CHAPTER TWO

ARIA’s POV

“You look like someone about to be ruined.” The stranger said flatly.

I blinked up at him. The room still tilted at its edges, my fingers were still curled around the fabric of his sleeve, and my dignity was barely somewhere on the floor between the barstool and where I was currently standing.

I straightened up and stared at him for a few seconds before snorting.

“You’re late, If you wanted to warn me, you should’ve done that three hours ago.”

His hands were still at my waist as if he hadn’t quite decided whether I would collapse the second he let go.

I looked down at where his fingers were wrapped around my arm.

“You can let go now,” I said, even though I didn’t mean it. I actually wanted him to hold me a little longer for no exact reason.

I looked at him properly now. He was tall and put together in a way that cost money. He was wearing a tan shirt, no tie, top button undone like he had loosened it himself, an expensive watch on his wrist. The polished shoes that had no business touching the sticky floor of this bar.

He looked like the kind of man who walked into rooms and didn’t need to announce himself. Like a man I wanted to get laid with tonight. I mean, why not?

“That’s quite an opening statement,” he said.

“You opened first,” I reminded him.

He looked at me for a moment, then at the line of empty glasses still seated on the counter behind me, then back at my face. Whatever assessment he was running, he kept the results to himself.

“Sit down before you fall again.”

“I wasn’t falling,” I snapped.

I noticed the almost-smile that curled up at the corner of his lips.

“Sit down,” he said again, quieter this time, and there was something in the way he said it that made my knees turn jelly. My legs complied before my pride could object. Even my urinary system were in attendance because the urge to urinate I had earlier had disappeared.

I dropped back onto the stool and he took the one beside me.

The bartender looked at the stranger, then at me, then back at the stranger with an expression that said he had seen this precise sequence of events before and had opinions about how it ended.

“What can I get you?” He asked.

“Scotch,” the stranger replied simply.

The bartender reached for the bottle while the stranger rested one forearm on the counter and looked straight ahead. For a stretch of time neither of us said anything. Just the deafening sound of music blowing out of the speakers in all corners of the bar.

I studied the stranger seated beside me without pretending I wasn’t.

His shoulders were straight but not relaxed, like the posture of a man burdened with something. He picked up his scotch when the bartender set it down and held it without drinking, turning the glass once in his hand.

“You don’t seem like someone here for the ambiance,” I said.

He turned his head toward me. “What made you say that?”

“You’re wearing a shirt that probably cost more than my monthly rent and you ordered the most expensive scotch on that shelf.” I pointed toward the back bar. “Men like you don’t end up in places like this unless they’re running from something.”

He was quiet for a moment.

“What do you mean by men like me?” He asked again.

“You look rich and affluent, used to better options.” I picked up my own glass. “This bar is a choice you made specifically because nobody who knows you would think to look here. Right?” I smiled.

He looked at me with that look that screams I have been caught.

“You’re more observant than you should be for someone who nearly introduced her face to the floor few minutes ago.”

“I function better than I look,” I said flatly.

He smiled this time.

“You’re right,” he said finally, and his voice dropped just enough that it belonged to him and the space between us and nobody else in the bar. “I’m not here for the ambiance.”

I waited to hear more but he didn’t elaborate, rather, he turned his scotch glass again in that slow, deliberate way, and I got the impression that volunteering information was not something he does easily or often.

“Family,” he said eventually. “And expectations I had no interest in meeting tonight,” he added.

“Tonight specifically, or in general?” I asked half-interested.

“Both.” He took a sip of his scotch. “Tonight, there was a dinner at my home. The kind where everyone in the room has already decided the outcome and your presence is just a formality.”

“And you left?” I asked again

“I didn’t go.”

I looked at him. “They’re still sitting at that dinner right now?”

“Presumably.” He said without any faint of guilt, which told me either he did this regularly or the dinner in question had earned the absence.

I turned my glass in my hands. “Must be nice,” I said, “having something worth running from. For me, I just have an empty apartment and a roommate I can’t look at.”

He turned toward me slightly but didn’t push for details, which I appreciated more than I expected to. He just nodded once, like he understood and looked back at the bar.

We sat like that for a while. Just two strangers sharing companionship after hiding their secrets in a bottle of liquor.

It was almost midnight now. The bar had gradually grown scanty as more people leaves. The bartender was arranging toward the close of work at the far end of the counter, stacking glasses and wiping surfaces.

At some point, the stranger still sitting beside me, whose name I still didn’t know and hadn’t thought to ask, flagged the bartender down.

“Do you have rooms available,” he asked. The bar actually has a small hotel above the bar, the kind that served the same clientele of people who needed somewhere to be that wasn’t home.

“A minute please,” the bartender said, pulling out a worn ledger from beneath the counter and flipped it open. He ran his finger down the page, then stopped. His expression shifted into a mild apologetic look of someone about to deliver an inconvenience. “Actually…” he looked up “we’re down to the last suite. We had a late booking come in an hour ago and cleaned us out.”

I stared at the bottom of my glass. Going home meant walking into that apartment with the possibility of Charles still being there, or worse, Kara, sitting in the room with that half guilt look on her face, already composing the version of events that made her the most sympathetic character in her own story.

I could not do it… not tonight. I set my glass down.

“I’ll take it,” I said.

Both the bartender and the stranger looked at me at once.

“We both need it,” I said, and then I turned to the stranger beside me with the recklessness of a woman who had already lost everything worth being careful about tonight. “You’re escaping something. I’m escaping something.” I held his gaze. “One suite, two people who have nowhere better to be.” I tilted my head slightly. “Unless you have a problem sharing.”

The bar had gone quiet enough that the jazz felt louder. He looked at me for a brief moment, something illegible moved behind those dark eyes of his, then he set his scotch glass down on the counter with a gentle click.

“I don’t have a problem,” he said.