Chapter 1: Three Beers and a Secret
The heat hadn’t broken with the sunset. It clung to Berlin like a second skin, thick and stagnant in the un-airconditioned apartment. The kitchen was a warzone. A half-melted pepperoni pizza congealed in its box on the counter, a monument to collective lethargy. Beer bottle rings dotted the sticky laminate like fossil records of the evening. The single fluorescent light buzzed and flickered, casting a sickly glow over the three of them slumped at the table.
Joanna ran a finger through the condensation on her bottle, watching the trail cut through the chill. She could feel the damp cotton of her loose tank top sticking to her lower back. Her shorts felt too tight across her thighs, a constant, private reminder. Across from her, Bartek was scrolling silently on his phone, the light etching shadows into his bearded jaw. He hadn’t said much in an hour.
“Another fantasy,” Paul declared, his French accent softening the edges of the German words. He leaned back in his chair, the front legs lifting off the linoleum. He was a long line of relaxed confidence in a sleeveless shirt, his guitar propped against the fridge. “Go on. Something you’ve never told anyone. The heat makes secrets slide out easier, no?”
It had been his game. A way to pass the sweaty, endless evening. Silly ones first: winning the lottery, finding a forgotten cache of vintage wine in the basement. Then, gradually, the texture changed.
Joanna took a long pull of her lager. It was cheap and too warm, but it was wet. She felt loose-limbed and dangerously transparent, the alcohol humming just beneath her skin. Bartek shifted, his phone screen going dark.
“I don’t have any,” Bartek mumbled, not looking up.
“Everyone has them,” Paul said, his gaze sliding from Bartek to Joanna. His eyes were a very clear, inquisitive green. “Even the quiet architects.”
“Fine.” Bartek’s voice was tight. “A commissioned project. From start to finish. No client revisions.”
Paul laughed, a bright, easy sound. “Boring! But honest. Joanna?”
She felt their attention land on her like a physical weight. She adjusted her glasses. The fantasy that floated up wasn’t about work. It was about the way Paul had looked at her last week when she’d come out of the shower, a towel wrapped tightly under her arms, her hair dripping. It hadn’t been a leer. It had been an appreciation, slow and thorough, that had burned straight through the terry cloth. She’d scurried to her room, heart hammering, a traitorous thrill zinging down her spine.
She couldn’t say that.
Instead, the frustration of the evening, the heat, the weight of Bartek’s silent neediness beside her, the way he’d touched her last night—tentative, almost apologetic—coalesced into a sudden, reckless pressure behind her ribs.
“Mine?” she said, her voice louder than she intended. “Mine is Bartek’s fantasy, actually.”
The fridge hummed. A motorbike snarled past on the street below.
Bartek went perfectly still. The color drained from his face, leaving his skin waxy under the flickering light.
Paul’s playful smile didn’t vanish, but it solidified into something more focused. He let the front legs of his chair hit the floor with a soft thud. “Is that so?”
The words were out now, hanging in the greasy air between the pizza box and the empty bottles. Joanna couldn’t look at Bartek. She stared at a watermark on the table, her own audacity ringing in her ears. She had done it. She had taken the thing he whispered to her in the dark, a confession that felt less like a shared secret and more like a burden he’d handed her to carry, and she had dumped it on the kitchen table for their handsome, amused housemate to see.
“Joanna.” Bartek’s voice was a husk.
“What is it?” Paul asked. His tone was gentle, genuinely curious, devoid of mockery. It was that, perhaps, that made it so much worse.
Silence stretched. Bartek’s breath was shallow. Joanna could see the pulse jumping in his throat. He was waiting for her to laugh, to say it was a joke, to rescind the exposure. She took another drink, the glass clinking against her teeth. She said nothing.
Paul’s gaze traveled between them, reading the catastrophe in the space between their bodies. He didn’t speak. He simply waited, an open, neutral space in the tension.
Finally, Bartek moved. He pushed his chair back, the legs screeching against the floor. The sound was horrific. He stood, his body blocking the flickering light for a moment. He didn’t look at either of them. He walked out of the kitchen, his steps heavy on the wooden floor, and a moment later the door to their bedroom clicked shut.
The silence he left behind was deafening.
Joanna finally risked a glance at Paul. He wasn’t smiling anymore. He was studying her, his head tilted slightly. She felt utterly naked, more exposed than if she’d dropped her towel right there. Her heart was a frantic bird against her ribs.
“That was cruel,” Paul said quietly. Not an accusation. An observation.
“It was true,” she whispered, defiance and shame warring in her throat.
“Truth can be the cruelest thing we have.” He reached for his guitar, not to play, but just to rest his fingers on the neck. “His fantasy. Which is it?”
She blinked. “You know.”
“I want to hear you say it.”
The demand hung in the air. It wasn’t lecherous. It was clinical. A designer asking for a specification. She found her voice, low and rough. “He… wants to see me with someone else. He thinks I deserve… more. Adventure. That he can’t give it to me.”
Paul absorbed this. He ran a thumb over a guitar string, producing a faint, dissonant note. “And what do you deserve, Joanna?”
No one had ever asked her that. Bartek told her what he thought she deserved. She told herself what she should be satisfied with. This question, direct and unpitying, dismantled her.
Tears pricked hot behind her eyes. She looked away, toward the dark window.
“He loves you,” Paul said. “It is written all over him. It is a pain to watch. This fantasy… it is his way of offering you a gift. A very strange, broken gift.”
“It doesn’t feel like a gift,” she said, the words cracking. “It feels like a trap. Or a test I keep failing.”
Paul nodded slowly. He stood then, unfolding his lean height. He walked to the sink, filled a glass with water, and brought it to her. He didn’t hand it to her. He placed it on the table in front of her chair. A simple, merciful act.
“I will be on the balcony,” he said. “The air is only slightly less dead out there.”
He left her alone in the buzzing, ugly light. She stared at the glass of water, the condensation already forming. She listened to the faint sound of his guitar, a soft, melancholic melody filtering in from the darkness outside. It wasn’t a retreat. It was an invitation.
In their bedroom, there was only silence.
She picked up the water. Drank. It was cool and clean. She placed the empty glass next to the army of bottles.
Then she stood, her legs unsteady, and walked toward the balcony door.