(based on "carmen" by Lana Del Rey)

They all knew your name, but none of them knew you. Not really.

You danced on tabletops in glittered boots and cherry-red lips, whispering lies into strangers’ ears and sipping alcohol through a straw like it was soda pop. You were 17 going on 70. Tired in the bones. Bright in the eyes. The kind of girl who could make destruction look like desire.

Damiano saw you for the first time under the sick yellow haze of a streetlight outside the club — one heel off, mascara smudged, humming something soft with a cigarette tucked behind your ear.

"You good?" he asked.

You looked up, slow. “Do I look good?”

He studied you for a beat too long. “You look... dangerous.”

You smiled like it was a compliment. “Then you’re the first honest man I’ve met tonight.”

You told him your name was Carmen. It wasn’t. But it felt better than your real one — shinier, like a stage name in a tragedy no one had finished writing yet. He walked you home without asking where home really was. You stopped three times on the way — once to vomit, once to sing, and once to ask if he believed in God.

“No,” he said quietly.

“Me neither.”

You kissed him that night. With sugar-pink breath and hands that trembled more than they held. He didn’t ask questions. Not yet.

But the next time he saw you, you were behind the bar, bruised at the hip and already two drinks too far gone by midnight. You spilled tequila, laughed like a girl in a horror film, and blinked too slow.

“You’re gonna dle at this pace,” he muttered under his breath as you poured another shot.