Chapter 3: The Midnight Response
The phone stayed silent for three hours.
Jennie paced. She pretended to read a paper on cognitive behavioral therapy, her eyes skating over the same paragraph about negative feedback loops seven times. She took a shower, scrubbing her skin until it was raw, trying to erase the phantom press of Kai’s shoe, the weight of his hand. The steam filled the bathroom, fogging the mirror, and she traced a shaky ‘L’ on the glass before wiping it away in a panic.
She was in bed, the lights off, staring at the ceiling’s familiar cracks, when the vibration came. A single, solid buzz against her thigh that felt like a shock to her nervous system.
She fumbled for it, the blue light blinding in the dark. A notification from an unsaved number. The one she knew.
Her thumbprint failed twice before the screen unlocked.
> Leonid: Yeah, it’s true. I make the best ones.
Her breath hitched. Simple. No questions. No ‘who is this?’ He knew. He’d always known.
She watched the three dots appear and disappear, appear again. Her heart was a trapped bird in her throat.
> Leonid: Free sample. Friday night. I’m on til 2.
A logical, sane part of her brain fired warnings. Friday. Family prayer group. Her father would expect her presence. Kai might drop by. Lies would need to be constructed, alibis forged. It was impossible. Reckless.
Her fingers were moving anyway, a direct line from the desperate, hungry thing coiled in her gut.
> Jennie: What’s your signature?
The dots danced. She could picture him. Probably in that cramped dorm, the desk lamp haloed around his curls, a textbook open but ignored. Maybe fresh from a shower, a towel low on his hips. The trail of hair from his navel…
> Leonid: Something strong and sweet. You’d like it.
Every word was a spark on dry tinder. It wasn’t just about the drink. It was an invitation into his world, the one Kai had sneered at. The world of worn edges and golden light and him.
> Jennie: I’ll try to stop by.
> Leonid: Cool.
That was it. No pressure. No big deal. Just ‘cool.’ It was so quintessentially him it made her chest ache. He’d given her an opening, no strings, and now the ball was in her court. The silence after felt heavier than the dinner’s suffocating quiet. It was a silence full of potential, screaming with it.
Across town, Leonid set his phone face down on the cluttered desk. The glow from the screen faded, leaving only the warm pool of his desk lamp. He leaned back in his creaky leather chair, the scent of the cigarette he’d just smoked in the hallway still clinging faintly to his fingers.
Jennie Kim. Of all people.
He hadn’t heard from her in years. Not really. Just distant, polite nods in university hallways, a ghost from a simpler time. Before the priest’s decree. He’d respected it, even if he never understood it. She’d become a portrait on a wall: beautiful, untouchable, framed by other people’s expectations.
He thought of her father’s stern face, the few times he’d seen him at school events. A man who spoke in blessings and judgments with the same measured tone. He thought of the rumors that filtered through old classmates—talk of a prosperous boyfriend, a polished future.
And yet.
The text felt like a crack in that portrait. A sliver of the girl he remembered, the one who’d shared her snack with him in preschool when he’d forgotten his, who’d laughed until she cried at his stupid jokes behind the gym. A girl who was now a woman, asking about his bartending job.
He ran a hand through his curls. It was probably nothing. A moment of boredom. A polite, fleeting curiosity. Friday night at the Anvil was rowdy, loud, a world away from wherever she spent her evenings. She wouldn’t come.
But he’d made the offer. And a part of him, the part that still carried the faint, stubborn bruise of that childhood exile, hoped, just vaguely, that she would. Just to see. To prove that the girl with the quiet eyes wasn’t completely erased by the woman with the perfect posture.
He grabbed his volleyball from the corner, spinning it idly on a finger. The texture of the leather was real, grounding. He’d make the drink anyway, he decided. The strong, sweet one. Just in case.
Jennie lay perfectly still. The plan was already forming, ugly and necessary. A lie. A headache. A prior study commitment with a trusted, discreet friend who would cover for her. The logistics were a wall she could scale. It was the act of crossing the threshold itself that terrified and electrified her.
She would go. The decision solidified like cement in her veins. She would sit at his bar. She would watch his hands—those strong, veined hands—shake a cocktail shaker. He would slide a glass toward her. Their fingers might almost touch.
And for a few stolen hours, she wouldn’t be the priest’s daughter, or Kai’s future, or a psychology student. She would just be Jennie, a girl in a dark bar, drinking something strong and sweet made just for her by the only man she’d ever wanted.
The shadow of the dining room chandelier seemed to stretch down the hall and under her door. She turned her face into her pillow, a slow, secret smile breaking across her lips in the darkness. It felt like a rebellion. It felt like coming up for air.
Friday was two days away. It felt like a lifetime. It felt like no time at all.