Chapter 2: The Morning After
The first thing David was aware of was the scent. Not the coffee or the cologne from his own clothes piled on the floor, but her. A mix of coconut and warm skin and something uniquely Simone, baked into the cotton of the pillowcase. He inhaled deeply, his body heavy and loose in a way that felt alien. The space next to him was empty, the sheets cool.
Sunlight sliced through a gap in the blinds, a sharp line cutting across the rumpled bed. He pushed himself up, the memories of the previous night flooding back not as a blur, but in high-definition flashes. The feel of her hands guiding his. The sound of her laugh in the alley. The terrifying, thrilling freedom of throwing his hoodie into the dumpster. He was here, in her bed. It wasn’t a dream.
On her pillow was a square of paper, torn from a bar receipt. He picked it up.
You survived. Now come find me at the bar tonight. We’re not done.
No smiley face. No ‘xoxo’. Just the instruction. It was so perfectly her that he almost laughed. He wasn’t being dismissed. He was being summoned for the next phase.
He got up, naked, and padded through the quiet apartment. It felt different in the daylight. The clutter was more pronounced—books stacked on the floor, a drying rack full of lacy bras and tank tops, a collection of mismatched mugs by the sink. He saw a framed photo on a bookshelf of a younger Simone with an older woman, both of them laughing, their cheeks pressed together. He looked away, feeling like an intruder.
His clothes from last night felt like a costume he’d outgrown. He put them on anyway—the thin t-shirt, the jeans that smelled of alley and bar. He found his glasses on her nightstand. Putting them on was like stepping back into a familiar, yet now ill-fitting, skin. The world snapped into sharp, sterile focus. Last night, everything had been sensation. Now, he was back to observation.
He didn’t know if he should make the bed. Write a note back. He stood in the center of the living room, paralyzed by what this was: the etiquette of a one-night stand that wasn’t really a one-night stand. Finally, he just left, pulling the red door softly shut behind him.
The city outside was aggressively normal. People on their way to brunch, carrying yoga mats, walking dogs. David felt like he had a secret etched onto his skin. He walked home, a thirty-minute journey that felt like crossing between worlds. His own apartment, when he unlocked the door, was a tomb of quiet. The hum of his computer, the glow of dormant monitors, the organized rows of action figures on a shelf. It all seemed absurdly small.
He showered. The water sluiced off him, but the feel of her—the phantom pressure of her hands, the memory of her mouth on him—clung. He stared at his reflection. It was the same face. Same scruffy beard. But the eyes looked back at him differently. There was a charge there, a latent energy that had been switched on and now had nowhere to go.
We’re not done.
The note was a lodestone. The entire day became a countdown. He tried to play a game, but the fantasy worlds felt flat. He opened a work spreadsheet, but the numbers danced meaninglessly. His mind was a waiting room.
At 7 p.m., the old anxiety began to creep back in. What was the protocol? Was he supposed to bring something? Act like nothing had happened? Act like everything had changed? He opened his closet. Rows of identical hoodies, graphic tees, jeans. The armor. He thought of the dumpster.
He didn’t own anything that wasn’t armor.
He left the apartment at 8:30, walking quickly. He wore a grey hoodie after all, but left it unzipped over a plain black tee. A concession. As he turned onto the block housing Dusty’s, his heart started that familiar, frantic drumming. But it was different now. It wasn’t just fear. It was anticipation. The nerves of a test he wanted to pass.
The bar’s neon was just flickering on. He paused outside, taking a breath. He could see the haze inside, the silhouettes of early-week drinkers. Last time, he’d had to force himself across the threshold. This time, he pushed the door open and walked straight in.
He didn’t slouch to the end of the bar. He took a stool in the middle, his back straight, and waited.
Simone was at the well, pouring a shot of tequila for an older white man in a trucker hat. She was in her uniform—the same sleeveless top. She looked tired. She finished the pour, took the money, and her gaze swept the bar. It passed over him, then snapped back.
No smirk. No warm smile. She just gave him a slow, deliberate nod. Recognition. An acknowledgment. Then she went back to wiping down the bar.
David felt a jolt. Was that it? He ordered a beer from the other bartender, a guy with tattooed sleeves, and sipped it slowly. He watched her work. She was efficient, a little brusque, her smiles for customers not reaching her eyes. She didn’t come over.
An hour bled away. The old ghosts of insecurity started whispering. He’d misinterpreted. Last night was a curiosity, now satisfied. The note was just a polite way to brush him off. He was just another guy at her bar again. The heat of the previous night cooled into a hard lump of humiliation in his gut. He was about to slide off the stool, to disappear back into the city, when she appeared in front of him, resting her elbows on the bar.
“You came,” she said.
“You told me to.”
“Lots of people don’t do what they’re told.” She looked him over. “You’re still wearing a hoodie.”
“It’s unzipped.”
A faint glimmer in her eyes.
“Okay. Baby steps.” She leaned closer. “You’ve been sitting here for an hour thinking you made a mistake. Your shoulders are up around your ears again. You’re drinking that beer like it’s medicine.”
He had no response. She saw everything.
“I’m working,” she said, straightening up. “This is my job. You sitting there radiating need isn’t part of my shift. So here’s another lesson for you: presence isn’t desperation. You can be here without being clingy. Own the space you’re in. Read a book on your phone. Watch the game. Just be. I’ll be done at midnight.”
She walked away before he could form a word. The correction was swift, surgical, and left him stinging. But it was also a roadmap. She wasn’t ignoring him. She was teaching him how to exist in her world without being a burden.
He pulled out his phone. He didn’t open a game. He opened a news article and actually read it. He watched the baseball highlights on the muted TV above the bar. He finished his beer and ordered another, nodding a thanks to the other bartender. He let his shoulders drop. He occupied the stool without apology.
Every so often, he’d catch her eye. She’d be pouring a drink, listening to a customer complain about something and her gaze would flick to him. Holding for a second. Checking his posture. Then away. It was like being monitored by a particularly rigorous coach.
At 11:45, the crowd thinned. Simone cashed out her last tab, then nodded to the back. She disappeared into the hallway. David waited a count of sixty, then settled his bill and followed.
The back hallway was just as he remembered. The flickering tube. The smell of cleaner. She was waiting, leaning against the wall by the storage room, her apron off. She had her arms crossed.
“Better,” she said as he approached. “You settled in. You didn’t panic and leave. That’s progress.”
“Is this another lesson?” he asked, his voice echoing slightly in the narrow space.
“Everything is.” She pushed off the wall. “Come on.”
She led him out the back door into the alley. The same dumpsters, the same buzzing light. The scene of the crime. She stopped in the middle of the alley and turned to face him.
“Alright,” she said, her hands on her hips. “Recap. You learned to look. You learned to touch. You learned to be present without suffocating me. Now we get to the hard part.”
“What’s the hard part?”
“Conversation.” She said it like a challenge. “Sex is easy. Talking is messy. You got a sharp mind in there. I want to hear it. Not the nervous babbling. The real thing.”
David felt exposed in a new way. His body was one thing. His mind, his history—that felt more intimate.
“What do you want to talk about?” He asked.
“Start with why you were a ghost. And don’t give me ‘I’m awkward’ bullshit. That’s a symptom. I want the diagnosis.”
He looked away, at the green dumpster where his old life was rotting. The words were lodged deep.
“I just… never fit the pattern. In high school, college. I knew how to solve problems on a screen. People… their code was always incompatible. I couldn’t crack it. So I stopped trying. It was safer in my head.”
“And the wanting? The frustration?”
“It was a data point. An error log that kept growing. I’d see couples, watch things online… and it just felt like a program I didn’t have access to. A locked function.”
“You objectify everything,” she said, not as a criticism, but as an observation. “Even your own loneliness. You turn it into data so you don’t have to feel it.”
He met her eyes. “Yes.”
“Good. First honest answer of the night.” She took a step closer. “My turn. You’re a project to me. Quite frankly, I’m bored. I see locked potential and I like picking locks. That’s my selfish reason. You’re interesting. That’s the other one. But this isn’t some fairytale. I’m not your girlfriend. This is a… collaboration. You understand the difference?”
The clarity was brutal, and bracing. There was no false promise. Just a genuine connection with defined, strange boundaries. He nodded.
“Yes.”
“Do you have a problem with that?”
He thought about it. About the hollow yearning for a storybook romance he’d carried for years. This was real. This was happening. It was more than he’d ever had.
“No. I don’t have a problem with it.”
She smiled then, a real one that softened the edges of her face. “Okay. Now we can go back to my place.”
They walked back in a comfortable silence. Her hand found his, not romantically, but like a steadying link. In her apartment, she went straight to the kitchen and pulled out two glasses and a bottle of whiskey.
“This one’s for talking,” she said, pouring.
They sat on the floor, backs against her sofa. She told him about growing up with four brothers, about dropping out of community college, about the slow grind of bartending and the weird intimacy of serving people at their best and worst. He told her about the quiet agony of being the smartest person in a room no one else was in, about his mother’s worried sighs, about the specific loneliness of online communities where you’re only as valuable as your last clever take.
The whiskey burned a pleasant path down his throat. He wasn’t used to talking this much, to having someone listen without glazing over.
“So you just… gave up on school?” he asked.
She swirled her glass, the ice clinking. “I didn’t give up. I pivoted. The classroom was a cage. The bar is a theater. I prefer the theater.” She nudged his foot with hers. “Your turn. Why data? Seems soul-crushing.”
“It’s orderly. Predictable. Clean.” He paused, considering the screens he faced all day. “It doesn’t look back at you with judgment or disappointment. It just is.”
“Sounds lonely as hell.”
“It was… still is.” The admission was easier the second time. He was getting used to the feeling of truth, like stretching a stiff muscle. “But it felt safe.”
“Safety is a slow death.” She said it plainly, without drama. She finished her drink and stood, extending a hand. “Come on. Death break’s over.”
In her bedroom, the neon stars glowed softly on the ceiling. She didn’t instruct him this time. She simply began unbuttoning her top, her eyes holding his, a silent test. David watched, his breath caught. This was the moment. Would he wait for permission again?
He didn’t.
He stood and crossed the short distance. His hands, which had trembled so badly the night before, were steady as they covered hers, stopping her.
“Let me,” he said, his voice low.
A slow smile spread across her face. She dropped her hands. “Okay.”
His fingers worked the remaining buttons. It was meticulous, focused. He pushed the fabric from her shoulders, let it fall. He traced the strap of her bra, then reached behind her. The clasp gave way with a quiet snick. He was learning her mechanics, her architecture.
This time, when they fell into the tangle of sheets, the rhythm was different. There were fewer pauses, less guidance. He remembered what made her gasp, the spot on her neck that made her sigh. He took his time, exploring with a new, hungry curiosity. It was less a lesson and more a conversation.
Afterwards, she lay sprawled half on top of him, her hair a wild cloud against his chest. Her finger drew idle patterns on his sternum.
“You’re a quick study, data analyst.”
“I have a good teacher.” He played with a curl of her hair, the texture coily and soft. “What’s the next lesson?”
She propped her chin on his chest. “The outside world. You can’t just be functional in my bedroom and that alley. You have to exist out there in the world.”
Dread, cold and familiar, coiled in his stomach. “Out where?”
“A restaurant. A park. A supermarket. Wherever. A place where we’re just two people. Not a project and her mentor.” She felt him tense and poked his side. “Don’t panic. It’s just dinner.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow. My night off. I’ll pick the place. You show up. You make conversation that isn’t about your internal crisis. You pretend to be a normal human man on a date.”
“A date,” he repeated, the word foreign and terrifying.
“A simulation of one, that is, for training purposes.” She rolled off him, sitting up. The glow-in-the-dark stars cast her profile in a faint green light. “You need to know this isn’t just a magic trick that only works in here. The point is to take it with you.”
He sat up beside her. The thought of sitting across from her in a brightly lit room, with waiters and other couples, made his palms sweat. But he’d thrown the hoodie away. He’d passed every test she’d set so far.
“What if I fail?”
“Then you fail. You learn from it.” She shrugged. “You go home, you feel like shit, and you try again later. Failure is just a system error. You debug it.” She looked at him, her expression serious. “But you won’t. Because I’ll be there. And you’re starting to trust yourself.”
He realized, with a jolt, that she was right. He did trust her. And a fragile, new part of him was beginning to trust the person he was when he was with her.
“Okay,” he said. “Dinner.”
“Good.” She lay back down. “Now go to sleep. You’ve got homework.”
David lay in the dark, listening to her breathing even out. The ambient sounds of her apartment—the hum of the refrigerator, a siren fading in the distance—were becoming familiar. He stared at the glowing stars on her ceiling, a child’s comfort in an adult’s messy room. He thought of the restaurant, a formless void of potential humiliation.
Then he thought of her hand guiding his in the alley. Own the space you’re in.
He closed his eyes. He wouldn’t just show up. He would decide, consciously, to own the chair across from her. To own the conversation. To own the fear itself. The decision was a quiet click inside him, a definitive step forward on a path he could no longer see the end of.
The decision was a quiet click inside him, a definitive step forward on a path he could no longer see the end of. He woke before her, the morning light just beginning to bleach the neon stars from the ceiling. Simone was a warm, solid weight against his back, her arm thrown possessively over his side. He lay perfectly still, memorizing the feel of it—the casual intimacy that was becoming a new, addictive data set.
The day at work was a strange, disconnected dream. Lines of code arranged themselves into neat patterns, but his mind kept rewinding to the scratch of her nails down his spine, the gravel in her morning voice. His coworkers’ conversations were background noise, meaningless static. He existed in a suspended state, waiting for the evening’s experiment to begin.
At 6:57 p.m., he stood outside La Lanterna, a small Italian place with checkered tablecloths visible through the window. He’d spent twenty minutes prior researching the menu online, a tactical move that now felt ridiculous. He saw her before she saw him. She was leaning against a bike rack across the street, scrolling on her phone, wearing a simple black dress that hugged her curves and ended just above her knees. She looked ordinary and breathtaking. His pulse was a trapped bird against his ribs.
She glanced up, spotted him, and pushed off the rack. A small, appraising smile touched her lips as she crossed the street.
“You’re early,” she said, stopping in front of him. “Good. You didn’t try to hide in the bathroom first.”
“I considered it,” he admitted, shoving his hands in the pockets of his chinos—a new, stiff purchase that felt like someone else’s skin.
“But you didn’t. That’s the part that counts.” She looped her arm through his, a simple gesture that sent a jolt through his system. “Remember, normal human conversation. No system diagnostics. No post-mortems of your own anxiety. Just talk.”
The inside was all warm garlic, simmering tomatoes, and low chatter. A young hostess led them to a small, wobbly table in the corner. David held Simone’s chair, a move he’d seen in movies, and she arched an eyebrow at him but sat. He took his own seat, facing the room. He felt exposed, like a specimen under glass.
“So,” she said, opening her menu. “How was the world of data today? Any exciting… integers?”
He recognized the teasing. It was a test. The old him would have launched into a technical explanation as a shield.
“The integers were actually shockingly predictable,” he said, meeting her eyes. “Unlike my blood pressure right now.”
She laughed, a real, unfiltered sound that turned a few heads. “Better. Honest, but not self-pitying. See? You’re learning to translate.” A waiter came for their drink order. Simone asked for a glass of red wine. David, who usually calculated alcohol units for optimal social lubrication, simply said, “Same.”
The drinks came. They ordered food. David’s knees bumped the underside of the small table. “This feels… very tall,” he mumbled.
“You are very tall. Stop folding yourself up. Own the space, remember?” She sipped her wine. “Tell me something you actually like about your job. Not the safety of it. Something that makes that sharp mind of yours light up.”
He thought, twisting the stem of his glass. “The patterns. Inconsistencies. You get these huge, messy streams of user data. My job is to clean it, sort it, and find the one anomalous blip that shouldn’t be there. The error that reveals the truth. It’s like… digital archaeology.”
Simone listened, her head tilted. “Finding hidden truths in the mess. I get that.” She leaned forward slightly. “That’s what I do at the bar. Everyone’s performing, giving me their cleaned-up data stream. My job is to see the blip. The real story.”
The connection was so obvious, so perfect, it left him stunned. He’d never framed his work in human terms before. It was just a skill. A function. “You saw mine,” he said softly.
“Your blip was a scream,” she said, no teasing now. “It was the most honest thing in the room.” Their food arrived, steaming plates of pasta that diffused the intensity. They ate. He asked about her brothers, and she told a chaotic, funny story about a childhood barbecue that ended with a stolen car and a police apology. He described his mother’s obsessive, loving curation of his comic book collection, which she’d alphabetized but never truly understood.
For stretches, it felt almost easy. Then a silence would fall, and he’d feel the old panic scramble up his throat. He’d grasp for a question, any question.
“What’s the worst drink someone’s ever ordered?”
She grinned. “Midori sour, with a raw egg white floated on top. For ‘protein.’” He gagged theatrically, and she laughed again.
“Ew.” He reacted to a laugh again. The sound was becoming a drug.
He was in the middle of a story about a failed coding project, his hands sketching shapes in the air, when her eyes shifted to a point behind his shoulder. Her smile didn’t vanish, but it cooled, solidifying into something polite and distant. David’s words died in his mouth. The blip.
“Well, shit. Simone Reeves? I thought that was you.”
A man was standing by their table. He was around Simone’s age, dressed in a sleek, expensive-looking sweater. Handsome in a muscular yet generic, gym-polished way. He smelled faintly of sandalwood cologne.
“Hey, Marcus,” Simone said, her voice flat. “Small world.”
“Too small sometimes,” Marcus said, his smile wide and toothy. His gaze slid over David, a quick, dismissive inventory that took in his plain shirt, his lanky frame, and filed him away as irrelevant. “Been a minute. You still slinging drinks at Dusty’s?”
“Still the best damn dive in town.” Simone took a slow sip of wine. “This is David.”
Marcus offered a hand without looking at him. “Marcus. I’m an old friend of Simone’s.” David shook it; the grip was aggressively firm. “So, what’s new? You seeing anyone, or…?” He let the question hang, his implication clear as he glanced between them.
David felt the familiar collapse beginning. The shrinking feeling. He was a prop, an awkward boy pretending to be a man at this woman’s table. His data-driven mind processed the variables: Marcus’s territorial posture, Simone’s icy politeness, his own silent invisibility. The algorithm suggested retreat.
But another function fired. A new one. It rejected the algorithm.
Simone opened her mouth, likely to deliver a cutting deflection, but David spoke first. He didn’t raise his voice. He leaned back in his chair, forcing Marcus to adjust his stance to look down at him, and met the man’s eyes directly.
“She’s having dinner with me,” David said. The words weren’t loud, but they were dense, final. He didn’t smile. He didn’t look at Simone for approval. He simply stated the fact and held Marcus’s gaze, his own sharp and unnervingly still. “Did you need something else with the table, or are you just passing through?”
The air crackled. Marcus’s smile flickered. He was used to being the dominant variable in any social equation. David’s calm, unblinking response was an error he couldn’t parse. Simone remained silent, watching David with laser focus.
“Just saying hello,” Marcus recovered, his tone slightly brittle. “Don’t let me interrupt your… dinner.” The pause was deliberate, petty. He nodded at Simone. “Take care, Simone. Good seeing you.”
He walked away, weaving through the tables toward a group of similarly polished people near the front. A low laugh drifted back.
David let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. His hands were trembling under the table. He felt nauseous. He’d just done that. He had no script for it.
Simone was staring at him. Her expression was unreadable.
“Where in the hell did that come from?”
“I don’t know,” he whispered, honestly terrified. “It just… came out. Was that wrong?”
She was silent for a long moment, then she shook her head, a slow, amazed smile breaking through.
“Wrong? That was… correct.” She reached across the table, not for his hand, but to tap her knuckle once, firmly, against his sternum. “That was actually the man. That was being a man. There’s actually one under the nervous system. You just made him sit up and speak.”
Prise, hot and bright, flooded his veins. It wasn’t the hollow victory of a solved puzzle. It was the visceral, thrilling shock of winning a physical contest he hadn’t known he could enter.
“He looked at me like I was a piece of furniture,” David said, the shock fading into a low, steady hum of energy.
“And you rewrote his code with one sentence.” She finished her wine, her eyes gleaming. “Forget the dessert menu. We’re leaving.”
She paid the bill before he could fumble for his wallet, waving off his protest.
“My simulation, my rules.”
Outside, the night air was cool. She didn’t loop her arm through his this time. Instead, she grabbed the front of his shirt, pulling him into the shadowed alcove of a closed shop front. Her kiss was sudden, hungry, and full of concession.
When she pulled back, both of them were breathing hard.
“Okay,” she said, her voice rough. “New plan. The classroom part of this is over.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you don’t need a lesson plan anymore. You need reps now…” took his hand, her grip tight, and started walking, pulling him down the street away from the direction of their apartments. “You just passed the midterm. Now we move to the lab.”
“Where are we going?”
“A real bar. Not Dusty’s. A place with music you can feel in your teeth and people who aren’t my regulars.” She glanced back at him, a wild challenge in her eyes. “You owned a wobbly table. Now let’s see if you can own a room.”