Chapter 3: The Morning After
The first thing Ares felt was sunlight—a blade of it cutting across his closed eyelids, hot and persistent. Then came the stiffness in his neck, the unfamiliar cushion of a couch that was too firm to be his own. The smell reached him next: clean linen, faint jasmine, and underneath it all, the subtle, expensive scent of Tasha’s skin.He opened his eyes. The world was a blinding panorama of skyline and morning light. Floor-to-ceiling windows framed a postcard view of the city waking up, the buildings sharp and geometric against a pale blue sky. He was in her condo, on her massive, dove-gray sofa.A fleece blanket was tangled around his legs. He was still in his clothes from last night.Memory reassembled itself in pieces.The movie. His hand on her breast, the heat of her.Her voice, gentle but firm: Let’s stop. The careful, agonizing distance they’d maintained afterwards. He’d offered to go home; she’d told him not to drive. He’d slept here, on the couch, while she disappeared behind a bedroom door that felt as significant as a border wall.He heard a soft click. The door to the bedroom opened, and she emerged.
She was dressed in loose, ash-colored linen pants and a simple white tank top.Her hair was piled in a messy knot, her face bare. She looked softer, younger, and utterly real.The corporate armor was nowhere in sight. “You’re awake,” she said, her voice still husky with sleep. “There’s coffee.”
“Coffee,” he croaked, pushing himself up. “The one true god.”
He followed her into a kitchen that looked like it belonged in a magazine. Everything was sleek, handle-less, and spotless.It felt staged. A single professional-grade coffee maker gurgled on the countertop, the only sign of life.She pulled down two heavy ceramic mugs, her movements efficient.
He leaned against the island, watching her.“This kitchen has never seen a spilled gallon of milk. I can feel it.”
“My friend is very tidy,” she said without looking at him, pouring the coffee.She pushed a mug toward him, their fingers brushing on the smooth glaze. The contact was a tiny electric shock in the quiet room.
They took their mugs to the living room, sitting at opposite ends of the same sofa.The sunlight poured in, illuminating the dust motes dancing between them. It was a beautiful, awkward silence, filled with everything they hadn’t done.
“So,” he said, blowing on his coffee. “That movie sucked.”
She let out a real laugh, the tension in her shoulders easing a fraction.“It was truly terrible. Why did you pick it?”
“So we wouldn’t have to watch it.” He grinned, then took a sip. The coffee was rich and perfect. “You make good coffee, for a yoga person.”
“It’s a survival skill.” She tucked her feet beneath her, curling into the corner of the sofa. She looked at him over the rim of her mug.“Did you sleep okay?”
“Like a baby. If the baby was six-foot-four on a five-foot couch.” He stretched, his shirt riding up to reveal a slice of taut stomach.He saw her eyes flicker there, then quickly away. “It was good, though.Being here.”
The words hung in the air, simple and heavy. She nodded, looking out at the city. “It was.”
He wanted to bridge the space between them, to touch her ankle, her hand, anything. But last night’s retreat felt like a rule that had been established.He took another drink, searching for safe ground. “What’s on the docket for the famous sabbatical today?Meditation? Saving spiders from bathtubs?”
She smiled.“Maybe. I have a… a conference call later.”
“A conference call.” He raised an eyebrow.“For yoga?”
“For… networking. Potential collaborations.” The lie came out stilted. She shifted, setting her mug down on the glass coffee table with a sharp click.“What about you?Two-a-days starting soon, right? You excited?”
He shrugged, a familiar energy lighting him up.“Hell yeah.Can’t wait to hit somebody. August 20th, the grind starts for real.”
“August 20th,” she repeated slowly.Then she paused.Her head tilted slightly.“That’s when you report. For your… sophomore year?”
The air in the sun-drenched room changed. It didn’t leave; it just got thinner.Ares froze, his mug halfway to his lips. His mind replayed his own words.Sophomore year.He hadn’t said that. He’d said “report.” But her question… it was specific.It was a trap he’d walked right into.
“I… yeah,” he said, the word clumsy in his mouth. He tried to cover it with a swig of coffee, but it was too late.The fissure was there.
Tasha was very still.Her almond eyes, usually warm, were now sharp, focused. The lawyer in her was awake. “You told me you were twenty,” she said, her voice quiet and terrifyingly even. “A twenty-year-old would be a junior.”
“I am twenty,” he said, too quickly.The defensive tone betrayed him.“Ares.” Just his name. It sounded like a verdict.He set his mug down, the clunk too loud. He ran a hand through his chaotic curls, looking everywhere but at her.The beautiful, sterile room felt like a cage. “Okay.Look.The age thing… it’s stupid.I know it’s stupid. When I met you, I just… I wanted you to take me seriously.”
“So you’re nineteen.” It wasn’t a question.He swallowed. The truth was a boulder in his throat. He looked at her then, saw the hurt and calculation in her eyes, and the last of his resolve crumbled. “I’m eighteen.”
The number dropped into the space between them, stark and ugly.Eighteen.A teenager.A high school graduate. A person who couldn’t legally buy a beer in this gleaming condo.
Tasha’s face didn’t crumple.It closed. She drew in a long, slow breath, her gaze dropping to her hands folded in her lap.The sun illuminated the careful containment of her posture. “You lied to me.”
“Yeah,” he said, the word raw.“I did. And I’m sorry.It’s just… you’re so… you. And I’m just some kid who runs fast. I didn’t think you’d even look at me if you knew.”
She let out a short, humorless laugh. “You didn’t think I would look at you?” She shook her head, a storm brewing behind her eyes. “That’s rich.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means you’re not the only one holding cards, Ares.” She stood up, walking to the window. She hugged herself, her back to him.The city sprawled beneath her, a world of logic and contracts and consequences. “You think I’m some carefree yoga sprite? On a sabbatical?”
A cold dread pooled in his stomach.“Tasha?”
She turned around. The morning light carved her features into something regal and wounded.“I’m thirty-three years old. I’m a corporate mergers and acquisitions lawyer.I’m recently divorced.I’m not on a sabbatical. I’m drowning in my own life and I lied to you because I thought a handsome, passionate twenty-year-old would bolt if he knew he was kissing a stressed-out, middle-aged lawyer with alimony payments.”
The words landed like punches.Thirty-three.Lawyer.Divorced. Each one stripped away a layer of the woman he thought he knew. The silence that followed was total, absorbing the confession into the bare walls.Ares stared at her.He didn’t see a middle-aged lawyer. He saw the woman on the rooftop bar who’d mocked his pick-up line. The woman who’d melted against him in the parking lot, her mouth soft and hungry. The woman who’d gently stopped him last night, whose touch had felt like a revelation. The numbers—18, 33—were just numbers.They didn’t change the magnetic pull he felt standing across the room from her.
He stood up. “So we both lied.”
“Spectacularly,” she whispered, her voice cracking.He took a step toward her.Then another.She didn’t retreat. “You thought I’d run, huh?”
“Wouldn’t you?” A tear escaped, tracing a path down her cheek.She wiped it away angrily.“It’s a lot. It’s… it’s a legal and ethical minefield, for starters.”
He was in front of her now. He could see the faint lines at the corners of her eyes, the slight tremor in her bottom lip.They weren’t flaws.They were evidence of a life lived. His heart was hammering, but not from panic.From clarity. “I don’t care about any of that.”
“You have to care.”
“I don’t.” He reached out, his hand hovering near her arm. “The only thing I care about is that you lied about who you are because you were scared.Me too. We’re the same.”
“We are not the same.” But she said it weakly, her protest crumbling.
“We are in this.” He finally let his fingers graze her arm.She flinched, but didn’t pull away. “You’re Tasha.I’m Ares. That’s the only true thing in this whole fucked-up mess.And it’s enough for me.” He searched her face. “Is it enough for you?Knowing I’m just a kid? Knowing I probably can’t even spell ‘mergers and acquisitions’?”
A sob broke from her, a raw, unattractive sound.She covered her mouth.All the poise, the control, shattered. He didn’t hesitate.He pulled her into his arms. She came stiffly at first, then collapsed against him, her face buried in his chest, her body shaking.
He held her tightly, his chin resting on top of her head. He breathed in the scent of her hair, felt the solid, curvy weight of her against him.This was real. This was the truth they’d built on a tower of lies.It was fragile, probably stupid, and undeniably theirs.
Her crying subsided into shaky breaths.She pulled back just enough to look up at him, her eyes red and vulnerable. “This is insane.”
“Totally,” he agreed, his thumbs wiping the tears from her cheeks.“You’re going to football camp in a few weeks.You have a whole life. I have court dates.”
“I know.”
“People will think things. Terrible things.”
“Let them.”
She studied his face—the earnest green eyes, the set of his jaw that was so young and so determined. She saw the boy in him, and for the first time, she didn’t see it as a liability. She saw his courage, staring down the canyon between their worlds and refusing to blink.
“I’m scared,” she admitted, the words a bare whisper.“Me too.” He smiled then, a small, genuine smile that softened his whole face. “But I’m not going anywhere. Unless you tell me to.”
She didn’t tell him to go.Instead, she stood on her toes and kissed him. It was nothing like the passionate kisses from before.This was soft, salty from tears, a seal on a terrible, wonderful truth. A promise.When they parted, she kept her forehead pressed against his. The morning sun had climbed higher, flooding the sterile room with a golden, forgiving light. The lies were out, rotting in the brilliance. What was left between them felt terrifyingly thin, and stronger than anything else in the room.
What was left between them felt terrifyingly thin, and stronger than anything else in the room. He held her for a long time, there in the sunlight, until the coffeepot hissed its completion in the silent kitchen. “I should go,” he mumbled into her hair, though every cell in his body protested.“You’ve got your call. I’ve got... life.”
“Yeah.” She nodded against his chest, then stepped back, putting a careful inch of air between them.The space felt charged, a new kind of tension replacing the old. “Text me when you get home. So I know you’re safe.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He gave her a mock salute, the dimples flashing, and she couldn’t help but smile.
The drive back to his neighborhood felt surreal. The world outside his Jeep windows—the faded strip malls, the scrubby palms, his family’s modest stucco house—seemed to belong to a different planet than her glass-walled sky fortress. He walked into the quiet, familiar clutter of his living room and texted her, just his address.Made it.See?Not a kid. Her reply was instant.Debatable.Shower.You smell like my couch. He laughed, loud in the empty house, and the sound was pure, uncomplicated joy.
Two hours later, he was on the practice field. The Florida sun was a brutal, honest weight on his shoulders, the grass smell sharp and clean.Every drill felt different. His cuts were sharper, his explosive bursts from the line quicker, his focus a laser.The ball seemed to find his hands as if magnetized.
“Yo, Morales!” Javier, a linebacker, shoved his shoulder after a particularly nasty sack. “What’s with you today? You’re grinning like you won the lottery and got laid in the same hour.”
Ares just kept smiling, adjusting his helmet. “Just a good day, man.”
“Bullshit,” said Rico, the quarterback, jogging over. “That’s not a ‘good day’ smile.That’s a ‘I’ve got a secret’ smile. Spill.”
The other guys gathered, a loose circle of sweating, curious athletes. The coach was across the field, bellowing at the offensive line. Ares felt a surge of possessive pride, mixed with a flicker of his old insecurity.They’ll see a thirty-three-year-old lawyer. They’ll see a cougar. But then he remembered the feel of her, real and shaking in his arms, and the fear evaporated. He pulled his phone from his hip pad, swiped it open, and turned the screen toward them.
It was a picture from the rooftop bar, the night they’d met.He’d asked a waiter to take it. Tasha was mid-laugh, her head thrown back, the city lights a sparkling halo behind her. Her emerald dress clung to every outrageous curve, her smile radiant and unguarded.
A collective, muted noise rose from the group—a soft chorus of appreciative exhales and low whistles. “Damn, brother,” Javier breathed, his eyes wide. “Who is that?”
“Tasha,” Ares said, the name feeling solid and right in his mouth.
“She is... visually outstanding,” Rico said, clapping him on the backpad.“Okay.I get it now. I’d be smiling too. I’d probably be dead, but I’d be smiling.”
The laughter was easy, ribbing, tinged with genuine awe.No one asked her age. No one questioned what she did. They just saw what he saw: a beautiful woman who looked at the camera, and by extension at him, with a dazzling, captured joy. The validation warmed him more than the sun.He slipped the phone back, the grin permanently etched on his face.
Practice ended in a blur of satisfied exhaustion. As he was stripping off his gear on the sidelines, his phone buzzed in his hand.A new message from Tasha lit up the screen. It was a simple, black-and-white photo of her messy kitchen counter, now holding two coffee mugs side by side. The text below read: I appear to have an extra mug. It’s creating a concerning imbalance in my cabinetry.You should come over after practice and fix this.
He stared at the words, at the two mugs sitting together.A simple, domestic image that meant everything.The fatigue evaporated. A new, deeper energy buzzed through him, sweet and urgent. He typed back, his thumbs clumsy and fast.On my way.Don’t let anyone else touch that mug. He hit send, shoved the rest of his gear into his bag, and practically jogged to the parking lot, the promise of her already pulling him across the city.