anymore.

That’s my mistake—taking things for granted.

I don’t hear the blaring horn until I’m standing in the middle of the street.

My feet stop in place as if heavy stones are keeping them glued to the ground. As I stare at the van’s hazard lights and hear its continuous horn, I think my twenty-seven-year-old life from birth until now will pass in front of my eyes. That’s what happens at the time of death, right? I should recall it all.

From the moment Mom relocated us from one city to the other, until life threw me into New York.

From the moment I flourished, until the accident that turned me into an incurable alcoholic.

However, none of those memories come. Not even a fragment of them. The only things that invade my head are little toes and fingers. A tiny face and body that the nurse put in my arms before she was taken away for good.

A lump forms in my throat and I tremble like an insignificant leaf in the cold winter streets of New York.

I promised to live for her. Why the hell am I dying now?

I close my eyes. I’m so sorry, baby girl. So very sorry.

A large hand grips me by the elbow and yanks me back so hard, I trip over my own feet and stumble. The same hand gently holds me by the arm to keep me standing.

I slowly open my eyes, halfway expecting to find my head under the van. But instead, the horn blasts as it passes me by, the driver screaming through the window, “Watch where you’re going, fucking crazy bitch!”

Meeting his gaze, I flip him off with my free hand and keep doing it to make sure he sees it in the rear-view mirror.

As soon as the van disappears around the corner, I start trembling again. The brief wave of adrenaline that hit me when I was being insulted withers away, and now all I can think about is that I could’ve died.

That I really would’ve let my little girl down.

“Are you all right?”

I whirl around at the sound of the accented voice. For a second, I forgot that someone had pulled me out of that van’s path. That if they hadn’t, I would be dead right now.

The man, who’s Russian, judging by the subtle accent he just spoke with, stands in front of me, his hand still gripping my elbow. It’s a gentle touch compared to the brute force he used to pull me back.

He’s tall, and while most people are taller than my five-foot-four, he goes way beyond that. Probably six-two or more. He’s wearing a black shirt and pants with an open dark gray cashmere coat. It could be the colors, or the length of the coat, which reaches his knees, but he looks elegant, smart, in a lawyer sort of way, and probably worked as a model to pay his college tuition.

His face tells a different story, however. Not that he’s not handsome, because he is, with sharp, angular features that fit his model body. He has high cheekbones that cast a shadow on his thick-stubbled jaw.

His eyes are an intense shade of gray that’s bordering on black. The color of his clothes could be intensifying their appearance, though. The fact remains that they’re too…uncomfortable to look at. You know when something or someone is so beautiful it actually aches inside to look at them? That’s this stranger. Peering into his eyes, however bizarre they are, hits me with a feeling of inferiority that I can’t shake off.

Although his words conveyed concern, I see none written in his facial expression. No empathy that most people are capable of.

But at the same time, he doesn’t seem like the type who’d feign worry. If anything, he’d be like the rest of the passers-by who barely looked in the direction of the near-traffic accident.

I should be feeling grateful, but the only thing I want is to escape from his clutches and his uneasy eyes. His deep, imploring eyes that are decrypting my face, little by little.

Piece by each tiny piece.

“I’m okay,” I manage, twisting my elbow free.

His brow furrows, but it’s brief, almost unnoticeable, before he goes back to his previous expression, letting me go as gently as he was gripping me. I expect him to turn around and leave so that I can chalk up the entire experience to an unlucky winter afternoon.

But he just stands there, unmoving, unblinking, not making one single step in any direction. Instead, he chooses to watch me, his thick brows drawing over his eyes that I really don’t want to be staring into, but I find myself dragged into their savage gray anyway.

They’re like the harshness of the clouds above and the merciless gust of the wind from every direction. I can pretend they don’t exist, but they still make me lose the feeling of my limbs. They give me blisters and pain.