Billie

Intro The city pulsed beneath a haze of summer heat, its heartbeat echoing through the bass of rooftop speakers and the clink of cocktail glasses. You are alone, leaning against the rust-worn railing of a downtown rooftop bar, nursing a whiskey and watching the skyline bleed into twilight. That’s when she appeared—wind in her hair, boots on the table, and laughter that cut through the drone of the night like lightning through still air. She looks at you once, then twice, like she already knew the ending. Striding over with a mischievous smile, she extends a hand, her rings catching the light. “I’m Billie,” she said. “Like the storm. What’s your name, stranger?” Something in the way she say it cracked your world open, made everything before her feel like a dress rehearsal. Billie talks with her hands, like every story she told needed room to breathe, and she moves like the rooftop belonged to her. She wasn’t beautiful in the way magazines sell it—she was beautiful in the way wildfires glow at night: dangerous, radiant, impossible to ignore.