The Loan Shark's Obsession

ould've never gi

ss the receiver, each syllable flaying

tred...it was all too familiar. To

singeing the air with its putrid vapors. But it was her festering self-l

ea

t to

ea

hing voice said at

evision screens during her heyday. In that moment, my mind catapulted back over two decades, to the night

ejo de la Traición. Every glossy inch of her had screamed crossover sensation - t

she gave herself to some random, faceless man in a dimly-lit corner of the hotel suite's hellpit. Jus

shining ingenue daughter of a conservative Cubano family - was now an unwed, sauce-soaked p

hopes and delusions, incinerated in an ins

through the phone in a whiskey-s

leaking from her jaundiced eyes. Middle-aged but looking triple-damned decades

ler rent through these

nken tirade continued. The scathing words s

she slurred. "How dare you

assed last week. $50,000 that my devout Catholic grandmother had squirreled away from decades of

ebts!" Gloria howled like a wounded animal. "Not l

ed stepfather blowing every last cent on po

house," I said evenly, struggling to maintain my

wants to abandon her mami? Ju

my eyes roll so hard they practically did 360s. As

"Just because I had the audacity to get myse

e puritanical notions of sexual morality. It cut straight to the bone of Gloria's lifelong selfish

lled 'career'!" I fired back, unable to resist defending Abuela's

eye, I could see her pudgy arm windmilling around, likely hurlin

a! Just a bastard child eating out of dumpsters and spre

t she'd already hung up, abandon

y knees to my chest and took a s

ly in the sink while laundry overflowed from the hamper like a sad, stained fabric waterfall. My room was equall

phor for the messiness of my life. No matter how hard I tried to straight

s I tried to process Gloria's latest toxic download. I needed a distracti

to my Inst*gram feed, where I started mindlessly flicking through the barrage of photos and videos. Puppies frolicking, artery-cloggin

caused my heart to plummet int

their lips mashed together in a sloppy display. The geotag showed they we

caption mocked in ele

red in unforgiving pixels. Theo's hands gripped the nameless girl's waist p

he last message Theo ha

ng on with your family, your therapy, your meds. I need so

de deeper into my core. Even after all this time, all the self-work and hea

f the grimy carpet with a dull thud. Theo was ancient history now, just another body in the ma

ocking the intimacy Theo and I once shared. His parting words replayed on a tormenting loop, each rep

d been the only stable force tethering me to some semblance of normalcy amid the perpetual c

e could somehow fortify the crumbling levees of my psyche. But inevitably, my issues - the trauma, the ADHD,

ith our toxic bond until the high dissolved into the harsh chemical comedown. Deluding m

only attract another broken person. We're drawn to the flashes of beautiful

oscope of perfection. But one errant twitch, one microscopically misaligned e

flashed across the screen and I si

y mood a few notches. Kat had this magical ability to be rele

you know." I didn'

th the toxic tornado that was

heard her take a sip of something, surely fueling up with an iced coffee or one of

. "Seven o'clock, I'm swinging by to pick you up. Wear something sexy but comfortable

mes, but that's exactly what made her such a soothing balm whenever I felt beaten down by life. She wa

ing no for an a

confidently. "See