Chapter 1: The Bar's Back Room
The bass from the main room was a dull throb through the wall, a heartbeat out of sync with her own. Here in the narrow, sticky-floored hallway by the bathrooms, the air smelled of spilled beer and fake citrus cleaner. Elena pressed her palms flat against the grimy brick, cool against her skin. His body was a furnace at her back.
“Come on, El. You know you want to.” Marcus’s voice was a wet scrape in her ear, his hand already sliding from her waist to the curve of her ass. His fingers dug in, possessive, testing. He smelled like gin and arrogance.
She didn’t move. This was the part where she was supposed to arch into him, or playfully swat his hand away, to participate in the ritual. A tightness coiled in her stomach, familiar and sour. His other hand came up, palming her breast, his thumb rubbing a slow circle over her nipple through the thin cotton of her dress. He made a low, approving sound.
“See? Perfect. Just perfect for me.”
The words were the tripwire. A static crackle filled her head, drowning out the music. Perfect for him. A body, a set of functions. A tight ass, small tits he could cup in one hand. Skills in the dark he’d bragged about to his friends last weekend, his voice carrying from the kitchen while she pretended to be asleep on his couch.
Her stillness broke. She didn’t shove so much as uncoil, a sharp and fluid motion driven from the centre of her rage. Her elbow caught him hard just below the ribcage.
He grunted, stumbling back a step, his hands falling away. “What the hell, Elena?”
She turned. The dim, piss-yellow light from a sconce carved shadows under his confused scowl. She felt her face, expressive and always betraying her, twist into something she knew was ugly. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what? We were having a moment.”
“We weren’t having anything.” Her voice was lower than usual, a rasp that carried over the bassline. “You were groping a wall. I happened to be attached to it.”
He laughed, a short, dismissive bark. He adjusted his shirt, recovering. “You’re being dramatic. You love this. You know you do.”
That was it. The definitive script. The one every Marcus had in his back pocket. You love it. You want it. You’re just playing hard to get. It turned her into a character in his story, one whose desires he got to narrate.
She looked him dead in his handsome, vacant face. “I’m tired of being your favourite toy. Go find someone else to practice on.”
She didn’t wait for a reply. She walked, her heels clicking a firm, final rhythm on the linoleum. She felt his stare on her back, a physical heat, but he didn’t follow. The victory was small, and it tasted like ash.
Pushing through the heavy door into the main bar was like walking into a wall of sound and sweat. The air was thick, humid with breath and condensation from cold bottles. A live band was on the small stage wedged in the corner, a four-piece grinding through a cover with more energy than precision. Green and purple lights swept over a sea of bobbing heads and raised glasses.
Elena moved through the crowd, a knife cutting through a current. The press of bodies felt different now—not festive, but oppressive. She found a sliver of space near a pillar, leaning against it as she ordered a whiskey, neat, from a passing server.
She sucked the liquor down, its fire a clean, harsh contrast to the sticky heat of the room. Her eyes scanned without seeing. Then they caught.
On the other side of the pillar, tucked into a small two-seat table that was mostly a ledge, a guy sat alone. He wasn’t looking at the band. He wasn’t scanning the room for prey. He was just… there. Nursing a pint, his fingers tracing the condensation on the glass. He had a kind of still quality to him, an island of calm in the chaotic sea. He looked up, as if feeling the weight of her gaze.
Their eyes met.
His weren’t predatory, weren’t assessing her parts. They were just looking, curious, maybe a little startled. He had a nice face. Not pretty, not rugged. Just a face. He didn’t smile. He didn’t look away. He just… held the glance for a second too long.
The singer on stage launched into the chorus, his voice straining for a note just out of reach. It was a popular song, one she knew all the words to, one she sang in the shower, in her car, into her hairbrush with the window blinds tightly shut. A hollow ache opened up beneath her ribs.
The shy guy finally broke the gaze, looking down at his beer with a slight, self-conscious shake of his head.
Elena put her empty glass on a table. The noise, the crowd, Marcus’s lingering touch on her skin—it all compressed into a single, urgent point of pressure in her skull. She needed air. She needed silence. She began to shoulder her way toward the exit, the bright red sign a beacon.
As she passed his table, his voice, soft but clear, cut through the din. “Your, um… your shoe.”
She stopped. Looked down. The thin strap of her right heel had snapped, dangling uselessly. She must have snapped it shoving off the wall, or maybe during her angry march. She hadn’t even felt it.
He was leaning down. He picked up the broken strap, the leather looking frail in his hand. He held it up, not offering it to her, just showing it, a small, helpless gesture. “It broke.”
“Yeah,” she said, her sultry voice flat with exhaustion. “I see that.”
He looked from the strap to her face, his expression open, genuinely concerned with the simple, practical problem of a broken shoe. No leer, no hidden agenda. Just a problem.
Outside, the cool night air hit her like a salvation. She stood on the sidewalk, one shoe on, one shoe half-off, the city humming around her. The image of his face, the quiet concern in it, replayed behind her eyes.
Inside, the band finished their song. There was a scatter of applause, then the messy silence between tracks. Into that silence, she heard the singer say, “Okay, we’re gonna try something original now. Be gentle.”
A simple, clean guitar chord rang out, hesitant. Then another.
Elena didn’t move. She listened, the broken strap dangling from her fingers, the city holding its breath with her.
She listened, the broken strap dangling from her fingers, the city holding its breath with her.
The door behind her hinges sighed open, spilling a wedge of sound and warm, beer-scented air onto the sidewalk. She didn’t turn, assuming it was another smoker or a couple seeking a moment’s privacy.
“Hey.”
It was a different voice. Quiet. Unsure. She glanced over her shoulder.
It was him. The guy from the table. He stood awkwardly in the doorway, one hand on the frame, like he wasn’t sure he was allowed outside. Up close, he was taller than she’d thought, lanky in a worn band t-shirt and dark jeans. His hair was a mess of brown curls, and his eyes, now that she could see them clearly, were a quiet, thoughtful grey.
“You, uh… you stormed out pretty fast,” he said. He had a nice voice. A little rough, like he didn’t use it much in crowds. “I was worried you’d trip. On the shoe.”
Elena looked down at her own feet, one bare heel resting on the cold pavement. She wiggled the toes of her shoeless foot. “I manage.”
“Right.” He shifted his weight. He was holding something. Her other shoe. He must have picked it up from under the table. He held it out, not coming any closer, as if offering food to a skittish animal. “Thought you might need this. Even if it’s broken.”
She stared at the shoe, then at him. No one did this. Men brought you drinks they expected you to pay for with your attention. They didn’t retrieve broken footwear. A strange, weak laugh bubbled up in her chest. She took it. “Thanks.”
He nodded, stuffing his hands into his pockets. He was about to retreat back inside when he paused. “I have a safety pin. In my wallet. Always do. My mum’s thing.” He flushed a little, as if admitting to carrying a safety pin was deeply embarrassing.
Elena blinked. “A safety pin.”
“For the strap. It’s a temporary fix. But it’ll get you to a cab.” He was already pulling out a battered leather wallet, procuring a small, shiny pin.
She didn’t know what to say. The simple, practical kindness of it disarmed her completely. “Okay.”
“Here,” he said, gesturing to the low concrete ledge bordering a planter. “Sit. It’ll be easier.”
She sat, the stone cold through her dress. He knelt on the sidewalk in front of her, which felt absurdly formal. He took the shoe from her hand, his fingers careful. He didn’t touch her. He lined up the broken ends of the leather strap, his brow furrowed in concentration. The noise of the bar was a muffled soundtrack.
“I’m Liam, by the way.”
“Elena.”
“Nice to meet you, Elena.” He focused on threading the pin. His hands were steady. “You looked like you were having a terrible night. Before the shoe thing, I mean.”
“That’s one word for it.”
“The band isn’t that bad,” he said, a slight smile touching his mouth.
“It wasn’t the band.”
He didn’t push. He simply nodded, as if that explained everything. He had the pin through both pieces of leather now. “Okay, give me your foot.”
She hesitated for a fraction of a second, then lifted her bare foot. He cradled her heel in one hand, his touch warm and dry. He slid the shoe on, his fingers deft. As he worked to secure the pin through the existing hole in the strap and anchor it, the pad of his thumb brushed the sensitive arch of her foot.
It was the briefest contact. A tiny, almost clinical transfer of skin on skin.
But she felt it. A current, sharp and clear, shot up her leg. She sucked in a quiet breath.
His hands stilled. For a moment, he didn’t move. He was staring at her foot in his hand, his cheeks tinged with pink even in the dim glow of the streetlight. He’d felt it too. That slight, electric stir. He cleared his throat, finished fastening the pin with clumsy speed, and gently placed her foot back on the ground.
“There,” he said, his voice a bit strained. He stood up abruptly, brushing his knees. “It’ll hold. Maybe not for dancing.”
“I wasn’t planning on dancing.” She stood, testing the weight. The shoe was wobbly, but it held. A ridiculous, salvaged thing. “Thank you, Liam.”
“Any time.” He rocked back on his heels. The cold night air was starting to bite, cutting through the adrenaline that had carried her outside. She crossed her arms over her chest.
“You’re freezing,” he stated.
“A little.”
“Do you… want to go back in? Just to warm up? It’s brutal out here.” He jerked his thumb toward the door. “We don’t have to go to the main bit. There’s a quieter spot near the back. You could just… sit. Get warm. I’ll leave you alone, if you want.”
She looked at him—at his worried grey eyes, his sincere, slightly flustered face. He’d followed her out. He’d fixed her shoe. He’d felt that jolt and hadn’t tried to exploit it. He was offering her a chair and warmth, nothing more.
Inside, the band started a new song. The guitar melody was cleaner this time, a melancholic thread weaving through the bass.
“Okay,” Elena said. “Just to warm up.”
The spot he led her to was a narrow alcove with a battered leather booth, partially shielded from the main bar by a large speaker column. It was quieter, the music a thrumming backdrop rather than an assault. He fetched two waters without asking, sliding one across the table to her.
“So,” he said, after a long sip. “The band.”
“The band,” she echoed, smiling faintly. “The guitarist is pretty good. The singer’s trying too hard to sound like someone else.”
Liam’s eyes lit up. “Yes! Exactly. He’s going for that rasp, but it’s all in his throat. It’s gonna be gone by last call.” He leaned forward, elbows on the table. “You know music?”
“I listen to it.” She traced a circle in the condensation on her glass. “I used to… sing. A little. A long time ago.”
“Why’d you stop?”
The old shame, cold and familiar, pressed against her ribs. She deflected. “What about you? You sat through their whole first set alone. Superfan or masochist?”
He laughed, a soft, genuine sound. “Neither. I’m friends with the bassist, Ben. Moral support. Plus, it’s cheaper than the cinema.” He nodded toward the stage. “They’re not terrible. They just haven’t found their own sound yet. They’re all playing different songs in their heads.”
Elena looked at him, really looked. He wasn’t just a quiet guy in a bar. He listened. He understood. “You play?”
“Guitar,” he said, almost shyly. “Since I was ten. In my garage. It’s loud and it annoys the neighbours and it’s the only thing that makes sense.” He looked down at his hands. “What about you? Singing ‘a little’?”
The band launched into the bridge, the singer reaching for a note and, for the first time all night, genuinely hitting it. The crowd, feeling the shift, gave a muted cheer. The sound wrapped around them in their little booth.
Elena took a breath. The usual defences—the brush-off, the sarcasm, the deflection—felt heavy and useless. Here, in this noisy, hidden corner, with this stranger who fixed shoes with safety pins, she felt a strange, tentative safety.
“I loved it,” she said, her sultry voice barely above a murmur, yet he leaned in to hear. “It felt like flying. Then I tried out for a thing in secondary school. A solo. I bombed. Forgot the words, voice cracked. The laugh… it wasn’t even that loud. But it was everywhere. After that, it just felt like the music was locked inside me. I could only let it out when I was completely alone.”
Liam was silent for a moment, just listening to the band, to her words hanging between them. He didn’t offer empty pity. He just nodded.
“The stuff that matters,” he said finally, meeting her eyes, “always feels like that. Like it’s too big and too fragile to let out. But the locking away… it hurts more than the laughing ever could.”
On stage, the singer held the last note, and for a second, it was pure and clear, cutting through the haze of the bar. In the silence that followed, before the applause, Elena felt something inside her, something long held shut, click softly open.
In the silence that followed, before the applause, Elena felt something inside her, something long held shut, click softly open.It wasn’t a dramatic unlocking. More like the quiet turn of a key in a well-oiled lock, a mechanism settling into place after years of disuse.
They stayed in the alcove for the rest of the set. They kept up a running, hushed commentary on the music, their heads bent close to be heard. Elena pointed out when the guitarist borrowed a riff from a classic rock song. Liam winced in solidarity when the singer strained for a high note and landed somewhere in the screech of a distressed animal.“He’s committed,” Liam murmured. “I’ll give him that.”
“Like a patient being committed,” Elena whispered back, and the sound of Liam’s stifled laugh was better than any chorus.
When the band took a break, the conversation didn’t.It spilled over into other things.The stupid film class she was failing. The vintage guitar he was trying to restore. The best place in the city for terrible, greasy pizza at 3 a.m.The words came easily, tumbling out without calculation. Elena realized, with a slow-dawning shock, that her shoulders had dropped. The permanent, faint knot of tension between her shoulder blades had loosened. She was leaning back against the leather, one knee pulled up, actually listening instead of just waiting for her turn to speak or deflect.
She took a sip of water and looked at him across the small table.His gaze was on her face, attentive, curious. Not once had it dipped to the neckline of her dress. Not once had his foot ‘accidentally’ brushed against hers under the table.
“This is weird,” she said, the words leaving her mouth before she could filter them.His eyebrows lifted.“What is?”
“Just… talking. Like this.” She gestured vaguely between them.A faint warmth rose in her cheeks. “I’m not… I’m not used to a guy just wanting to talk. Usually the talking is just the stuff you have to get through, you know? The boring bit before the main event.”
Liam’s expression softened.He didn’t look offended. He looked, if anything, a little sad.“Well,” he said, his voice low. “Consider this a night off from the main event.I’m interested in the opening act.The bonus tracks. The B-sides.”
Her blush deepened. “You know what I mean.”
“I do.” He spun his water glass slowly on the table.“And for the record, I’m interested in you.Not just your body. Although,” he added, a quick, shy glance flicking up at her, “I’m not blind. I just think there’s more to read than the cover.”
The honesty of it, the sheer novelty, hit her square in the chest. A glow, warm and unfamiliar, spread through her.The noise of the bar receded further. It was just this little bubble, this quiet pocket of realness.She opened her mouth, the question Do you want to get out of here? forming on her lips.It was her default, her escape hatch, her way of taking control. But before the words could leave her, a shadow fell across the table.
A guy with a sheen of sweat on his forehead and a bass guitar strap marks indented on his t-shirt loomed over them, grinning.“Liam! You made it!”
Liam looked up, his face breaking into an easy smile.“Ben.Sounded good, man. Tight.”
Ben, the bassist, slid into the booth next to Liam, bringing a wave of body heat and beer with him. “Liar.But I’ll take it.” He turned his grin on Elena. “Who’s your friend?”
They talked for a while. Ben was loud and enthusiastic, dissecting their set with a brutal, self-deprecating humour that made Elena laugh. She could see the genuine fondness between him and Liam, the years of friendship in their easy ribbing. It was another layer, another piece of the puzzle that was this quiet guy with the safety pin.
When Ben hauled himself up to go schmooze with some friends, the spell was different but not broken. The bar was closing up.“I should probably…” Elena nodded toward the door.
“Yeah.” Liam stood up quickly.“I’ll walk you. It’s late.”
They stepped out into the night, the city air cool and sobering after the bar’s haze. Her repaired shoe held, a tiny click-tap with each step. They walked without touching, a foot of cool night air between them. The conversation started again, softer now, about nothing and everything—the graffiti on the shutters of a shop, the terrible street lighting on her block, the constellation of Orion visible between the rooftops.
Too soon, they were at the base of her apartment building, a bland brick structure with a flickering light above the entrance.“This is me,” she said, turning to face him. Her heart was doing a funny, uneven rhythm against her ribs.The old script screamed in her head. She swallowed.“Do you… do you want to come up for a coffee?Or, you know. Something.”
Liam smiled, a gentle, understanding thing.He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
The rejection was a small, cold shock. It was so utterly foreign, a reversal of a universal law.Her eyebrows knitted together.“Oh. Okay.”
“No, hey,” he said, taking a half-step closer.He could see the confusion on her face. “It’s not… I’m not saying no to you. I’m saying no to… the routine.” He searched for the words.“I had a really good time tonight. Talking to you.I’d like to do it again.Properly.Like, in the daylight. Where the only thing on the menu is conversation and maybe some food.” He took a breath. “Would you like to go on a date with me?Next Friday?”
Elena stared at him. A date. A planned, pre-meditated, dressed-for event that wasn’t a prelude to a darkened bedroom.“A date?”
“Yeah.A date.The whole cliché. Pick you up, terrible small talk in the car, awkwardly decide where to eat.”
A laugh bubbled out of her, surprised and relieved.“Yes.Okay. Yes.”
“Great.” His smile widened, bright and real.He made no move to kiss her. He just stood there, hands in his pockets.The confusion, the novelty of it all, overwhelmed her filter. “I’ve just… I’ve never had a guy say no to coming upstairs before. It’s a first.”
Liam’s expression grew serious. He looked directly into her eyes, his grey ones steady and clear in the bad fluorescent light. “Elena, for what it’s worth, I find you incredibly attractive. You’re literally the sexiest woman I’ve ever seen, let alone had an actual conversation with.The thought of going upstairs is… it’s definitely a thought. A very loud one.” He let out a short breath.“But I like the sound of your voice. I like the way you think about music. I want to know what makes you laugh when you’re not in a bar. I want to know what you’re like when you’re not braced for a grab. I want to know you first.”
The words hung in the space between them, sincere and undeniable.They weren’t a line.They were just the truth.
“Okay,” she whispered, feeling unmoored and strangely, wonderfully light.“Okay,” he echoed. He gave her a final, soft smile.“I’ll text you. Goodnight, Elena.”
“Goodnight, Liam.”
She watched him walk away, his tall frame disappearing around the corner. Then she pushed through the heavy door into the quiet, stale-aired lobby. Inside her flat, she closed the door and leaned back against it. The silence was a physical thing, ringing in her ears after the night’s noise. She bent down, undid the clumsy safety pin, and slipped her shoes off.The cool wooden floor felt divine on her soles.
She padded barefoot to her bedroom, the events of the evening swirling in her head—Marcus’s greedy hands, the broken strap, the quiet guy in the booth, the feel of a thumb on her arch, the sound of a lock clicking open, a firm ‘no’, a request for a date. Her body felt tired, but her mind was vibrantly, chaotically awake.
She fell back onto her bed, the old mattress springs groaning in protest.Staring at the cracked ceiling, she replayed it all. The easy laughter.The way he listened, his whole face focused on her words. The specific, deliberate choice he had made on her doorstep. The memory of it—not charged with lust, but with a potent, unfamiliar kindness—washed over her, warmer and more lingering than any touch she could remember.