Grazielle didn't sleep.
She lay on the mattress in her apartment in República, staring at the ceiling while the fan turned slowly and the noise of the street drifted in through the open window. The rain had stopped around eleven, but the ground outside was still wet—you could hear cars driving through the puddle at the corner, that sound of water being sliced through that seemed like the world sighing.
She smoked three cigarettes. She stubbed out the third in the saucer she used as an ashtray and watched the ember die.
Fiancée.
The word spun through her head like a coin that refused to land. Fiancée. Giovanna had a fiancée. Giovanna had come out, had built a life with a woman—and that woman wasn't Grazielle. Her name was Rafaela, and she waited for Giovanna to come home for dinner and probably slept on the left side of the bed and knew how Giovanna liked her coffee and recognized the sound she made when she really laughed.
Grazielle turned onto her side. Stared at the wall.
The worst part wasn't the jealousy. The worst part was the thing that came with the jealousy, the thing Grazielle didn't want to name but that was there, taking up space: relief. A small, ashamed relief, hidden beneath the anger. Relief at knowing Giovanna had come out. That her parents hadn't succeeded. That part of Giovanna—the part that held Grazielle's hand under the table, wrote letters, kissed with the taste of rain—hadn't died. It had survived. It had just survived with someone else.
And that hurt in a way Grazielle didn't know where to put.
She got up at six. Drank black coffee, no sugar, standing in the kitchen. Put on her usual cargo pants, black T-shirt, and beat-up sneakers. Went to the studio.
Grazielle's studio was on the second floor of a building on Augusta Street, between a record store and a bar that didn't open until after ten at night. It was small—a room with the client chair, the workstation, the computer, and an entire wall covered in drawings Grazielle had made over the years. Flowers, faces, phrases, animals, geometric patterns. A gallery of everything that had passed through her mind and left through her hand.
She sat in the chair. Turned on the computer. Opened her schedule. She had two clients: one at ten, another at two. The rest of the day was empty.
She looked at the wall of drawings. In the lower right corner, almost hidden, was a drawing she'd never shown anyone. It was small—the size of a postcard. A profile, straight hair, a delicate chin, long lashes. There was no name beneath it. There didn't need to be one. Grazielle had drawn that face from memory at twenty-one, during a sleepless night when her longing was so physical it felt like a fever.
She looked away.
The ten o'clock client was a twenty-year-old guy who wanted an ankle tattoo of an anchor. Grazielle tattooed him on autopilot—clean, stencil, needle, ink, clean again. Mechanical motions. The buzz of the machine. The familiar smell. Everything just like yesterday, except yesterday the wrist beneath the needle had been Giovanna's, and today it belonged to a stranger, and the difference between the two was the difference between breathing and drowning.
The guy paid, thanked her, and left. Grazielle cleaned the workstation. Sat down. Stared at the door.
She wasn't going to show up. Giovanna wasn't going to show up. Giovanna had a fiancée and a dinner and a life, and she wasn't going to cross the city to show up at Grazielle's studio on some random Thursday just because—
The door opened.
It wasn't Giovanna.
It was Camila. She came in chewing on a pão de queijo, her purse hanging from her shoulder and her pink hair pulled into a high ponytail.
"So, did you survive my studio?" She tossed her purse onto the counter. "Did the three o'clock client come? That Giovanna girl?"
Grazielle felt the name like a finger pressing on a bruise.
"She did."
"Everything go okay? It was her first tattoo, right? Did she cry?"
"No."
Camila looked at her. Stopped chewing.
"You okay?"
"I'm fine."
"You look like you didn't sleep."
"I didn't."
Camila sat on the rolling stool. Crossed her legs. Looked at Grazielle with that expression Grazielle knew—the expression of someone who would wait until the other person spoke, even if it took an hour.
Grazielle didn't speak. She didn't know how. She didn't know how to say the client was the girl I loved when I was sixteen, the girl who was ripped out of my life and showed up ten years later asking me to tattoo the words from our first kiss onto her skin, the girl who has a fiancée waiting at home and said she wasn't leaving and left anyway.
"The client," Grazielle said at last. "She was someone I knew."
"Knew her how?"
"From before."
Camila waited.
"From Ribeirão."
Camila's eyes widened. Camila knew about Ribeirão. Not everything—Grazielle never told her everything—but enough. She knew there had been someone. She knew that someone was the reason Grazielle didn't date, didn't open up, didn't let anyone get close enough to hurt her.
"The girl?" Camila asked softly.
Grazielle nodded.
"Holy shit."
"Yeah."
"And she—how is she? Did she recognize you? Did you talk?"
"She's engaged, Camila."
Camila fell silent. Then she reached out and squeezed Grazielle's knee. She said nothing. She didn't need to. The gesture said everything—I'm here, I'm not going anywhere, you don't have to talk if you don't want to.
Grazielle placed her hand over Camila's. Squeezed back.
They stayed that way for a while. Two friends in a tattoo studio on Augusta Street, silent while São Paulo carried on outside—loud, indifferent, enormous. A city of twelve million people where two had found each other by chance, after ten years, on a rainy afternoon.
Grazielle's phone vibrated in her pocket.
Unknown number. A message.
Hi. It's Gi. I got your number from Camila's client records. I'm sorry. I know you told me to go away. But I needed to tell you something I couldn't say yesterday.
Grazielle stared at the screen. Her heart pounding in her ears.
Three dots blinking. Giovanna typing.
The message arrived.
I didn't choose her. I chose not to be alone. It's different.
Grazielle closed her phone. Put it in her pocket. Looked at Camila, who was pretending she hadn't seen anything.
"Camila."
"Hm."
"I'm screwed."
Camila squeezed her knee again.
"I know, love. I know."