By midnight the bar always smelled like spilled beer, cheap perfume, and the kind of regret that doesn’t hit until the sun comes up.
I liked it that way. Noise, bodies, bad lighting—anonymity disguised as atmosphere. No one looked too closely at the brunette wiping down tables in a faded band tee. No one asked why she flinched when sirens wailed outside or why she always sat with her back to the wall during breaks.
Tonight, the band was loud enough to rattle the bottles on the shelf, the bass a pulse in my ribs. The crowd swayed, laughed, yelled drink orders over the music. I moved through it like smoke, balancing a tray of empty glasses on one hand, smile clipped on like an accessory.
Another night. Another city. Another name.
“Aria, you dying on me or you good?” Zoe leaned over the bar as I passed, dark curls piled on top of her head, eyeliner smudged from rubbing at her eyes. She had glitter on her collarbone that hadn’t been there at the start of the shift, and somehow that detail felt like proof that she belonged here in a way I never would.
“Good.” I slid the tray down, grabbed the next set of clean glasses. “You’re the one flirting with every bachelorette party. You sure you’re hydrated?”
She snorted. “Alcohol is a hydration strategy. Scientifically speaking.”
“Pretty sure that’s not how science works.”
She smiled, bright and easy, and for a second the bar softened around the edges. “Hey. After close, I’m making you try that new cocktail. The blue one that looks like windshield fluid? It’s disgusting and I need you to suffer with me.”
“Tempting.” I rolled my eyes, but I felt my mouth twitch. “I’ll think about it.”
“Think fast. We’re slammed.” She jerked her chin toward the far end of the bar. “And we just got a table of suits. Rich ones. I can smell the money from here. Go be pretty and mysterious and upsell them on the overpriced whiskey.”
I followed her gaze.
The crowd had shifted. At the back, in a booth usually claimed by local regulars and aspiring guitar gods, three men in dark suits sat like they were at a private club that had accidentally been dropped in the middle of our dive.
Two of them were talking, laughing at something on a phone screen. The third sat with his body angled slightly away, one arm stretched along the back of the booth, fingers relaxed. He wasn’t laughing. He was watching.
The lighting back there was moody—blues and reds from the stage lights sliding over his face—but it didn’t matter. I saw the edges clearly enough: clean lines of a tailored jacket that didn’t belong anywhere near our sticky floors, a white shirt open at the throat, no tie. Dark hair, too neat for a musician, not neat enough for a banker. His profile was all sharp planes and indifference.
Then his head turned.
Our eyes met from across the room, cutting through bodies and smoke and neon. It hit like a spotlight.
I swallowed, fingers tightening around the tray. For half a second the air thickened, sound blurring at the edges. His gaze didn’t slide off me the way everyone else’s did, a brush of interest at best. It landed, deliberate, like a hand on the nape of my neck.
