“I’m not calling Uncle Frankie,” I said.
My phone buzzed against the lime sack.
The sound cut under the blender, fryer, music, and Mari’s knife hitting the prep board. One small vibration, and I tightened my grip around the metal jigger hard enough to chill my palm.
I looked down.
TORRETTI HARBOR CAPITAL:
Five days remain. Payment or possession.
The bar noise rolled on. The sun hammered through the doorway. A woman in a straw visor laughed too loudly at the patio rail while her husband tried to photograph his margarita before it melted into green soup. Past them, cyclists wobbled along the boardwalk between palm shadows and sunscreen-bright families headed for the beach.
I took one tight breath.
Then I moved.
I flipped the phone facedown beside the limes and poured the test margarita into a plastic sample cup. It was limoncello, tequila, fresh lime, a tiny bite of salt, and enough sugar to make tourists think life loved them personally.
The drink was too sweet.
“Antonella,” my mother said.
I picked up the cup and drank again anyway.
“Nella,” she said, softer now. “What was that face?”
“What face?”
“The face you made when your father used to tell me the Giants would turn it around this year.”
“That’s not a face. That’s generational trauma.”
“Don’t joke with me when I’m looking right at you.”
Taryn appeared at my left shoulder with a stack of menus hugged to her chest. She was tall and freckled, with a honey-brown braid pulled through the back of her visor and the kind of customer-service look that could turn merciful or deadly depending on the table.
“We’ve got six waiting at the host stand, two pickup orders trying to turn fries into calamari, and an uncle at seven campaigning for espresso martinis.”
“Tell the uncle I respect his journey, but this is a margarita bar with Italian boardwalk food, not a cry for help.”
Taryn nodded. “I’ll make it sound nicer.”
“Don’t make it too nice. They come back when you feed them false hope.”
My mother’s mouth pinched. “You’re busy. I can tell when you’re busy because you become your grandfather with earrings.”
“I’m always busy. That’s how ownership works.”
“That’s how hiding works too.”
I took the apron from the hook and tied it over my fitted black tank and cutoffs. My hoop earrings brushed my neck when I turned toward the room. Bite Me was loud, bright, sticky, understaffed, and mine. A neon shark glowed over the back mirror. String lights crossed the patio. Mari’s perfect block letters filled the chalkboard menu. Fryer heat fogged the takeout window. Outside, palm shadows moved across the boardwalk railing, and the beach beyond it seemed too pretty to be attached to this much debt. Garlic, lime, hot oil, sunscreen, and money I needed very badly filled every inch of the room.
That phone on the lime sack had Jersey in it. The bar around me had my name on every repaired stool, every string light I’d hung after midnight, every chalkboard special I’d rewritten when the numbers got mean. I had borrowed from the wrong men after the right bank laughed me out of a chair, and now those men wanted proof I could pay or keys to the only thing I’d built that didn’t belong to my family.
“Ma, I love you, but I have to go.”
“Are you eating?”
