Kiss Kill Vanish by Jessica Martinez

when I reach up and cup his jaw with my hand, I feel clenched muscle. He’s bracing.
    â€œHow did you find me?” I ask, my hand still on his cheek, my thumb on his lips.
    â€œI didn’t.”
    â€œBut you did.”
    â€œNo. When I walked into the gallery tonight and saw Lucien’s arm around you, I thought I was seeing things. Going crazy. Or that you were someone who looked enough like Valentina Cruz to make me feel crazy. I was on the opposite side of the room and you were facing the other way, so I had to watch you for a while before I was sure. You’re thinner now. But even from a distance, I recognized your mannerisms, the way you put your hand under your chin when you talk. Your walk.”
    â€œBut—”
    â€œI saw you go into that room and realized it was my only chance. It was just luck.” My hand drops to his neck. I let my fingertips rest on the smooth skin over his clavicle. Luck. After everything he’s told me tonight, luck sounds like a bad word, the curse that made my childhood perfect. Luck is a lie.
    â€œHow do you know Lucien?” he asks.
    â€œJust randomly.”
    â€œTell me how.”
    I picture the glittering mosaic by Sherbrooke station where I used to sit, remember the dull burn of an empty stomach. The hungry days seem like forever ago. During those first few weeks I spent nearly every afternoon sitting cross-legged below the mural, playing till my butt was numb and my back ached. “I was busking outside the Metro.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œPlaying mandolin.”
    â€œ My mandolin, but why were you busking? Don’t you have money?”
    â€œI do now, but I was down to my last few dollars when Lucien found me. I can’t get a real job here without a work visa, and I’d used all my pawned jewelry money on rent. Busking was how I got money for food.” I stop and swallow. The memory is as clear as a cold sky. “Then one day he was there listening. He listened for a while, and then he put money in my case and asked me if I’d ever modeled. The timing was . . .” I trail off, refusing to say it. Lucky . It was lucky.
    â€œDid you recognize him from anywhere?”
    â€œNo. What do you mean?”
    â€œDo you think he’d been watching you for a while?”
    Would I have noticed? I burrow my face into Emilio’s chest and smell him. He’s the same, but different somehow, too. I don’t want to answer these questions. “I don’t know. I guess he could’ve been lurking without me noticing. I tried not to look up. People walk away if you stare at them.”
    He thinks for a moment, then says, “I can’t believe Victor Cruz’s daughter has been begging on a street corner.”
    â€œIt’s not begging. And it doesn’t matter, because I make enough working for Lucien now.”
    He grumbles something I can’t make out.
    â€œHow do you know him?” I ask.
    â€œLucien keeps turning up at events I have to go to for the art side of Victor’s business. Your father actually does buy and sell art, you know. He’s sort of fanatical about it, which makes it an even better front.”
    I think of the galleries Papi’s taken me to. The auctions. The museums. Hours and hours filling years and years spent soaking up what I thought was his legacy. The betrayal feels so sharp, so physical, I might be bleeding.
    â€œI know Marcel a lot better, though,” Emilio goes on.
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œBecause he parties with the big boys.”
    I don’t ask who the big boys are. Marcel can party with the president for all I care.
    A long pause hardens the air around us. The longer it lasts, the more impossible it becomes to force out words. I glance up, and he looks so distant and unbreakable with his thoughts that I barely recognize him. I put my head back down on his chest and feel his breaths instead.
    â€œYou’re not the one who’s