Red Light by J. D. Glass

school altogether and gotten a different job—like the one Kerry always said I could get in her firm. But that would have meant giving up everything I’d worked so hard for—
    “Come on, Victoria, where’s that Del Castillo blood?” Nina teased me lightly. One thing I had to admit, the Del Castillo blood was definitely prepotent: we all had such similar faces. Sure, we had different eye color, hair color, even different shades of skin, but we all had the same almost too-large eyes, the same curve of lip, the same bone structure.
    There was, again, no doubt the Del Castillos were a very pretty bunch, and Nina was probably the prettiest of us all, I thought, though she was the only one who didn’t know it. Hell, I considered as I sipped from my glass, maybe that’s why she was the shortest of all the cousins, too. All that concentrated…whatever it was…became beautiful.
    I shook my head and grimaced—I’d been staring at my cousin, the one who was about to save my sorry ass, and had caught myself admiring her lower lip, which was slightly fuller than mine.
    “What do I need to go back there for, anyway?” I asked instead, trying to cover up that I’d been lost in thought about something other than my heartbreak. I didn’t really feel heartbroken. I felt cold, and where I wasn’t cold I felt nothing. The more I drank the colder I got.
    My peripheral vision found Samantha smothering a grin at me. Caught. Ah, well, at least Samantha had a sense of humor, and I grinned in return as Nina grasped my shoulder. She crouched before me and I stared at my drink, clunking the ice around in circles.
    “You need your books, Tor.” Her fingertips grazed my chin. “You need your notes.”
    Her eyes were such a light blue fading into gray at the edges, so unlike my light brown ones that were now probably ringed in dark, dark green since I’d been drinking.
    I tossed my head away from her touch and shrugged.
    Gulping my drink, I looked around me as I thought about myself and my life: fucked-up home, fucked-up academics, and fucked-up life while I sat on the perfect sofa—all clean lines and espresso-colored leather. Perfect.
    Perfect Nina’s perfect world. Perfect wife, perfect life, and then I remembered: she’d fucked my girlfriend first. Ex. My ex-girlfriend.
    I had to know.
    “When did you guys fuck?” I asked her and was instantly sorry. Still, as guilty as I felt, I wanted, I needed to know, and Nina knew exactly who and what I meant.
    She pulled her hands away and stood.
    “We were kids, Tori,” Nina sighed, and ran her fingers through her hair, “and that’s not what it was. We were just kids.”
    I nodded as if I understood. I did, but that didn’t stop me. “Yeah…so?” I continued. “Did you fuck her? She fuck you?”
    Samantha stirred next to me and set her glass down on the coffee table.
    “Okay,” she announced and stood, clapping her hands together, “this is where I excuse myself.” She walked around the table toward Nina, who gave her an odd look.
    “You can stay, Sammy. There’s nothing you don’t know.” Nina gestured her back to the sofa.
    Samantha shook her head and gave her one of her diamond smiles as she closed the scant distance between them. “I’m not worried about that, love,” Samantha said softly, and put her arms around her. She kissed her softly, fully, as Nina returned the embrace.
    God, they were so perfect together—it fucking killed me as I watched them, the fucking axe that drove through my ice, and once again I flipped from cold to heat because, as upset as I was about Kerry, I’d never had what these two did. My jealousy moments before was petty compared to this.
    Samantha murmured something into Nina’s ear, who nodded in response.
    “All right,” Samantha agreed, and turned to leave the room. She stopped and pointedly stared at me. “You,” and while her expression was very serious, she smiled anyway, “be nice. Nina’s your friend, not just your