Chapter 1: The Triangle Bar
The Triangle Bar hummed, a low and steady thing beneath the chatter. Neon signs flickered behind fogged glass, casting a watery pink and blue glow over everything. The floors were sticky, grabbing at the soles of Abby’s boots with a soft, persistent pull. She watched the light from the jukebox—stuck on some loop of lo-fi indie rock—catch the rim of her glass, a pale circle on the dark wood.
Lee was on his second cheap beer, nursing it like it was medicine. His posture was a closed bracket: shoulders hunched, curly black hair fallen forward to curtain his eyes. The hood of his sweatshirt was up, even indoors. It was his uniform, his armor. Abby called it ‘boymoding’ in her head, a term she’d learned online and held with a quiet, aching understanding.
“You’re staring,” Lee said, without looking up. His voice was flat, sandpapered by cigarettes and distrust.
“Sorry.” Abby took a quick sip of her gin and tonic. The lime was bitter. “I was just thinking.”
“Dangerous habit.”
“You talked me into drinking. My thoughts are your responsibility now.” She meant it to be light, but it came out soft, too earnest.
Lee finally glanced over. His eyes, when visible, were a dark, liquid brown, too perceptive for his own good. He’d talked her into one drink an hour ago, and the alcohol had unspooled something in her chest, a warmth that loosened her careful accountant’s tongue. She felt tipsy, buoyant, and dangerously honest.
“You’re a cheap date, Brooks. One drink and you’re giggling at the napkin dispensers.”
“They’re shaped like little pigs. It’s charming.” She traced a watermark on the bar. The air smelled of stale beer and patchouli from the bartender’s oil, underneath something sharper, like ozone before a storm. “Lee?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you ever think about just… staying? In one place?”
He barked a short, humorless laugh. “You mean like, philosophically? Or are you asking if I’m planning to overstay my welcome on your couch?”
“You’re not overstaying.” She said it too quickly. “I mean it. I like… having you there.”
The words hung between them, clumsy and oversized. Lee took a long swallow of beer, his Adam’s apple bobbing. A remnant, Abby thought, a ghost of a timeline they were both quietly fleeing. The sight of it always gave her a complicated twist of empathy and a strange, guilty distance.
“You shouldn’t,” he said finally, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “I’m a bad investment. Unreliable tenant. Terrible credit.”
“You’re not an investment.” The gin was talking now, pushing past her filters. “You’re my friend. And I… I care about you. A lot.”
Lee went very still. He studied his bottle, picking at the label with a bitten-down thumbnail. “You’ve got a shitty radar for people, Abby. I did stuff on the streets. To get by. You know that, right? It wasn’t just harmless scavenging.”
“I know.” Her voice was a whisper. She did know. He’d alluded to it in vague, grim terms—transactions, not encounters. The knowledge sat in her stomach like a cold stone, but it didn’t change the feeling. It just made it more desperate.
“Then you should be smarter.” His tone was final, a door clicking shut.
But the alcohol had blown the lock off her hinges. The warmth in her chest was a blazing, foolish courage. She reached out, her fingers brushing the frayed cuff of his hoodie. He flinched, but didn’t pull away.
“Lee.”
“Don’t.” It was a warning, low and tense.
“I think I love you.”
The music from the jukebox swelled, a plaintive guitar riff. Someone laughed too loudly at the pool table. Lee slowly turned his head to look at her. His expression was unreadable, a careful blank, but his eyes were wide, almost frightened.
“You’re drunk,” he stated.
“I’m not that drunk. I’m just… finally saying it. I look at you and I see how pretty you are, and it hurts.” The word ‘pretty’ fell from her lips, deliberate and tender. It was a risk. It was a truth.
Lee’s face did something then. The blank mask crumpled at the edges, revealing a flash of raw, starving want before shame slammed back down. He looked away, his jaw tight.
“Don’t call me that,” he muttered.
“Why? It’s true. You have the prettiest eyes. And your hair, when you let it down…” She was fawning, she knew it, spilling a secret she’d kept under meticulous lock and key. The power imbalance yawned like a canyon beneath her—she had a job, an apartment, stability. He had a backpack and eight months of concrete for a bed. And she was using her safety as a platform to profess love. The guilt was a sour note in the sweet gin haze.
Lee pushed his bottle away. It made a sharp sound on the wood. “You have no idea what you’re talking about. You feel bad for me. That’s not love. It’s pity with a savior complex.” He stood up, the legs of his stool screeching. “I need some air.”
“Lee, wait—”
But he was already weaving through the crowd toward the back door, a tall, lean shadow disappearing into the darker shadows of the hallway. Abby was left alone with her confession, sticky and exposed on the bar between the pig napkin holder and her half-finished drink. The charged silence she’d felt earlier had now condensed into a single, aching point in her throat.
She waited for five minutes, counting the rotations of the ceiling fan. He didn’t come back.
With a leaden heart, she pulled some cash from her wallet, left it on the bar, and followed him.
The back alley was a canyon of brick and dumpsters, lit by a single buzzing security light. The electric smell was stronger here, mixed with rotting garbage and wet pavement. Lee was there, leaning against the wall, head tilted back. He had a cigarette in his fingers, but it wasn’t lit. He was just holding it.
“I’m sorry,” Abby said, her voice small in the alley.
“For what?” He didn’t look at her. “Being nice? That’s your fatal flaw, Brooks. You’re just nice.”
“It wasn’t just nice. It was selfish. I’m your… I’m providing you shelter. It’s not right for me to say those things. It puts you in a spot.” She hugged herself, the night air chilling her through her sweater.
Lee was silent for a long time. Then he pushed off the wall and turned. The security light cut across his face, highlighting the sharp line of his cheekbone, the soft bow of his lip. He did look pretty. Beautiful, even. It was a fact, simple and devastating as geometry.
“You want to know what I’m good at, Abby?” he asked, his voice dangerously calm. “Since we’re doing truths tonight. I’m good at transactions. I’m good at making someone feel good for ten minutes in exchange for a twenty-dollar bill. It’s a skill. It’s clean. No one pretends it’s anything else.”
He took a step closer. The predatory grace of his movement was new, something she’d never seen from him. It was from the street, from surviving. “You’re talking about love. You’re talking about pretty. That’s not a currency I understand. So if this is going somewhere, you need to be clear. Because I don’t do ambiguous. I do this.”
Before she could process it, he’d closed the distance. His hand came up, not to touch her face, but to cradle the air beside her jaw. His touch, when it finally landed, was on her shoulder, guiding her gently but firmly to turn her back to the wall. It was not romantic. It was clinical. He dropped to his knees on the dirty asphalt.
Her brain stuttered, frozen. “Lee… what are you—”
“A transaction,” he said, looking up at her. His eyes were hollow, a performer slipping into a familiar, despised role. “You house me. You feed me. You look at me like I’m something whole. This is what I can give back. It’s the only thing I know how to give that’s worth anything.”
The horror washed over her, cold and sobering. This was her fault. Her drunk, clumsy confession had twisted his shame into this grotesque offer. He was trying to balance the scales in the only way he comprehended.
“No.” The word came out strangled. She reached down, her fingers trembling as they touched his hair, not to push him away, but to still him. “Lee, get up. Please.”
He stayed there, rigid. A tremor ran through him.
“That’s not what I want,” she said, her voice breaking. “I don’t want a transaction. I just… wanted you to know someone sees you. Really sees you. And thinks you’re worthy of more than that.”
For a second, he didn’t move. He remained crouched on the ground, a figure of utter defeat. Then his shoulders slumped. The performance shattered. He braced his hands on his knees and pushed himself up, turning away from her to lean on the dumpster, his back rising and falling with quick, shallow breaths.
“Just go home, Abby,” he said, the words muffled. “I’ll be there later. Or I won’t. Don’t wait up.”
She wanted to touch him. To fix it. But she had broken it, with her good intentions and her gin-loosened love. All she could do was stand there in the reeking alley, the buzzing light the only witness, as the person she cared for most dissolved into shadows before her eyes.
Finally, she turned and walked away, each step echoing with the sound of a door she wasn’t sure could ever be fully opened again.