Here's the thing about heartbreak: you can only take so much before you become numb.

More than two months after Griffin left for Amsterdam, after the TV news reported him dead, after that miserable day I realized he was never coming back to me, I'm alive.

And numb as a rod of iron.

There's a knock on my bedroom door and I burrow my head in the pillow.

"Juliette. Get up. You told me to wake you. It's six and you need to be at the school at seven." Victoria's throaty voice soars into my room through the closed bedroom door.

I groan and nestle further into my bed. I know she's also upset, but this whole situation has brought out her motherly instincts. The door flies open.

"Get up. Now." Victoria whips the comforter off me, exposing my curled-up body huddled on the mattress.

I let out a low groan. "Go to hell."

"It's six at night. You told me to wake you up. Now get going. You need to show up at this party tonight. It's good for you."

I sit up, my eyelids half-shut. "I know, I know. I'm up."

"When you're through with your school soiree, why don't you join me at Prana? I'm meeting some new girls tonight. They're going to meet this new group of men from Italy that found me through some old friends. You can help me vet them, to see if they'll be trustworthy."

"Maybe. We'll see." I climb out of bed and slip the hood of my sweatshirt over my head. This was Griffin's sweatshirt, and I still haven't washed it. His smell faintly lingers on the fabric.

Jesus. Vetting potential escorts with Vee is exactly what I don't want to do. But neither is going to a school event.

As I'm walking to my closet to figure out what to wear to this stupid party tonight, Victoria follows close behind.

"I know you're still upset about him. I'm still upset. But you can't continue like this, sleeping ninety percent of the time and studying the other ten percent. At least study more. Or help me with my business. I'll pay you. You need to get out. Live your life. He'd want you to. He'd want you to go out, meet people at school, have fun. You can't just die."

I'm flipping through a rack of dresses when I stop and glare at her. "I'm already dead. And I'm fine. I'm going to this party, aren't I?"

Victoria sighs. "Okay, I'm not going to argue anymore. But I would love it if you came out tonight. I need your brain. We could get a drink after, maybe swing by a club where that DJ from Montreal's playing..."

She sweeps out of the room. Vee handles grief differently. She wants to make money. Lots of it. Griffin's death, and the demise of his drug business, has forced her to make money elsewhere. She's running an informal escort service, and is busy all the time. But I know she's grieving over Griffin. I hear her crying at night.

I pull out a sheath dress. It's cranberry colored and doesn't show my boobs or butt too much. I'd bought it for a party Griffin and I went to months ago, a celebration for some hotshot lawyer. It had been my attempt to look more adult and sophisticated.

That color is so beautiful with your skin. And it's just conservative enough that it makes you look like a librarian. And that makes me he hard. Come here, angel.

He pulled me close and ran his hands down my back, stopping at my butt. Can we have a quickie before we go? Please?

His voice was so earnest and polite that I'd laughed and said yes.

I sigh at the memory and march to the bathroom. All I want is to stay in bed. It's one of the many reasons I'm living with Victoria in this new, two-bedroom condo. She promised to always kick my ass into gear, to not allow me to wallow in grief.

Had I moved to Jacksonville to be with Ashton and my mom, I'd have probably slit my wrists by now. God knows I've thought of it enough here in Miami.

I shower quickly in my bathroom — Victoria gave me the master bath, probably out of pity. The day after I found out about Griffin, I left the apartment he owned, worried that authorities would show up and question me. I left everything in that apartment except two suitcases full of clothes that Victoria helped me pack.

She suggested we move into a swank beachfront condo together, considering her business was going well and I had the cash from the safety deposit box that he'd left behind.

Maybe Jacksonville would have helped me get past this grief. But living with Victoria was like a link to Griffin — and I didn't want to let go. Not yet.

Once I'm done showering, I put my hair back into a bun, pull the dress over my head and slip on a pair of conservative black flats. I briefly check myself in the mirror, long enough to know that the dress is a little too big because of the weight I've lost.

Grabbing my purse, I shuffle through the living room.

"Bye," I holler.

Victoria peeks her head out her bedroom. She's wearing a pink kimono and has a headband taming her red curls. "Girl, you're gorgeous. Go and have fun, and text me after. Please?"

She makes a funny little face and I smile. "We'll see."

I walk downstairs to the parking garage, sliding into the passenger seat of my car. Before his trip, Griffin had bought me a new car — not a luxury SUV like he wanted, but the same as my old Honda, only a new model. Every time I drive, I think of him, and how he'd grinned when he picked me up in the car that first time.

Emotion wells in my chest as I drive over the bridge and into the city, to school. The feelings are so big and strong that I fear I can't control them, that I might stop in the middle of the road and let out a primal scream.

Rage.

I am fucking angry.

I've been this way lately. About everything.

At Griffin, for dealing drugs and getting his stupid ass killed in Amsterdam. At myself, for falling in love with him. At the whole shitty situation, from the fact that I've never been able to find out what happened to Griffin and Zoe's bodies, mostly because I can't ask questions without risking my own skin, to the devastating lack of knowledge about their final moments.

Victoria had spent weeks trying for details with her contacts in Amsterdam. But all anyone would tell her was that three people we know died that night: Griffin, Paul, and Matthew. The others who were there somehow scattered to the wind. Including Zoe. Her disappearance is a mystery, and since no one around Miami had seen nor heard from her, Victoria and I think she was also killed, possibly not in the bombing, but somewhere else.

Why hadn't Griffin protected her?

My blood is boiling by the time I park and reach the building to my school. This party, for the pharmacy tech majors and wannabe doctors, is outdoors, in a courtyard. I stop at a map attached to a wall and squint. I'm not familiar with this building; it's where the theater and art programs are held.

My mood turns fouler as I wind my way down a glaringly bright corridor, get lost once, and stop to reapply my lipstick and ponder whether I want to leave. I'm ready to give up and head home when I see a hastily printed sign taped to a wall. "Med-Pharm party this way."

"Finally," I mutter under my breath. I shove the glass door open and sail through. Yep. This is it. A courtyard decorated more like a South Beach lounge.

The ground is covered in stiff green Astroturf, and modern steel sculptures dot the space. It looks more like a swank art gallery opening than a school meet-and-greet.

But, because it's Miami, I'm not surprised. Everything here tries to look upscale.

I take a deep breath and sidle to a high-top table in the far corner of the courtyard, away from the clusters of people. This is my first real night out since Griffin, and I'm now second-guessing my decision to come.

Why was I so hasty about leaving my bed? Damn Victoria for waking me up. I could've slept right through until the morning, and because it's Friday, I could've been in bed all weekend, only waking up to read a few chapters of a novel or study.

It's what I've been doing for two and a half months.

I take a deep breath and look around. I see a few people I recognize from classes, and a couple of professors. Everyone looks pleasantly normal. Nothing like the people I'd spent time with when I was with Griffin. No one looks grief stricken, tear-stained or pissed off, either.

But my world with Griffin, both in life and death, wasn't real. This is. This is where I need to be. What's my alternative?

Helping Victoria with her business? Being one of her girls, hoping a rich guy will be my sugar daddy?

No thanks.

This is the year to remake your life.That's what my mom keeps telling me in emails and phone calls.

I'm remaking my life, I repeat in my mind like a mantra as I make my way to the bar. I almost pull out my fake ID, an instinct from my days with Griffin, but there are several professors here who know that I'm only eighteen.

"Diet coke," I say to the bartender in a flat tone.

As I sip demurely from the straw, I catch the eye of a woman in one of my classes. She waves me over to the table, where she's talking to two other women.

I can't recall her name. Crap. I can't ignore her because she's waving with such enthusiasm.

"Julie, right?" She smiles big..

"Close. Juliette."

"I'm Clara. I didn't know you were a pharmacy major."

"Yeah, I'm taking my first pharmacy class this semester."

Clara, who's about my height, with a heart-shaped face and shiny brown hair that hangs straight to her shoulders, is excellent at small talk. So excellent that I don't have to speak much at all.

Which is fine by me.

"Why do you want to be a pharmacist?" I ask, during a brief lull.

She launches into an explanation of how her grandfather was a small-town pharmacist. And her great-grandfather. Something about a soda counter in a pharmacy in Havana and how he refused to give Che Guevara asthma medicine because he didn't believe in the rebel cause in the fifties.

I have no idea what she's talking about, so I nod and smile.

"Oh. My. God. There he is." Clara stops talking about her great-grandfather and looks over my shoulder. Her voice is breathy and mysterious, and my attention perks up. It's the most interesting thing she'd said in twenty minutes.

"Who?" I take a sip of my soda. It's probably some handsome student or a friend, maybe a minor reality show celebrity since they're everywhere in Miami. The way she sounds, as if she's excited to be alive, stirs something inside me.

Her pretty brown eyes are positively dancing with glee.

I used to look and sound like that about Griffin.

I scowl into my soda. Screw him. He didn't care enough about me to stay home. To not go on a drug deal. To not get killed.

"You okay? You look angry. Do you know Dr. Engel?"

"Hunh?" I look up.

"You asked me who I was referring to and I answered. Then you looked mad."

"Oh." I smile sheepishly. "I've had a kind of a difficult week. Sorry, I didn't hear you. And no, I don't know a Dr. Engel."

She sighs dreamily and props up her chin with her hand, her elbow on the table. "You should at least feast on the beauty that is Dr. Engel. Just come over here and stand by me so it's not so obvious. It would be weird if you turned around."

I mutter a protest.

"No, no come on. Pretend like you're looking at something on my phone."

Jesus.

In the spirit of new friendship, I do. This is part of starting fresh, too, right? Acting like an eighteen-year-old girl, and not a widow.

I move around the table so I'm shoulder to shoulder with Clara.

"Who are we looking at?" My eyes scan the room, but I didn't see anything, or anyone, that would catch my eye. Actually, everything still seems grey and beige to me, like it has for weeks. Even people's voices sound dull.

"The guy in the jeans. The one with the dark blue sport jacket. To the right. Two o'clock, standing near Mrs. Muñoz, the department chair."

"Oh, that guy?" I tilt my head, now curious. "The bald one? I do know him."

____