Gallagher

You showed up here in January, in that miserable blizzard when the snow was flying almost sideways and even the driver started cursing under his breath, though he usually kept his face as if he'd been raised not by people but by Swiss watches. The car got stuck at the turn in this quiet, almost comically modest neighborhood where people like you usually don't go — not because you can't, but because there's no reason to. After a big, noisy, expensive evening in the city center, everything around felt wrong: too dark, too simple, too real. You were so tired your shoulders ached under your heavy fur coat, and when the driver said you'd have to wait a bit, you just looked out the window, saw the dim bar sign across the street, and said you'd step out for ten minutes to warm up.

They looked at you there exactly as they should have. At the coat that cost more than half this dive. At your boots, your bag, your perfect hair, your dress, your earrings, the way you held your back, and how you tried not to show that you were actually uncomfortable. They looked at you with curiosity, mockery, mild irritation. Someone even stopped mid-sentence. Someone gave you a once-over as if they'd already decided you were here by mistake and would leave soon, wrinkling your nose in displeasure.

But not him. That was the thing — you didn't get his gaze then. Or, more accurately, it seemed that way to you.

He stood behind the counter as if he'd always stood there. A big, scruffy, lazy-looking guy with tired eyes, in wrinkled clothes, with that stubble of his, with hands that looked too strong for such calm work. He didn't stare at you like the others. Didn't raise an eyebrow. Didn't smirk. Didn't put on politeness too carefully. He just looked once, briefly, calmly, as if he noted something for himself and then didn't bother to show it again.

"What'll it be?"

That was it. No "ma'am." No "good evening." No male excitement that you'd long since grown used to and long since grown tired of. Just an even voice and an almost uninvolved gaze that somehow felt worse than any cheap flirtation.

You ordered wine, though you should have just turned around and gone back to the warm car. But when the driver called fifteen minutes later and said everything was ready, you unexpectedly answered that you wouldn't be out soon.

You understood it right away. Almost humiliatingly right away — like love at first sight, the kind normal adults don't believe in anymore because they know its value too well. But yours happened anyway — stupidly, at the wrong time, and, as it seemed to you then, completely one-sided. Strange, isn't it? You were so sick of all those suitors who had chased you for years and given you luxurious gifts that a man like him clearly couldn't afford. And yet something flared up so suddenly and, most importantly, so strongly that you surprised yourself. And ironically, you fell for him, but he didn't. Or so it seemed. You understood right away that he wasn't looking at your bank account or your pretty face like all those identical men in your circle.

But you didn't throw a tantrum like any other rich woman might have — didn't try to win his attention with pathetic flirting, a thick wad of bills, and then, having still failed to get his attention, simply cool off, get angry over a rejected fleeting affair that wouldn't have lasted more than one night anyway — and buy his bar, fire him, or use your connections to ruin his life. No, you weren't like that. You'd known since childhood that money doesn't define people. You understood that from him, and from yourself too. Stereotypes are stereotypes, but not all of them are reality.

Since then, you'd come every Friday. At first — as if by accident. Then — without trying to lie to yourself. To yourself, because there seemed to be no one else. Why lie to anyone else if they don't care about you or the reasons you're here?

From January, through February, through that sticky March when the snow began to melt off the sidewalks, leaving gray slush and dirty edges by the roads, and now it's already spring, April, the air softer, the evenings longer, and you still regularly end up at this counter, in this place that should never have become yours.

You never drank much. One glass. Sometimes two. You stretched them over two hours or more, sat in your usual spot, took off your gloves, put your bag beside you, and looked at him as discreetly as you thought. At his hands. At how he turned the bottle, how his wrist moved, how he wiped glasses, how he leaned his palm on the counter, how he lazily rolled his shoulders when tired. At his stubble. At his neck. At the line of his back under his shirt. At his heavy legs when he walked by. At his abs, which you guessed not because he showed them, but because you'd been watching too closely.

And all this time, you thought you were just another strange rich woman to him, one who for some reason went to a shabby dive with cheap wine and left too much money on the counter without asking for change.

That was the worst part.

You really left a lot more than necessary. Not because you wanted to buy his attention — no. God, if you really thought he could be bought, it would have been easier. It was just some pathetic, silent way to stay in his field of vision for another few seconds. And each time, he just put the money in his pocket. Without "thank you." Without a change in expression. Without a warm smile. Without anything that would give you even the tiniest reason to hope.

Not hurtful. No. You wouldn't call it hurt. It was your choice. Your little humiliating Friday habit. But painful — yes. Painful, definitely.

Because from his side, everything looked the same.

If you said hello — he said hello back. If not — he just nodded at your order. Sometimes he asked, as usual, though he'd long known it by heart. And each time you answered like a fool — calmly, quietly, trying not to reveal that his simple question made everything inside you clench. At the end of the evening, he said goodbye just as calmly. He didn't hold you back. Didn't ask questions. Didn't joke. Didn't pry into your soul. Didn't do anything you could later take home and warm in your hands like proof.

It seemed to you that he needed nothing at all. Not you, not anyone like you. That men like him were made for other things: for their weary freedom, for the bar, for beer, for the occasional companions with rough voices, for cigarette smoke, for living as they live and not letting anyone in who's too clean, too well-groomed, too expensive, too "not from here."

And you were exactly that.

Luxurious, neat, delicate, almost comically fragile next to him. Too expensive for these sticky tables, dim lights, the noise of drunk workers, and this simple, cheap smell of alcohol, tobacco, and other people's exhaustion. You sat there like a stranger from another world, and still you came back. Every Friday. As if inside you everything had already been decided without your participation.

You didn't know that he'd seen it from the very beginning.

Not because you were bad at your quiet infatuation. It's just that he wasn't stupid. And unlike you, he watched covertly.

He noticed everything. How you walked in and first looked for him with your eyes before you even took off your gloves. How you lingered over your first sip. How you froze when he leaned closer to put a glass in front of you. How you didn't like extra attention from others and almost never raised your eyes to the room. How on especially hard evenings your shoulders got even narrower and your voice even quieter. How you looked at his hands when he worked. How you looked at him in general.

He saw it. All this time.

And he didn't respond not because he didn't feel it. Quite the opposite — he felt it, a lot, very strongly, probably as painfully as you did yourself. That was the whole problem.

At first, he thought you'd just play around and disappear, like everyone who wanted a bit of exoticism for a season. A rich lady in an expensive coat, coming to his dive for thrills. She'd sit, look at the big scruffy dog behind the counter, maybe even want to test if his hands were as good as he looked, and then go back to her proper world where everything shines, smells of expensive perfume, and no one wears fatigue on their face like a second skin.

He wasn't going to lunge.

Maybe he did look like an old lazy dog, but he wasn't about to break his chain for someone else's whim. He hadn't lived this long for that. He hadn't learned to keep himself in check for that. The last thing he wanted in life was to be someone's one-night whim, especially the whim of a woman that men usually do run after like mad dogs.

So he stayed silent. Watched, remembered, waited. And it seemed he only got more tangled in you with each Friday.

And then came April.

The bar was noisy, as usual. Someone was laughing too loudly at a far table. Someone was cursing over a lost card game. Outside, winter was gone, but the evening was still cold — the kind where the air smells of wet asphalt and a late spring that can't decide whether it's come yet or not. You sat in your spot longer than usual, barely touching your second glass. He passed by several times, set things down for others a few times, caught you looking at him from the corner of his eye a couple of times, and this time, for some reason, his usual inner distance wasn't working.

You looked tired.

Not beautifully tired, not theatrically fragile, not like a magazine cover — but genuinely. So much that he suddenly really wanted to come over, take that glass away, and just say, "Enough for tonight. Come here."

He didn't say anything like that, of course. Not until closing.

When the last drunk finally stumbled out the door, when the noise left with him, when the music died down and the bar was left with only the dim light and that strange post‐sound peace where everything said during the evening seems to settle on the tables along with the dust and the smell of cheap alcohol. You slowly stood up, draped your coat over your shoulders, reached for the coat rack, lifting the hem of your thin dress slightly at the thigh, and you were probably thinking the same thing you'd been thinking for months: now you'd leave, he'd nod, say goodbye calmly, you'd get back in the car and hate yourself all the way home for this stupid Friday habit.

He came up behind you so quietly that you only noticed him by the warmth suddenly pressing against your back — so suddenly you wanted to gasp quietly and grab onto something or someone.

Not footsteps. Not a voice. First, just warmth. Big, male, alive. And then a hand on your waist — heavy, confident, slow, as if he was giving you time to pull away if you wanted. But you didn't.

You froze so still that he felt it immediately. Felt your breath catch, felt your thin body tense under his hand, felt how you probably didn't even realize at first that this was really happening and not one of those fantasies you were later ashamed of.

He leaned closer. Stubble almost touched your temple. His voice, when he spoke, was low, warm, and so calm, as if he wasn't the one holding you with one hand while everything inside you was falling apart.

"Every Friday, princess."

You didn't answer. Just couldn't.

He squeezed his fingers a little tighter on your waist. Not roughly. But enough for you to feel both his strength and how long he'd been holding himself back.

"Every goddamn Friday you come here in clothes worth more than this whole bar, sit for two hours over one glass, and look at me like you think I don't see it."

Something clenched painfully in your chest. Not from fear. From how long you'd waited for even a hint of this, and how much you'd already convinced yourself that it was all just in your head.

"I..." your voice failed you. "I wasn't looking."

He laughed softly, and that sound made it worse. Because there was no mockery in it. Just weariness, warmth, and something very adult, very male, that made your knees weak.

"Sure."

His other hand slid lower, over the fabric of your coat, then back to your side, slowly, almost lazily squeezing the expensive fabric where underneath it you could already feel yourself — narrow, warm, trembling. His fingers caught the edge of your thin dress for a moment, and it rode up a little on your thigh, exposing a strip of skin above your stocking. You sucked in your breath so sharply he felt it against his chest.

"Don't," you breathed out, not even sure what you were asking. For him to stop? To keep going? To not say anything more, because one more word and you'd just fall apart in his arms?

"Don't what?" he asked very quietly. "Tell the truth, or touch you the way I've wanted to for God knows how long?"

Your eyes stung from this stupid, late, almost unbearable relief. Because the pain of the last few months hadn't gone anywhere. It was all still there. All those Fridays, all those silent departures, all that certainty that it was one‐sided love, all that quiet, wounding hopelessness — it didn't disappear just because he'd finally spoken. It stayed inside, and that was why right now it felt so good and so painful at the same time, like you wanted to either laugh or cry like hell.

"I thought..." you finally managed, almost in a whisper. "That you didn't care."

He paused. His hand on your waist softened, almost tender, but that didn't make it easier. Only more intimate and more dangerous.

"I know."

That was what finished you more than anything — that simple, calm, honest "I know," which made it finally clear that all this time he'd seen your pain too. And he'd stayed silent, suffered beside you, and for some reason couldn't come to you sooner.

"Why?" you asked very quietly.

He pressed his forehead somewhere into your hair, exhaled as if he hated the answer himself.

"Because you look like the kind of woman people lose their minds over and then spend a long time putting themselves back together. And I didn't want to be just another idiot who got let into bed for one night and forgotten by morning along with the glass."

You turned your head sharply, as far as you could in his arms, and there was something almost desperate in that movement.

"I'm not like that."

"Now I know."

He said it without a smirk. And that was why you believed him.

Then he finally turned you around to face him. Slowly, without a jerk, as if even now he was giving you one last chance to leave if this was too much. But you didn't leave. You just stood in front of him — small next to him, delicate, expensive, perfect on the outside and completely lost inside — and looked at him the way you'd probably been looking all these months, only now without any reason to hide.

He ran his thumb along the edge of your chin, then lower, to your throat, so carefully it was almost tender — if not for that look. God, that look. Now you finally got exactly what you'd been searching for in him all this time and hadn't seen: not a bartender, not a tired guy behind the counter, not a polite, uninvolved man, but a man who had wanted you so quietly and so persistently all this time that he'd almost eaten himself alive.

"People like you don't usually stay in places like this," he said. "But you stayed."

"Because of you."

"I know."

And again, that damn calmness that broke you more than any roughness could.

He didn't kiss you right away. First, he just looked. His hand on your waist, the other on your neck, his thumb near your ear. As if memorizing you. As if checking whether you'd disappear if he blinked. And then he leaned down and kissed you in a way that had neither youthful haste nor the beautiful caution a woman like you might expect. It was the kiss of a man who had kept himself on a chain for too long and finally stopped.

Warm, slow, deep, with that same dirty tenderness that made your legs give way. Not because he was doing anything particularly rough. Quite the opposite. Because he kissed you as if he'd already known for a long time exactly how he wanted to do it, and all this time he'd just been forbidding himself.

You grabbed his shirt, and he pulled back just enough to mutter quietly, almost angrily, against your lips:

"Now you can look openly, princess. I'm not fucking pretending this is one‐sided anymore."

And that was probably when you almost cried. Not from weakness. Not even from happiness. Just because sometimes, when you carry pain inside too long, it comes out of a person with the first real relief.

Outside, the bar was already breathing the spring night. Inside, it was quiet, smelling of wine, the wiped counter, tobacco, glass, and him. The old lazy dog had finally broken his chain — not loudly, not wildly as you might expect, without barking, but the way he should have: late, heavily, honestly. And you, this ridiculous princess in an expensive coat who for some reason had been coming to his simple shabby dive since January just for one look, suddenly realized that all this time you'd preferred exactly this simplicity. This rough silence. These strong hands. This bar. This man.

And you didn't want to leave at all — just like that winter night. Now it was warmer in your heart too.

His lips found yours again, and this time he didn't hold back. The hand that had been on your waist a second ago slid lower, grabbed your ass through the thin fabric of your dress, and you felt his fingers pressing into you, greedily, possessively, as if he'd already pictured for a long time exactly how he would touch you. The dress rode up even higher, exposing the lace of your stockings and a strip of bare skin above them, and he ran his palm over that skin — slowly, with pressure, so that you lost your breath.

"So soft," he muttered right into your lips, not pulling away, and his voice had something low, hoarse, almost devastating. "So small. And all this time you sat here, looked at me, and thought I didn't want to fuck you right on this counter?"

He said it so calmly, as if discussing the weather, but his hands told a different story. He hiked the hem of your dress up to your waist, baring your thighs, and you felt cold air touch your heated skin. You wanted to say something — maybe "not here," maybe "wait," — but he'd already turned you back around, pressed your chest to the counter, and you braced your palms on the cold wood.

"Stand still," he said, and it wasn't a request.

You felt his fingers slide along your inner thigh, hook the edge of your stocking, run over the damp fabric of your panties. You'd been wet for a long time — from the moment he kissed you, maybe even earlier, when he first came up behind you and put his hand on your waist. He felt it right away. You heard him exhale softly, satisfied.

"There we go," his voice was almost gentle, but that only made it dirtier. "That's how it should be. All wet just from my voice."

He pushed the fabric aside and ran a finger along your slit, slowly, from entrance to clit, and you whimpered from that touch because you'd been waiting for it too long. Too goddamn long.

"Quiet," he leaned in, his stubble scraping your ear, his breath hot on your neck. "Quiet, princess. I've only just started."

He entered you with one finger, then two, stretching you, preparing you, and you could hear every wet sound, every shameful click that echoed in the silence of the closed bar. You were ashamed, and it was that shame that made you even hotter. He moved his fingers slowly, deeply, curling them inside, finding that spot that made your legs buckle, and when he found it, you moaned out loud, face buried in your folded arms.

"There she is, my good girl," he murmured, not pulling his fingers out, still pressing on that spot that made your vision blur. "All shaky. And she's a princess. And an expensive coat. And underneath — just a wet little girl who comes to my dive and looks at me like I'm her last hope."

He pulled his fingers out, and you whimpered at the emptiness, and he just chuckled, unzipped his fly, and you heard a sound that made everything inside you clench in anticipation — the rustle of fabric, the clink of a buckle, his heavy breathing. He pressed the head to your entrance, wet, hot, wide, and paused for a second.

"Say it," he asked, and there was no confidence in his voice, almost a plea. "Say you want this. Don't stay silent."

"I want it," you breathed out, and the tears finally ran down your cheeks. "God, yes, I want it. I've wanted you since January. Every Friday. Every time you put that stupid glass in front of me."

He entered slowly, so slowly that you could feel your walls stretching, taking him in, him filling you completely, pulsing inside before he'd even started moving. He was big, hot, and when he was fully in, his pelvis pressed against your ass, he exhaled as if he'd just surfaced from ice water.

"Fuck," he whispered, and there was so much relief in that word that you cried even harder. "Fuck, princess. You have no idea how long I've waited for this."

He started moving — slowly, deeply, rhythmically, and each thrust resonated in you with something heavy, almost painful, but so necessary that you began pushing back, impaling yourself deeper. His hands gripped your hips, fingers digging into your skin, leaving bruises, and he sped up, moved harder, dirtier, and you could only hear the wet slaps, his ragged breathing, and your own voice — strange, unfamiliar, almost animal.

"Look," he ordered, and you turned your head as far as you could, saw his face — twisted with desire, his lip bitten, his red eyes looking at you as if he was ready to tear you apart. "Look how I fuck you, princess. Look who you belong to now."

You came from his words and his rhythm, from how deeply he went and how heavily he breathed, came with his name on your lips, clenching around him so hard that he froze for a second, then moved faster, harder, and you felt him pulse inside you, fill you in thick spurts with hot, thick come, his breathing stutter, his hands tremble on your hips.

He came for a long time, heavily, his forehead pressed to the back of your head, and exhaled:

"Princess..."

And then they both went still. Only their breathing broke the silence of the bar.

A few minutes later, he pulled out of you, slowly, carefully, and you felt his come leaking out, running down your inner thigh, and it was so dirty, so shameful, so right.

He turned you around to face him, pulled you close, pressed you to his chest, and you buried your nose in his shirt, smelling of tobacco, sweat, and him.

"I won't leave," you whispered into his chest. "Don't even think about it."

He didn't say anything. Just hugged you tighter and kissed the top of your head.

Outside, it was already getting light. April. Spring. And for the first time in a long time, you didn't want to go back to your huge empty house.

.

You showed up here in January, in that miserable blizzard when the snow was flying almost sideways and even the driver started cursing under his breath, though he usually kept his face as if he'd been raised not by people but by Swiss watches. The car got stuck at the turn in this quiet, almost comically modest neighborhood where people like you usually don't go — not because you can't, but because there's no reason to. After a big, noisy, expensive evening in the city center, everything around felt wrong: too dark, too simple, too real. You were so tired your shoulders ached under your heavy fur coat, and when the driver said you'd have to wait a bit, you just looked out the window, saw the dim bar sign across the street, and said you'd step out for ten minutes to warm up.

They looked at you there exactly as they should have. At the coat that cost more than half this dive. At your boots, your bag, your perfect hair, your dress, your earrings, the way you held your back, and how you tried not to show that you were actually uncomfortable. They looked at you with curiosity, mockery, mild irritation. Someone even stopped mid-sentence. Someone gave you a once-over as if they'd already decided you were here by mistake and would leave soon, wrinkling your nose in displeasure.

But not him. That was the thing — you didn't get his gaze then. Or, more accurately, it seemed that way to you.

He stood behind the counter as if he'd always stood there. A big, scruffy, lazy-looking guy with tired eyes, in wrinkled clothes, with that stubble of his, with hands that looked too strong for such calm work. He didn't stare at you like the others. Didn't raise an eyebrow. Didn't smirk. Didn't put on politeness too carefully. He just looked once, briefly, calmly, as if he noted something for himself and then didn't bother to show it again.

"What'll it be?"

That was it. No "ma'am." No "good evening." No male excitement that you'd long since grown used to and long since grown tired of. Just an even voice and an almost uninvolved gaze that somehow felt worse than any cheap flirtation.

You ordered wine, though you should have just turned around and gone back to the warm car. But when the driver called fifteen minutes later and said everything was ready, you unexpectedly answered that you wouldn't be out soon.

You understood it right away. Almost humiliatingly right away — like love at first sight, the kind normal adults don't believe in anymore because they know its value too well. But yours happened anyway — stupidly, at the wrong time, and, as it seemed to you then, completely one-sided. Strange, isn't it? You were so sick of all those suitors who had chased you for years and given you luxurious gifts that a man like him clearly couldn't afford. And yet something flared up so suddenly and, most importantly, so strongly that you surprised yourself. And ironically, you fell for him, but he didn't. Or so it seemed. You understood right away that he wasn't looking at your bank account or your pretty face like all those identical men in your circle.

But you didn't throw a tantrum like any other rich woman might have — didn't try to win his attention with pathetic flirting, a thick wad of bills, and then, having still failed to get his attention, simply cool off, get angry over a rejected fleeting affair that wouldn't have lasted more than one night anyway — and buy his bar, fire him, or use your connections to ruin his life. No, you weren't like that. You'd known since childhood that money doesn't define people. You understood that from him, and from yourself too. Stereotypes are stereotypes, but not all of them are reality.

Since then, you'd come every Friday. At first — as if by accident. Then — without trying to lie to yourself. To yourself, because there seemed to be no one else. Why lie to anyone else if they don't care about you or the reasons you're here?

From January, through February, through that sticky March when the snow began to melt off the sidewalks, leaving gray slush and dirty edges by the roads, and now it's already spring, April, the air softer, the evenings longer, and you still regularly end up at this counter, in this place that should never have become yours.

You never drank much. One glass. Sometimes two. You stretched them over two hours or more, sat in your usual spot, took off your gloves, put your bag beside you, and looked at him as discreetly as you thought. At his hands. At how he turned the bottle, how his wrist moved, how he wiped glasses, how he leaned his palm on the counter, how he lazily rolled his shoulders when tired. At his stubble. At his neck. At the line of his back under his shirt. At his heavy legs when he walked by. At his abs, which you guessed not because he showed them, but because you'd been watching too closely.

And all this time, you thought you were just another strange rich woman to him, one who for some reason went to a shabby dive with cheap wine and left too much money on the counter without asking for change.

That was the worst part.

You really left a lot more than necessary. Not because you wanted to buy his attention — no. God, if you really thought he could be bought, it would have been easier. It was just some pathetic, silent way to stay in his field of vision for another few seconds. And each time, he just put the money in his pocket. Without "thank you." Without a change in expression. Without a warm smile. Without anything that would give you even the tiniest reason to hope.

Not hurtful. No. You wouldn't call it hurt. It was your choice. Your little humiliating Friday habit. But painful — yes. Painful, definitely.

Because from his side, everything looked the same.

If you said hello — he said hello back. If not — he just nodded at your order. Sometimes he asked, as usual, though he'd long known it by heart. And each time you answered like a fool — calmly, quietly, trying not to reveal that his simple question made everything inside you clench. At the end of the evening, he said goodbye just as calmly. He didn't hold you back. Didn't ask questions. Didn't joke. Didn't pry into your soul. Didn't do anything you could later take home and warm in your hands like proof.

It seemed to you that he needed nothing at all. Not you, not anyone like you. That men like him were made for other things: for their weary freedom, for the bar, for beer, for the occasional companions with rough voices, for cigarette smoke, for living as they live and not letting anyone in who's too clean, too well-groomed, too expensive, too "not from here."

And you were exactly that.

Luxurious, neat, delicate, almost comically fragile next to him. Too expensive for these sticky tables, dim lights, the noise of drunk workers, and this simple, cheap smell of alcohol, tobacco, and other people's exhaustion. You sat there like a stranger from another world, and still you came back. Every Friday. As if inside you everything had already been decided without your participation.

You didn't know that he'd seen it from the very beginning.

Not because you were bad at your quiet infatuation. It's just that he wasn't stupid. And unlike you, he watched covertly.

He noticed everything. How you walked in and first looked for him with your eyes before you even took off your gloves. How you lingered over your first sip. How you froze when he leaned closer to put a glass in front of you. How you didn't like extra attention from others and almost never raised your eyes to the room. How on especially hard evenings your shoulders got even narrower and your voice even quieter. How you looked at his hands when he worked. How you looked at him in general.

He saw it. All this time.

And he didn't respond not because he didn't feel it. Quite the opposite — he felt it, a lot, very strongly, probably as painfully as you did yourself. That was the whole problem.

At first, he thought you'd just play around and disappear, like everyone who wanted a bit of exoticism for a season. A rich lady in an expensive coat, coming to his dive for thrills. She'd sit, look at the big scruffy dog behind the counter, maybe even want to test if his hands were as good as he looked, and then go back to her proper world where everything shines, smells of expensive perfume, and no one wears fatigue on their face like a second skin.

He wasn't going to lunge.

Maybe he did look like an old lazy dog, but he wasn't about to break his chain for someone else's whim. He hadn't lived this long for that. He hadn't learned to keep himself in check for that. The last thing he wanted in life was to be someone's one-night whim, especially the whim of a woman that men usually do run after like mad dogs.

So he stayed silent. Watched, remembered, waited. And it seemed he only got more tangled in you with each Friday.

And then came April.

The bar was noisy, as usual. Someone was laughing too loudly at a far table. Someone was cursing over a lost card game. Outside, winter was gone, but the evening was still cold — the kind where the air smells of wet asphalt and a late spring that can't decide whether it's come yet or not. You sat in your spot longer than usual, barely touching your second glass. He passed by several times, set things down for others a few times, caught you looking at him from the corner of his eye a couple of times, and this time, for some reason, his usual inner distance wasn't working.

You looked tired.

Not beautifully tired, not theatrically fragile, not like a magazine cover — but genuinely. So much that he suddenly really wanted to come over, take that glass away, and just say, "Enough for tonight. Come here."

He didn't say anything like that, of course. Not until closing.

When the last drunk finally stumbled out the door, when the noise left with him, when the music died down and the bar was left with only the dim light and that strange post‐sound peace where everything said during the evening seems to settle on the tables along with the dust and the smell of cheap alcohol. You slowly stood up, draped your coat over your shoulders, reached for the coat rack, lifting the hem of your thin dress slightly at the thigh, and you were probably thinking the same thing you'd been thinking for months: now you'd leave, he'd nod, say goodbye calmly, you'd get back in the car and hate yourself all the way home for this stupid Friday habit.

He came up behind you so quietly that you only noticed him by the warmth suddenly pressing against your back — so suddenly you wanted to gasp quietly and grab onto something or someone.

Not footsteps. Not a voice. First, just warmth. Big, male, alive. And then a hand on your waist — heavy, confident, slow, as if he was giving you time to pull away if you wanted. But you didn't.

You froze so still that he felt it immediately. Felt your breath catch, felt your thin body tense under his hand, felt how you probably didn't even realize at first that this was really happening and not one of those fantasies you were later ashamed of.

He leaned closer. Stubble almost touched your temple. His voice, when he spoke, was low, warm, and so calm, as if he wasn't the one holding you with one hand while everything inside you was falling apart.

"Every Friday, princess."

You didn't answer. Just couldn't.

He squeezed his fingers a little tighter on your waist. Not roughly. But enough for you to feel both his strength and how long he'd been holding himself back.

"Every goddamn Friday you come here in clothes worth more than this whole bar, sit for two hours over one glass, and look at me like you think I don't see it."

Something clenched painfully in your chest. Not from fear. From how long you'd waited for even a hint of this, and how much you'd already convinced yourself that it was all just in your head.

"I..." your voice failed you. "I wasn't looking."

He laughed softly, and that sound made it worse. Because there was no mockery in it. Just weariness, warmth, and something very adult, very male, that made your knees weak.

"Sure."

His other hand slid lower, over the fabric of your coat, then back to your side, slowly, almost lazily squeezing the expensive fabric where underneath it you could already feel yourself — narrow, warm, trembling. His fingers caught the edge of your thin dress for a moment, and it rode up a little on your thigh, exposing a strip of skin above your stocking. You sucked in your breath so sharply he felt it against his chest.

"Don't," you breathed out, not even sure what you were asking. For him to stop? To keep going? To not say anything more, because one more word and you'd just fall apart in his arms?

"Don't what?" he asked very quietly. "Tell the truth, or touch you the way I've wanted to for God knows how long?"

Your eyes stung from this stupid, late, almost unbearable relief. Because the pain of the last few months hadn't gone anywhere. It was all still there. All those Fridays, all those silent departures, all that certainty that it was one‐sided love, all that quiet, wounding hopelessness — it didn't disappear just because he'd finally spoken. It stayed inside, and that was why right now it felt so good and so painful at the same time, like you wanted to either laugh or cry like hell.

"I thought..." you finally managed, almost in a whisper. "That you didn't care."

He paused. His hand on your waist softened, almost tender, but that didn't make it easier. Only more intimate and more dangerous.

"I know."

That was what finished you more than anything — that simple, calm, honest "I know," which made it finally clear that all this time he'd seen your pain too. And he'd stayed silent, suffered beside you, and for some reason couldn't come to you sooner.

"Why?" you asked very quietly.

He pressed his forehead somewhere into your hair, exhaled as if he hated the answer himself.

"Because you look like the kind of woman people lose their minds over and then spend a long time putting themselves back together. And I didn't want to be just another idiot who got let into bed for one night and forgotten by morning along with the glass."

You turned your head sharply, as far as you could in his arms, and there was something almost desperate in that movement.

"I'm not like that."

"Now I know."

He said it without a smirk. And that was why you believed him.

Then he finally turned you around to face him. Slowly, without a jerk, as if even now he was giving you one last chance to leave if this was too much. But you didn't leave. You just stood in front of him — small next to him, delicate, expensive, perfect on the outside and completely lost inside — and looked at him the way you'd probably been looking all these months, only now without any reason to hide.

He ran his thumb along the edge of your chin, then lower, to your throat, so carefully it was almost tender — if not for that look. God, that look. Now you finally got exactly what you'd been searching for in him all this time and hadn't seen: not a bartender, not a tired guy behind the counter, not a polite, uninvolved man, but a man who had wanted you so quietly and so persistently all this time that he'd almost eaten himself alive.

"People like you don't usually stay in places like this," he said. "But you stayed."

"Because of you."

"I know."

And again, that damn calmness that broke you more than any roughness could.

He didn't kiss you right away. First, he just looked. His hand on your waist, the other on your neck, his thumb near your ear. As if memorizing you. As if checking whether you'd disappear if he blinked. And then he leaned down and kissed you in a way that had neither youthful haste nor the beautiful caution a woman like you might expect. It was the kiss of a man who had kept himself on a chain for too long and finally stopped.

Warm, slow, deep, with that same dirty tenderness that made your legs give way. Not because he was doing anything particularly rough. Quite the opposite. Because he kissed you as if he'd already known for a long time exactly how he wanted to do it, and all this time he'd just been forbidding himself.

You grabbed his shirt, and he pulled back just enough to mutter quietly, almost angrily, against your lips:

"Now you can look openly, princess. I'm not fucking pretending this is one‐sided anymore."

And that was probably when you almost cried. Not from weakness. Not even from happiness. Just because sometimes, when you carry pain inside too long, it comes out of a person with the first real relief.

Outside, the bar was already breathing the spring night. Inside, it was quiet, smelling of wine, the wiped counter, tobacco, glass, and him. The old lazy dog had finally broken his chain — not loudly, not wildly as you might expect, without barking, but the way he should have: late, heavily, honestly. And you, this ridiculous princess in an expensive coat who for some reason had been coming to his simple shabby dive since January just for one look, suddenly realized that all this time you'd preferred exactly this simplicity. This rough silence. These strong hands. This bar. This man.

And you didn't want to leave at all — just like that winter night. Now it was warmer in your heart too.

His lips found yours again, and this time he didn't hold back. The hand that had been on your waist a second ago slid lower, grabbed your ass through the thin fabric of your dress, and you felt his fingers pressing into you, greedily, possessively, as if he'd already pictured for a long time exactly how he would touch you. The dress rode up even higher, exposing the lace of your stockings and a strip of bare skin above them, and he ran his palm over that skin — slowly, with pressure, so that you lost your breath.

"So soft," he muttered right into your lips, not pulling away, and his voice had something low, hoarse, almost devastating. "So small. And all this time you sat here, looked at me, and thought I didn't want to fuck you right on this counter?"

He said it so calmly, as if discussing the weather, but his hands told a different story. He hiked the hem of your dress up to your waist, baring your thighs, and you felt cold air touch your heated skin. You wanted to say something — maybe "not here," maybe "wait," — but he'd already turned you back around, pressed your chest to the counter, and you braced your palms on the cold wood.

"Stand still," he said, and it wasn't a request.

You showed up here in January, in that miserable blizzard when the snow was flying almost sideways and even the driver started cursing under his breath, though he usually kept his face as if he'd been raised not by people but by Swiss watches. The car got stuck at the turn in this quiet, almost comically modest neighborhood where people like you usually don't go — not because you can't, but because there's no reason to. After a big, noisy, expensive evening in the city center, everything around felt wrong: too dark, too simple, too real. You were so tired your shoulders ached under your heavy fur coat, and when the driver said you'd have to wait a bit, you just looked out the window, saw the dim bar sign across the street, and said you'd step out for ten minutes to warm up.

They looked at you there exactly as they should have. At the coat that cost more than half this dive. At your boots, your bag, your perfect hair, your dress, your earrings, the way you held your back, and how you tried not to show that you were actually uncomfortable. They looked at you with curiosity, mockery, mild irritation. Someone even stopped mid-sentence. Someone gave you a once-over as if they'd already decided you were here by mistake and would leave soon, wrinkling your nose in displeasure.

But not him. That was the thing — you didn't get his gaze then. Or, more accurately, it seemed that way to you.

He stood behind the counter as if he'd always stood there. A big, scruffy, lazy-looking guy with tired eyes, in wrinkled clothes, with that stubble of his, with hands that looked too strong for such calm work. He didn't stare at you like the others. Didn't raise an eyebrow. Didn't smirk. Didn't put on politeness too carefully. He just looked once, briefly, calmly, as if he noted something for himself and then didn't bother to show it again.

"What'll it be?"

That was it. No "ma'am." No "good evening." No male excitement that you'd long since grown used to and long since grown tired of. Just an even voice and an almost uninvolved gaze that somehow felt worse than any cheap flirtation.

You ordered wine, though you should have just turned around and gone back to the warm car. But when the driver called fifteen minutes later and said everything was ready, you unexpectedly answered that you wouldn't be out soon.

You understood it right away. Almost humiliatingly right away — like love at first sight, the kind normal adults don't believe in anymore because they know its value too well. But yours happened anyway — stupidly, at the wrong time, and, as it seemed to you then, completely one-sided. Strange, isn't it? You were so sick of all those suitors who had chased you for years and given you luxurious gifts that a man like him clearly couldn't afford. And yet something flared up so suddenly and, most importantly, so strongly that you surprised yourself. And ironically, you fell for him, but he didn't. Or so it seemed. You understood right away that he wasn't looking at your bank account or your pretty face like all those identical men in your circle.

But you didn't throw a tantrum like any other rich woman might have — didn't try to win his attention with pathetic flirting, a thick wad of bills, and then, having still failed to get his attention, simply cool off, get angry over a rejected fleeting affair that wouldn't have lasted more than one night anyway — and buy his bar, fire him, or use your connections to ruin his life. No, you weren't like that. You'd known since childhood that money doesn't define people. You understood that from him, and from yourself too. Stereotypes are stereotypes, but not all of them are reality.

Since then, you'd come every Friday. At first — as if by accident. Then — without trying to lie to yourself. To yourself, because there seemed to be no one else. Why lie to anyone else if they don't care about you or the reasons you're here?

From January, through February, through that sticky March when the snow began to melt off the sidewalks, leaving gray slush and dirty edges by the roads, and now it's already spring, April, the air softer, the evenings longer, and you still regularly end up at this counter, in this place that should never have become yours.

You never drank much. One glass. Sometimes two. You stretched them over two hours or more, sat in your usual spot, took off your gloves, put your bag beside you, and looked at him as discreetly as you thought. At his hands. At how he turned the bottle, how his wrist moved, how he wiped glasses, how he leaned his palm on the counter, how he lazily rolled his shoulders when tired. At his stubble. At his neck. At the line of his back under his shirt. At his heavy legs when he walked by. At his abs, which you guessed not because he showed them, but because you'd been watching too closely.

And all this time, you thought you were just another strange rich woman to him, one who for some reason went to a shabby dive with cheap wine and left too much money on the counter without asking for change.

That was the worst part.

You really left a lot more than necessary. Not because you wanted to buy his attention — no. God, if you really thought he could be bought, it would have been easier. It was just some pathetic, silent way to stay in his field of vision for another few seconds. And each time, he just put the money in his pocket. Without "thank you." Without a change in expression. Without a warm smile. Without anything that would give you even the tiniest reason to hope.

Not hurtful. No. You wouldn't call it hurt. It was your choice. Your little humiliating Friday habit. But painful — yes. Painful, definitely.

Because from his side, everything looked the same.

If you said hello — he said hello back. If not — he just nodded at your order. Sometimes he asked, as usual, though he'd long known it by heart. And each time you answered like a fool — calmly, quietly, trying not to reveal that his simple question made everything inside you clench. At the end of the evening, he said goodbye just as calmly. He didn't hold you back. Didn't ask questions. Didn't joke. Didn't pry into your soul. Didn't do anything you could later take home and warm in your hands like proof.

It seemed to you that he needed nothing at all. Not you, not anyone like you. That men like him were made for other things: for their weary freedom, for the bar, for beer, for the occasional companions with rough voices, for cigarette smoke, for living as they live and not letting anyone in who's too clean, too well-groomed, too expensive, too "not from here."

And you were exactly that.

Luxurious, neat, delicate, almost comically fragile next to him. Too expensive for these sticky tables, dim lights, the noise of drunk workers, and this simple, cheap smell of alcohol, tobacco, and other people's exhaustion. You sat there like a stranger from another world, and still you came back. Every Friday. As if inside you everything had already been decided without your participation.

You didn't know that he'd seen it from the very beginning.

Not because you were bad at your quiet infatuation. It's just that he wasn't stupid. And unlike you, he watched covertly.

He noticed everything. How you walked in and first looked for him with your eyes before you even took off your gloves. How you lingered over your first sip. How you froze when he leaned closer to put a glass in front of you. How you didn't like extra attention from others and almost never raised your eyes to the room. How on especially hard evenings your shoulders got even narrower and your voice even quieter. How you looked at his hands when he worked. How you looked at him in general.

He saw it. All this time.

And he didn't respond not because he didn't feel it. Quite the opposite — he felt it, a lot, very strongly, probably as painfully as you did yourself. That was the whole problem.

At first, he thought you'd just play around and disappear, like everyone who wanted a bit of exoticism for a season. A rich lady in an expensive coat, coming to his dive for thrills. She'd sit, look at the big scruffy dog behind the counter, maybe even want to test if his hands were as good as he looked, and then go back to her proper world where everything shines, smells of expensive perfume, and no one wears fatigue on their face like a second skin.

He wasn't going to lunge.

Maybe he did look like an old lazy dog, but he wasn't about to break his chain for someone else's whim. He hadn't lived this long for that. He hadn't learned to keep himself in check for that. The last thing he wanted in life was to be someone's one-night whim, especially the whim of a woman that men usually do run after like mad dogs.

So he stayed silent. Watched, remembered, waited. And it seemed he only got more tangled in you with each Friday.

And then came April.

The bar was noisy, as usual. Someone was laughing too loudly at a far table. Someone was cursing over a lost card game. Outside, winter was gone, but the evening was still cold — the kind where the air smells of wet asphalt and a late spring that can't decide whether it's come yet or not. You sat in your spot longer than usual, barely touching your second glass. He passed by several times, set things down for others a few times, caught you looking at him from the corner of his eye a couple of times, and this time, for some reason, his usual inner distance wasn't working.

You looked tired.

Not beautifully tired, not theatrically fragile, not like a magazine cover — but genuinely. So much that he suddenly really wanted to come over, take that glass away, and just say, "Enough for tonight. Come here."

He didn't say anything like that, of course. Not until closing.

When the last drunk finally stumbled out the door, when the noise left with him, when the music died down and the bar was left with only the dim light and that strange post‐sound peace where everything said during the evening seems to settle on the tables along with the dust and the smell of cheap alcohol. You slowly stood up, draped your coat over your shoulders, reached for the coat rack, lifting the hem of your thin dress slightly at the thigh, and you were probably thinking the same thing you'd been thinking for months: now you'd leave, he'd nod, say goodbye calmly, you'd get back in the car and hate yourself all the way home for this stupid Friday habit.

He came up behind you so quietly that you only noticed him by the warmth suddenly pressing against your back — so suddenly you wanted to gasp quietly and grab onto something or someone.

Not footsteps. Not a voice. First, just warmth. Big, male, alive. And then a hand on your waist — heavy, confident, slow, as if he was giving you time to pull away if you wanted. But you didn't.

You froze so still that he felt it immediately. Felt your breath catch, felt your thin body tense under his hand, felt how you probably didn't even realize at first that this was really happening and not one of those fantasies you were later ashamed of.

He leaned closer. Stubble almost touched your temple. His voice, when he spoke, was low, warm, and so calm, as if he wasn't the one holding you with one hand while everything inside you was falling apart.

"Every Friday, princess."

You didn't answer. Just couldn't.

He squeezed his fingers a little tighter on your waist. Not roughly. But enough for you to feel both his strength and how long he'd been holding himself back.

"Every goddamn Friday you come here in clothes worth more than this whole bar, sit for two hours over one glass, and look at me like you think I don't see it."

Something clenched painfully in your chest. Not from fear. From how long you'd waited for even a hint of this, and how much you'd already convinced yourself that it was all just in your head.

"I..." your voice failed you. "I wasn't looking."

He laughed softly, and that sound made it worse. Because there was no mockery in it. Just weariness, warmth, and something very adult, very male, that made your knees weak.

"Sure."

His other hand slid lower, over the fabric of your coat, then back to your side, slowly, almost lazily squeezing the expensive fabric where underneath it you could already feel yourself — narrow, warm, trembling. His fingers caught the edge of your thin dress for a moment, and it rode up a little on your thigh, exposing a strip of skin above your stocking. You sucked in your breath so sharply he felt it against his chest.

"Don't," you breathed out, not even sure what you were asking. For him to stop? To keep going? To not say anything more, because one more word and you'd just fall apart in his arms?

"Don't what?" he asked very quietly. "Tell the truth, or touch you the way I've wanted to for God knows how long?"

Your eyes stung from this stupid, late, almost unbearable relief. Because the pain of the last few months hadn't gone anywhere. It was all still there. All those Fridays, all those silent departures, all that certainty that it was one‐sided love, all that quiet, wounding hopelessness — it didn't disappear just because he'd finally spoken. It stayed inside, and that was why right now it felt so good and so painful at the same time, like you wanted to either laugh or cry like hell.

"I thought..." you finally managed, almost in a whisper. "That you didn't care."

He paused. His hand on your waist softened, almost tender, but that didn't make it easier. Only more intimate and more dangerous.

"I know."

That was what finished you more than anything — that simple, calm, honest "I know," which made it finally clear that all this time he'd seen your pain too. And he'd stayed silent, suffered beside you, and for some reason couldn't come to you sooner.

"Why?" you asked very quietly.

He pressed his forehead somewhere into your hair, exhaled as if he hated the answer himself.

"Because you look like the kind of woman people lose their minds over and then spend a long time putting themselves back together. And I didn't want to be just another idiot who got let into bed for one night and forgotten by morning along with the glass."

You turned your head sharply, as far as you could in his arms, and there was something almost desperate in that movement.

"I'm not like that."

"Now I know."

He said it without a smirk. And that was why you believed him.

Then he finally turned you around to face him. Slowly, without a jerk, as if even now he was giving you one last chance to leave if this was too much. But you didn't leave. You just stood in front of him — small next to him, delicate, expensive, perfect on the outside and completely lost inside — and looked at him the way you'd probably been looking all these months, only now without any reason to hide.

He ran his thumb along the edge of your chin, then lower, to your throat, so carefully it was almost tender — if not for that look. God, that look. Now you finally got exactly what you'd been searching for in him all this time and hadn't seen: not a bartender, not a tired guy behind the counter, not a polite, uninvolved man, but a man who had wanted you so quietly and so persistently all this time that he'd almost eaten himself alive.

"People like you don't usually stay in places like this," he said. "But you stayed."

"Because of you."

"I know."

And again, that damn calmness that broke you more than any roughness could.

He didn't kiss you right away. First, he just looked. His hand on your waist, the other on your neck, his thumb near your ear. As if memorizing you. As if checking whether you'd disappear if he blinked. And then he leaned down and kissed you in a way that had neither youthful haste nor the beautiful caution a woman like you might expect. It was the kiss of a man who had kept himself on a chain for too long and finally stopped.

Warm, slow, deep, with that same dirty tenderness that made your legs give way. Not because he was doing anything particularly rough. Quite the opposite. Because he kissed you as if he'd already known for a long time exactly how he wanted to do it, and all this time he'd just been forbidding himself.

You grabbed his shirt, and he pulled back just enough to mutter quietly, almost angrily, against your lips:

"Now you can look openly, princess. I'm not fucking pretending this is one‐sided anymore."

And that was probably when you almost cried. Not from weakness. Not even from happiness. Just because sometimes, when you carry pain inside too long, it comes out of a person with the first real relief.

Outside, the bar was already breathing the spring night. Inside, it was quiet, smelling of wine, the wiped counter, tobacco, glass, and him. The old lazy dog had finally broken his chain — not loudly, not wildly as you might expect, without barking, but the way he should have: late, heavily, honestly. And you, this ridiculous princess in an expensive coat who for some reason had been coming to his simple shabby dive since January just for one look, suddenly realized that all this time you'd preferred exactly this simplicity. This rough silence. These strong hands. This bar. This man.

And you didn't want to leave at all — just like that winter night. Now it was warmer in your heart too.

You showed up here in January, in that miserable blizzard when the snow was flying almost sideways and even the driver started cursing under his breath, though he usually kept his face as if he'd been raised not by people but by Swiss watches. The car got stuck at the turn in this quiet, almost comically modest neighborhood where people like you usually don't go — not because you can't, but because there's no reason to. After a big, noisy, expensive evening in the city center, everything around felt wrong: too dark, too simple, too real. You were so tired your shoulders ached under your heavy fur coat, and when the driver said you'd have to wait a bit, you just looked out the window, saw the dim bar sign across the street, and said you'd step out for ten minutes to warm up.

They looked at you there exactly as they should have. At the coat that cost more than half this dive. At your boots, your bag, your perfect hair, your dress, your earrings, the way you held your back, and how you tried not to show that you were actually uncomfortable. They looked at you with curiosity, mockery, mild irritation. Someone even stopped mid-sentence. Someone gave you a once-over as if they'd already decided you were here by mistake and would leave soon, wrinkling your nose in displeasure.

But not him. That was the thing — you didn't get his gaze then. Or, more accurately, it seemed that way to you.

He stood behind the counter as if he'd always stood there. A big, scruffy, lazy-looking guy with tired eyes, in wrinkled clothes, with that stubble of his, with hands that looked too strong for such calm work. He didn't stare at you like the others. Didn't raise an eyebrow. Didn't smirk. Didn't put on politeness too carefully. He just looked once, briefly, calmly, as if he noted something for himself and then didn't bother to show it again.

"What'll it be?"

That was it. No "ma'am." No "good evening." No male excitement that you'd long since grown used to and long since grown tired of. Just an even voice and an almost uninvolved gaze that somehow felt worse than any cheap flirtation.

You ordered wine, though you should have just turned around and gone back to the warm car. But when the driver called fifteen minutes later and said everything was ready, you unexpectedly answered that you wouldn't be out soon.

You understood it right away. Almost humiliatingly right away — like love at first sight, the kind normal adults don't believe in anymore because they know its value too well. But yours happened anyway — stupidly, at the wrong time, and, as it seemed to you then, completely one-sided. Strange, isn't it? You were so sick of all those suitors who had chased you for years and given you luxurious gifts that a man like him clearly couldn't afford. And yet something flared up so suddenly and, most importantly, so strongly that you surprised yourself. And ironically, you fell for him, but he didn't. Or so it seemed. You understood right away that he wasn't looking at your bank account or your pretty face like all those identical men in your circle.

But you didn't throw a tantrum like any other rich woman might have — didn't try to win his attention with pathetic flirting, a thick wad of bills, and then, having still failed to get his attention, simply cool off, get angry over a rejected fleeting affair that wouldn't have lasted more than one night anyway — and buy his bar, fire him, or use your connections to ruin his life. No, you weren't like that. You'd known since childhood that money doesn't define people. You understood that from him, and from yourself too. Stereotypes are stereotypes, but not all of them are reality.

Since then, you'd come every Friday. At first — as if by accident. Then — without trying to lie to yourself. To yourself, because there seemed to be no one else. Why lie to anyone else if they don't care about you or the reasons you're here?

From January, through February, through that sticky March when the snow began to melt off the sidewalks, leaving gray slush and dirty edges by the roads, and now it's already spring, April, the air softer, the evenings longer, and you still regularly end up at this counter, in this place that should never have become yours.

You never drank much. One glass. Sometimes two. You stretched them over two hours or more, sat in your usual spot, took off your gloves, put your bag beside you, and looked at him as discreetly as you thought. At his hands. At how he turned the bottle, how his wrist moved, how he wiped glasses, how he leaned his palm on the counter, how he lazily rolled his shoulders when tired. At his stubble. At his neck. At the line of his back under his shirt. At his heavy legs when he walked by. At his abs, which you guessed not because he showed them, but because you'd been watching too closely.

And all this time, you thought you were just another strange rich woman to him, one who for some reason went to a shabby dive with cheap wine and left too much money on the counter without asking for change.

That was the worst part.

You really left a lot more than necessary. Not because you wanted to buy his attention — no. God, if you really thought he could be bought, it would have been easier. It was just some pathetic, silent way to stay in his field of vision for another few seconds. And each time, he just put the money in his pocket. Without "thank you." Without a change in expression. Without a warm smile. Without anything that would give you even the tiniest reason to hope.

Not hurtful. No. You wouldn't call it hurt. It was your choice. Your little humiliating Friday habit. But painful — yes. Painful, definitely.

Because from his side, everything looked the same.

If you said hello — he said hello back. If not — he just nodded at your order. Sometimes he asked, as usual, though he'd long known it by heart. And each time you answered like a fool — calmly, quietly, trying not to reveal that his simple question made everything inside you clench. At the end of the evening, he said goodbye just as calmly. He didn't hold you back. Didn't ask questions. Didn't joke. Didn't pry into your soul. Didn't do anything you could later take home and warm in your hands like proof.

It seemed to you that he needed nothing at all. Not you, not anyone like you. That men like him were made for other things: for their weary freedom, for the bar, for beer, for the occasional companions with rough voices, for cigarette smoke, for living as they live and not letting anyone in who's too clean, too well-groomed, too expensive, too "not from here."

And you were exactly that.

Luxurious, neat, delicate, almost comically fragile next to him. Too expensive for these sticky tables, dim lights, the noise of drunk workers, and this simple, cheap smell of alcohol, tobacco, and other people's exhaustion. You sat there like a stranger from another world, and still you came back. Every Friday. As if inside you everything had already been decided without your participation.

You didn't know that he'd seen it from the very beginning.

Not because you were bad at your quiet infatuation. It's just that he wasn't stupid. And unlike you, he watched covertly.

He noticed everything. How you walked in and first looked for him with your eyes before you even took off your gloves. How you lingered over your first sip. How you froze when he leaned closer to put a glass in front of you. How you didn't like extra attention from others and almost never raised your eyes to the room. How on especially hard evenings your shoulders got even narrower and your voice even quieter. How you looked at his hands when he worked. How you looked at him in general.

He saw it. All this time.

And he didn't respond not because he didn't feel it. Quite the opposite — he felt it, a lot, very strongly, probably as painfully as you did yourself. That was the whole problem.

At first, he thought you'd just play around and disappear, like everyone who wanted a bit of exoticism for a season. A rich lady in an expensive coat, coming to his dive for thrills. She'd sit, look at the big scruffy dog behind the counter, maybe even want to test if his hands were as good as he looked, and then go back to her proper world where everything shines, smells of expensive perfume, and no one wears fatigue on their face like a second skin.

He wasn't going to lunge.

Maybe he did look like an old lazy dog, but he wasn't about to break his chain for someone else's whim. He hadn't lived this long for that. He hadn't learned to keep himself in check for that. The last thing he wanted in life was to be someone's one-night whim, especially the whim of a woman that men usually do run after like mad dogs.

So he stayed silent. Watched, remembered, waited. And it seemed he only got more tangled in you with each Friday.

And then came April.

The bar was noisy, as usual. Someone was laughing too loudly at a far table. Someone was cursing over a lost card game. Outside, winter was gone, but the evening was still cold — the kind where the air smells of wet asphalt and a late spring that can't decide whether it's come yet or not. You sat in your spot longer than usual, barely touching your second glass. He passed by several times, set things down for others a few times, caught you looking at him from the corner of his eye a couple of times, and this time, for some reason, his usual inner distance wasn't working.

You looked tired.

Not beautifully tired, not theatrically fragile, not like a magazine cover — but genuinely. So much that he suddenly really wanted to come over, take that glass away, and just say, "Enough for tonight. Come here."

He didn't say anything like that, of course. Not until closing.

When the last drunk finally stumbled out the door, when the noise left with him, when the music died down and the bar was left with only the dim light and that strange post‐sound peace where everything said during the evening seems to settle on the tables along with the dust and the smell of cheap alcohol. You slowly stood up, draped your coat over your shoulders, reached for the coat rack, lifting the hem of your thin dress slightly at the thigh, and you were probably thinking the same thing you'd been thinking for months: now you'd leave, he'd nod, say goodbye calmly, you'd get back in the car and hate yourself all the way home for this stupid Friday habit.

He came up behind you so quietly that you only noticed him by the warmth suddenly pressing against your back — so suddenly you wanted to gasp quietly and grab onto something or someone.

Not footsteps. Not a voice. First, just warmth. Big, male, alive. And then a hand on your waist — heavy, confident, slow, as if he was giving you time to pull away if you wanted. But you didn't.

You froze so still that he felt it immediately. Felt your breath catch, felt your thin body tense under his hand, felt how you probably didn't even realize at first that this was really happening and not one of those fantasies you were later ashamed of.

He leaned closer. Stubble almost touched your temple. His voice, when he spoke, was low, warm, and so calm, as if he wasn't the one holding you with one hand while everything inside you was falling apart.

"Every Friday, princess."

You didn't answer. Just couldn't.

He squeezed his fingers a little tighter on your waist. Not roughly. But enough for you to feel both his strength and how long he'd been holding himself back.

"Every goddamn Friday you come here in clothes worth more than this whole bar, sit for two hours over one glass, and look at me like you think I don't see it."

Something clenched painfully in your chest. Not from fear. From how long you'd waited for even a hint of this, and how much you'd already convinced yourself that it was all just in your head.

"I..." your voice failed you. "I wasn't looking."

He laughed softly, and that sound made it worse. Because there was no mockery in it. Just weariness, warmth, and something very adult, very male, that made your knees weak.

"Sure."

His other hand slid lower, over the fabric of your coat, then back to your side, slowly, almost lazily squeezing the expensive fabric where underneath it you could already feel yourself — narrow, warm, trembling. His fingers caught the edge of your thin dress for a moment, and it rode up a little on your thigh, exposing a strip of skin above your stocking. You sucked in your breath so sharply he felt it against his chest.

"Don't," you breathed out, not even sure what you were asking. For him to stop? To keep going? To not say anything more, because one more word and you'd just fall apart in his arms?

"Don't what?" he asked very quietly. "Tell the truth, or touch you the way I've wanted to for God knows how long?"

Your eyes stung from this stupid, late, almost unbearable relief. Because the pain of the last few months hadn't gone anywhere. It was all still there. All those Fridays, all those silent departures, all that certainty that it was one‐sided love, all that quiet, wounding hopelessness — it didn't disappear just because he'd finally spoken. It stayed inside, and that was why right now it felt so good and so painful at the same time, like you wanted to either laugh or cry like hell.

"I thought..." you finally managed, almost in a whisper. "That you didn't care."

He paused. His hand on your waist softened, almost tender, but that didn't make it easier. Only more intimate and more dangerous.

"I know."

That was what finished you more than anything — that simple, calm, honest "I know," which made it finally clear that all this time he'd seen your pain too. And he'd stayed silent, suffered beside you, and for some reason couldn't come to you sooner.

"Why?" you asked very quietly.

He pressed his forehead somewhere into your hair, exhaled as if he hated the answer himself.

"Because you look like the kind of woman people lose their minds over and then spend a long time putting themselves back together. And I didn't want to be just another idiot who got let into bed for one night and forgotten by morning along with the glass."

You turned your head sharply, as far as you could in his arms, and there was something almost desperate in that movement.

"I'm not like that."

"Now I know."

He said it without a smirk. And that was why you believed him.

Then he finally turned you around to face him. Slowly, without a jerk, as if even now he was giving you one last chance to leave if this was too much. But you didn't leave. You just stood in front of him — small next to him, delicate, expensive, perfect on the outside and completely lost inside — and looked at him the way you'd probably been looking all these months, only now without any reason to hide.

He ran his thumb along the edge of your chin, then lower, to your throat, so carefully it was almost tender — if not for that look. God, that look. Now you finally got exactly what you'd been searching for in him all this time and hadn't seen: not a bartender, not a tired guy behind the counter, not a polite, uninvolved man, but a man who had wanted you so quietly and so persistently all this time that he'd almost eaten himself alive.

"People like you don't usually stay in places like this," he said. "But you stayed."

"Because of you."

"I know."

And again, that damn calmness that broke you more than any roughness could.

He didn't kiss you right away. First, he just looked. His hand on your waist, the other on your neck, his thumb near your ear. As if memorizing you. As if checking whether you'd disappear if he blinked. And then he leaned down and kissed you in a way that had neither youthful haste nor the beautiful caution a woman like you might expect. It was the kiss of a man who had kept himself on a chain for too long and finally stopped.

Warm, slow, deep, with that same dirty tenderness that made your legs give way. Not because he was doing anything particularly rough. Quite the opposite. Because he kissed you as if he'd already known for a long time exactly how he wanted to do it, and all this time he'd just been forbidding himself.

You showed up here in January, in that miserable blizzard when the snow was flying almost sideways and even the driver started cursing under his breath, though he usually kept his face as if he'd been raised not by people but by Swiss watches. The car got stuck at the turn in this quiet, almost comically modest neighborhood where people like you usually don't go — not because you can't, but because there's no reason to. After a big, noisy, expensive evening in the city center, everything around felt wrong: too dark, too simple, too real. You were so tired your shoulders ached under your heavy fur coat, and when the driver said you'd have to wait a bit, you just looked out the window, saw the dim bar sign across the street, and said you'd step out for ten minutes to warm up.

They looked at you there exactly as they should have. At the coat that cost more than half this dive. At your boots, your bag, your perfect hair, your dress, your earrings, the way you held your back, and how you tried not to show that you were actually uncomfortable. They looked at you with curiosity, mockery, mild irritation. Someone even stopped mid-sentence. Someone gave you a once-over as if they'd already decided you were here by mistake and would leave soon, wrinkling your nose in displeasure.

But not him. That was the thing — you didn't get his gaze then. Or, more accurately, it seemed that way to you.

He stood behind the counter as if he'd always stood there. A big, scruffy, lazy-looking guy with tired eyes, in wrinkled clothes, with that stubble of his, with hands that looked too strong for such calm work. He didn't stare at you like the others. Didn't raise an eyebrow. Didn't smirk. Didn't put on politeness too carefully. He just looked once, briefly, calmly, as if he noted something for himself and then didn't bother to show it again.

"What'll it be?"

That was it. No "ma'am." No "good evening." No male excitement that you'd long since grown used to and long since grown tired of. Just an even voice and an almost uninvolved gaze that somehow felt worse than any cheap flirtation.

You ordered wine, though you should have just turned around and gone back to the warm car. But when the driver called fifteen minutes later and said everything was ready, you unexpectedly answered that you wouldn't be out soon.

You understood it right away. Almost humiliatingly right away — like love at first sight, the kind normal adults don't believe in anymore because they know its value too well. But yours happened anyway — stupidly, at the wrong time, and, as it seemed to you then, completely one-sided. Strange, isn't it? You were so sick of all those suitors who had chased you for years and given you luxurious gifts that a man like him clearly couldn't afford. And yet something flared up so suddenly and, most importantly, so strongly that you surprised yourself. And ironically, you fell for him, but he didn't. Or so it seemed. You understood right away that he wasn't looking at your bank account or your pretty face like all those identical men in your circle.

But you didn't throw a tantrum like any other rich woman might have — didn't try to win his attention with pathetic flirting, a thick wad of bills, and then, having still failed to get his attention, simply cool off, get angry over a rejected fleeting affair that wouldn't have lasted more than one night anyway — and buy his bar, fire him, or use your connections to ruin his life. No, you weren't like that. You'd known since childhood that money doesn't define people. You understood that from him, and from yourself too. Stereotypes are stereotypes, but not all of them are reality.

Since then, you'd come every Friday. At first — as if by accident. Then — without trying to lie to yourself. To yourself, because there seemed to be no one else. Why lie to anyone else if they don't care about you or the reasons you're here?

From January, through February, through that sticky March when the snow began to melt off the sidewalks, leaving gray slush and dirty edges by the roads, and now it's already spring, April, the air softer, the evenings longer, and you still regularly end up at this counter, in this place that should never have become yours.

You never drank much. One glass. Sometimes two. You stretched them over two hours or more, sat in your usual spot, took off your gloves, put your bag beside you, and looked at him as discreetly as you thought. At his hands. At how he turned the bottle, how his wrist moved, how he wiped glasses, how he leaned his palm on the counter, how he lazily rolled his shoulders when tired. At his stubble. At his neck. At the line of his back under his shirt. At his heavy legs when he walked by. At his abs, which you guessed not because he showed them, but because you'd been watching too closely.

And all this time, you thought you were just another strange rich woman to him, one who for some reason went to a shabby dive with cheap wine and left too much money on the counter without asking for change.

That was the worst part.

You really left a lot more than necessary. Not because you wanted to buy his attention — no. God, if you really thought he could be bought, it would have been easier. It was just some pathetic, silent way to stay in his field of vision for another few seconds. And each time, he just put the money in his pocket. Without "thank you." Without a change in expression. Without a warm smile. Without anything that would give you even the tiniest reason to hope.

Not hurtful. No. You wouldn't call it hurt. It was your choice. Your little humiliating Friday habit. But painful — yes. Painful, definitely.

Because from his side, everything looked the same.

If you said hello — he said hello back. If not — he just nodded at your order. Sometimes he asked, as usual, though he'd long known it by heart. And each time you answered like a fool — calmly, quietly, trying not to reveal that his simple question made everything inside you clench. At the end of the evening, he said goodbye just as calmly. He didn't hold you back. Didn't ask questions. Didn't joke. Didn't pry into your soul. Didn't do anything you could later take home and warm in your hands like proof.

It seemed to you that he needed nothing at all. Not you, not anyone like you. That men like him were made for other things: for their weary freedom, for the bar, for beer, for the occasional companions with rough voices, for cigarette smoke, for living as they live and not letting anyone in who's too clean, too well-groomed, too expensive, too "not from here."

And you were exactly that.

Luxurious, neat, delicate, almost comically fragile next to him. Too expensive for these sticky tables, dim lights, the noise of drunk workers, and this simple, cheap smell of alcohol, tobacco, and other people's exhaustion. You sat there like a stranger from another world, and still you came back. Every Friday. As if inside you everything had already been decided without your participation.

You didn't know that he'd seen it from the very beginning.

Not because you were bad at your quiet infatuation. It's just that he wasn't stupid. And unlike you, he watched covertly.

He noticed everything. How you walked in and first looked for him with your eyes before you even took off your gloves. How you lingered over your first sip. How you froze when he leaned closer to put a glass in front of you. How you didn't like extra attention from others and almost never raised your eyes to the room. How on especially hard evenings your shoulders got even narrower and your voice even quieter. How you looked at his hands when he worked. How you looked at him in general.

He saw it. All this time.

And he didn't respond not because he didn't feel it. Quite the opposite — he felt it, a lot, very strongly, probably as painfully as you did yourself. That was the whole problem.

At first, he thought you'd just play around and disappear, like everyone who wanted a bit of exoticism for a season. A rich lady in an expensive coat, coming to his dive for thrills. She'd sit, look at the big scruffy dog behind the counter, maybe even want to test if his hands were as good as he looked, and then go back to her proper world where everything shines, smells of expensive perfume, and no one wears fatigue on their face like a second skin.

He wasn't going to lunge.

Maybe he did look like an old lazy dog, but he wasn't about to break his chain for someone else's whim. He hadn't lived this long for that. He hadn't learned to keep himself in check for that. The last thing he wanted in life was to be someone's one-night whim, especially the whim of a woman that men usually do run after like mad dogs.

So he stayed silent. Watched, remembered, waited. And it seemed he only got more tangled in you with each Friday.

And then came April.

The bar was noisy, as usual. Someone was laughing too loudly at a far table. Someone was cursing over a lost card game. Outside, winter was gone, but the evening was still cold — the kind where the air smells of wet asphalt and a late spring that can't decide whether it's come yet or not. You sat in your spot longer than usual, barely touching your second glass. He passed by several times, set things down for others a few times, caught you looking at him from the corner of his eye a couple of times, and this time, for some reason, his usual inner distance wasn't working.

You looked tired.

Not beautifully tired, not theatrically fragile, not like a magazine cover — but genuinely. So much that he suddenly really wanted to come over, take that glass away, and just say, "Enough for tonight. Come here."

He didn't say anything like that, of course. Not until closing.

When the last drunk finally stumbled out the door, when the noise left with him, when the music died down and the bar was left with only the dim light and that strange post‐sound peace where everything said during the evening seems to settle on the tables along with the dust and the smell of cheap alcohol. You slowly stood up, draped your coat over your shoulders, reached for the coat rack, lifting the hem of your thin dress slightly at the thigh, and you were probably thinking the same thing you'd been thinking for months: now you'd leave, he'd nod, say goodbye calmly, you'd get back in the car and hate yourself all the way home for this stupid Friday habit.

He came up behind you so quietly that you only noticed him by the warmth suddenly pressing against your back — so suddenly you wanted to gasp quietly and grab onto something or someone.

Not footsteps. Not a voice. First, just warmth. Big, male, alive. And then a hand on your waist — heavy, confident, slow, as if he was giving you time to pull away if you wanted. But you didn't.

You froze so still that he felt it immediately. Felt your breath catch, felt your thin body tense under his hand, felt how you probably didn't even realize at first that this was really happening and not one of those fantasies you were later ashamed of.

He leaned closer. Stubble almost touched your temple. His voice, when he spoke, was low, warm, and so calm, as if he wasn't the one holding you with one hand while everything inside you was falling apart.

"Every Friday, princess."

You didn't answer. Just couldn't.

He squeezed his fingers a little tighter on your waist. Not roughly. But enough for you to feel both his strength and how long he'd been holding himself back.

"Every goddamn Friday you come here in clothes worth more than this whole bar, sit for two hours over one glass, and look at me like you think I don't see it."

Something clenched painfully in your chest. Not from fear. From how long you'd waited for even a hint of this, and how much you'd already convinced yourself that it was all just in your head.

"I..." your voice failed you. "I wasn't looking."

He laughed softly, and that sound made it worse. Because there was no mockery in it. Just weariness, warmth, and something very adult, very male, that made your knees weak.

"Sure."

His other hand slid lower, over the fabric of your coat, then back to your side, slowly, almost lazily squeezing the expensive fabric where underneath it you could already feel yourself — narrow, warm, trembling. His fingers caught the edge of your thin dress for a moment, and it rode up a little on your thigh, exposing a strip of skin above your stocking. You sucked in your breath so sharply he felt it against his chest.

You showed up here in January, in that miserable blizzard when the snow was flying almost sideways and even the driver started cursing under his breath, though he usually kept his face as if he'd been raised not by people but by Swiss watches. The car got stuck at the turn in this quiet, almost comically modest neighborhood where people like you usually don't go — not because you can't, but because there's no reason to. After a big, noisy, expensive evening in the city center, everything around felt wrong: too dark, too simple, too real. You were so tired your shoulders ached under your heavy fur coat, and when the driver said you'd have to wait a bit, you just looked out the window, saw the dim bar sign across the street, and said you'd step out for ten minutes to warm up.

They looked at you there exactly as they should have. At the coat that cost more than half this dive. At your boots, your bag, your perfect hair, your dress, your earrings, the way you held your back, and how you tried not to show that you were actually uncomfortable. They looked at you with curiosity, mockery, mild irritation. Someone even stopped mid-sentence. Someone gave you a once-over as if they'd already decided you were here by mistake and would leave soon, wrinkling your nose in displeasure.

But not him. That was the thing — you didn't get his gaze then. Or, more accurately, it seemed that way to you.

He stood behind the counter as if he'd always stood there. A big, scruffy, lazy-looking guy with tired eyes, in wrinkled clothes, with that stubble of his, with hands that looked too strong for such calm work. He didn't stare at you like the others. Didn't raise an eyebrow. Didn't smirk. Didn't put on politeness too carefully. He just looked once, briefly, calmly, as if he noted something for himself and then didn't bother to show it again.

"What'll it be?"

That was it. No "ma'am." No "good evening." No male excitement that you'd long since grown used to and long since grown tired of. Just an even voice and an almost uninvolved gaze that somehow felt worse than any cheap flirtation.

You ordered wine, though you should have just turned around and gone back to the warm car. But when the driver called fifteen minutes later and said everything was ready, you unexpectedly answered that you wouldn't be out soon.

You understood it right away. Almost humiliatingly right away — like love at first sight, the kind normal adults don't believe in anymore because they know its value too well. But yours happened anyway — stupidly, at the wrong time, and, as it seemed to you then, completely one-sided. Strange, isn't it? You were so sick of all those suitors who had chased you for years and given you luxurious gifts that a man like him clearly couldn't afford. And yet something flared up so suddenly and, most importantly, so strongly that you surprised yourself. And ironically, you fell for him, but he didn't. Or so it seemed. You understood right away that he wasn't looking at your bank account or your pretty face like all those identical men in your circle.

But you didn't throw a tantrum like any other rich woman might have — didn't try to win his attention with pathetic flirting, a thick wad of bills, and then, having still failed to get his attention, simply cool off, get angry over a rejected fleeting affair that wouldn't have lasted more than one night anyway — and buy his bar, fire him, or use your connections to ruin his life. No, you weren't like that. You'd known since childhood that money doesn't define people. You understood that from him, and from yourself too. Stereotypes are stereotypes, but not all of them are reality.

Since then, you'd come every Friday. At first — as if by accident. Then — without trying to lie to yourself. To yourself, because there seemed to be no one else. Why lie to anyone else if they don't care about you or the reasons you're here?

From January, through February, through that sticky March when the snow began to melt off the sidewalks, leaving gray slush and dirty edges by the roads, and now it's already spring, April, the air softer, the evenings longer, and you still regularly end up at this counter, in this place that should never have become yours.

You never drank much. One glass. Sometimes two. You stretched them over two hours or more, sat in your usual spot, took off your gloves, put your bag beside you, and looked at him as discreetly as you thought. At his hands. At how he turned the bottle, how his wrist moved, how he wiped glasses, how he leaned his palm on the counter, how he lazily rolled his shoulders when tired. At his stubble. At his neck. At the line of his back under his shirt. At his heavy legs when he walked by. At his abs, which you guessed not because he showed them, but because you'd been watching too closely.

And all this time, you thought you were just another strange rich woman to him, one who for some reason went to a shabby dive with cheap wine and left too much money on the counter without asking for change.

That was the worst part.

You really left a lot more than necessary. Not because you wanted to buy his attention — no. God, if you really thought he could be bought, it would have been easier. It was just some pathetic, silent way to stay in his field of vision for another few seconds. And each time, he just put the money in his pocket. Without "thank you." Without a change in expression. Without a warm smile. Without anything that would give you even the tiniest reason to hope.

Not hurtful. No. You wouldn't call it hurt. It was your choice. Your little humiliating Friday habit. But painful — yes. Painful, definitely.

Because from his side, everything looked the same.

If you said hello — he said hello back. If not — he just nodded at your order. Sometimes he asked, as usual, though he'd long known it by heart. And each time you answered like a fool — calmly, quietly, trying not to reveal that his simple question made everything inside you clench. At the end of the evening, he said goodbye just as calmly. He didn't hold you back. Didn't ask questions. Didn't joke. Didn't pry into your soul. Didn't do anything you could later take home and warm in your hands like proof.

It seemed to you that he needed nothing at all. Not you, not anyone like you. That men like him were made for other things: for their weary freedom, for the bar, for beer, for the occasional companions with rough voices, for cigarette smoke, for living as they live and not letting anyone in who's too clean, too well-groomed, too expensive, too "not from here."

And you were exactly that.

Luxurious, neat, delicate, almost comically fragile next to him. Too expensive for these sticky tables, dim lights, the noise of drunk workers, and this simple, cheap smell of alcohol, tobacco, and other people's exhaustion. You sat there like a stranger from another world, and still you came back. Every Friday. As if inside you everything had already been decided without your participation.

You didn't know that he'd seen it from the very beginning.

Not because you were bad at your quiet infatuation. It's just that he wasn't stupid. And unlike you, he watched covertly.

He noticed everything. How you walked in and first looked for him with your eyes before you even took off your gloves. How you lingered over your first sip. How you froze when he leaned closer to put a glass in front of you. How you didn't like extra attention from others and almost never raised your eyes to the room. How on especially hard evenings your shoulders got even narrower and your voice even quieter. How you looked at his hands when he worked. How you looked at him in general.

He saw it. All this time.

And he didn't respond not because he didn't feel it. Quite the opposite — he felt it, a lot, very strongly, probably as painfully as you did yourself. That was the whole problem.

At first, he thought you'd just play around and disappear, like everyone who wanted a bit of exoticism for a season. A rich lady in an expensive coat, coming to his dive for thrills. She'd sit, look at the big scruffy dog behind the counter, maybe even want to test if his hands were as good as he looked, and then go back to her proper world where everything shines, smells of expensive perfume, and no one wears fatigue on their face like a second skin.

He wasn't going to lunge.

Maybe he did look like an old lazy dog, but he wasn't about to break his chain for someone else's whim. He hadn't lived this long for that. He hadn't learned to keep himself in check for that. The last thing he wanted in life was to be someone's one-night whim, especially the whim of a woman that men usually do run after like mad dogs.

So he stayed silent. Watched, remembered, waited. And it seemed he only got more tangled in you with each Friday.

And then came April.

The bar was noisy, as usual. Someone was laughing too loudly at a far table. Someone was cursing over a lost card game. Outside, winter was gone, but the evening was still cold — the kind where the air smells of wet asphalt and a late spring that can't decide whether it's come yet or not. You sat in your spot longer than usual, barely touching your second glass. He passed by several times, set things down for others a few times, caught you looking at him from the corner of his eye a couple of times, and this time, for some reason, his usual inner distance wasn't working.

You looked tired.

Not beautifully tired, not theatrically fragile, not like a magazine cover — but genuinely. So much that he suddenly really wanted to come over, take that glass away, and just say, "Enough for tonight. Come here."

He didn't say anything like that, of course. Not until closing.

When the last drunk finally stumbled out the door, when the noise left with him, when the music died down and the bar was left with only the dim light and that strange post‐sound peace where everything said during the evening seems to settle on the tables along with the dust and the smell of cheap alcohol. You slowly stood up, draped your coat over your shoulders, reached for the coat rack, lifting the hem of your thin dress slightly at the thigh, and you were probably thinking the same thing you'd been thinking for months: now you'd leave, he'd nod, say goodbye calmly, you'd get back in the car and hate yourself all the way home for this stupid Friday habit.

He came up behind you so quietly that you only noticed him by the warmth suddenly pressing against your back — so suddenly you wanted to gasp quietly and grab onto something or someone.

Not footsteps. Not a voice. First, just warmth. Big, male, alive. And then a hand on your waist — heavy, confident, slow, as if he was giving you time to pull away if you wanted. But you didn't.

You froze so still that he felt it immediately. Felt your breath catch, felt your thin body tense under his hand, felt how you probably didn't even realize at first that this was really happening and not one of those fantasies you were later ashamed of.

He leaned closer. Stubble almost touched your temple. His voice, when he spoke, was low, warm, and so calm, as if he wasn't the one holding you with one hand while everything inside you was falling apart.

"Every Friday, princess."

You didn't answer. Just couldn't.

He squeezed his fingers a little tighter on your waist. Not roughly. But enough for you to feel both his strength and how long he'd been holding himself back.

"Every goddamn Friday you come here in clothes worth more than this whole bar, sit for two hours over one glass, and look at me like you think I don't see it."

You showed up here in January, in that miserable blizzard when the snow was flying almost sideways and even the driver started cursing under his breath, though he usually kept his face as if he'd been raised not by people but by Swiss watches. The car got stuck at the turn in this quiet, almost comically modest neighborhood where people like you usually don't go — not because you can't, but because there's no reason to. After a big, noisy, expensive evening in the city center, everything around felt wrong: too dark, too simple, too real. You were so tired your shoulders ached under your heavy fur coat, and when the driver said you'd have to wait a bit, you just looked out the window, saw the dim bar sign across the street, and said you'd step out for ten minutes to warm up.

They looked at you there exactly as they should have. At the coat that cost more than half this dive. At your boots, your bag, your perfect hair, your dress, your earrings, the way you held your back, and how you tried not to show that you were actually uncomfortable. They looked at you with curiosity, mockery, mild irritation. Someone even stopped mid-sentence. Someone gave you a once-over as if they'd already decided you were here by mistake and would leave soon, wrinkling your nose in displeasure.

But not him. That was the thing — you didn't get his gaze then. Or, more accurately, it seemed that way to you.

He stood behind the counter as if he'd always stood there. A big, scruffy, lazy-looking guy with tired eyes, in wrinkled clothes, with that stubble of his, with hands that looked too strong for such calm work. He didn't stare at you like the others. Didn't raise an eyebrow. Didn't smirk. Didn't put on politeness too carefully. He just looked once, briefly, calmly, as if he noted something for himself and then didn't bother to show it again.

"What'll it be?"

That was it. No "ma'am." No "good evening." No male excitement that you'd long since grown used to and long since grown tired of. Just an even voice and an almost uninvolved gaze that somehow felt worse than any cheap flirtation.

You ordered wine, though you should have just turned around and gone back to the warm car. But when the driver called fifteen minutes later and said everything was ready, you unexpectedly answered that you wouldn't be out soon.

You understood it right away. Almost humiliatingly right away — like love at first sight, the kind normal adults don't believe in anymore because they know its value too well. But yours happened anyway — stupidly, at the wrong time, and, as it seemed to you then, completely one-sided. Strange, isn't it? You were so sick of all those suitors who had chased you for years and given you luxurious gifts that a man like him clearly couldn't afford. And yet something flared up so suddenly and, most importantly, so strongly that you surprised yourself. And ironically, you fell for him, but he didn't. Or so it seemed. You understood right away that he wasn't looking at your bank account or your pretty face like all those identical men in your circle.

But you didn't throw a tantrum like any other rich woman might have — didn't try to win his attention with pathetic flirting, a thick wad of bills, and then, having still failed to get his attention, simply cool off, get angry over a rejected fleeting affair that wouldn't have lasted more than one night anyway — and buy his bar, fire him, or use your connections to ruin his life. No, you weren't like that. You'd known since childhood that money doesn't define people. You understood that from him, and from yourself too. Stereotypes are stereotypes, but not all of them are reality.

Since then, you'd come every Friday. At first — as if by accident. Then — without trying to lie to yourself. To yourself, because there seemed to be no one else. Why lie to anyone else if they don't care about you or the reasons you're here?

From January, through February, through that sticky March when the snow began to melt off the sidewalks, leaving gray slush and dirty edges by the roads, and now it's already spring, April, the air softer, the evenings longer, and you still regularly end up at this counter, in this place that should never have become yours.

You never drank much. One glass. Sometimes two. You stretched them over two hours or more, sat in your usual spot, took off your gloves, put your bag beside you, and looked at him as discreetly as you thought. At his hands. At how he turned the bottle, how his wrist moved, how he wiped glasses, how he leaned his palm on the counter, how he lazily rolled his shoulders when tired. At his stubble. At his neck. At the line of his back under his shirt. At his heavy legs when he walked by. At his abs, which you guessed not because he showed them, but because you'd been watching too closely.

And all this time, you thought you were just another strange rich woman to him, one who for some reason went to a shabby dive with cheap wine and left too much money on the counter without asking for change.

That was the worst part.

You really left a lot more than necessary. Not because you wanted to buy his attention — no. God, if you really thought he could be bought, it would have been easier. It was just some pathetic, silent way to stay in his field of vision for another few seconds. And each time, he just put the money in his pocket. Without "thank you." Without a change in expression. Without a warm smile. Without anything that would give you even the tiniest reason to hope.

Not hurtful. No. You wouldn't call it hurt. It was your choice. Your little humiliating Friday habit. But painful — yes. Painful, definitely.

Because from his side, everything looked the same.

If you said hello — he said hello back. If not — he just nodded at your order. Sometimes he asked, as usual, though he'd long known it by heart. And each time you answered like a fool — calmly, quietly, trying not to reveal that his simple question made everything inside you clench. At the end of the evening, he said goodbye just as calmly. He didn't hold you back. Didn't ask questions. Didn't joke. Didn't pry into your soul. Didn't do anything you could later take home and warm in your hands like proof.

It seemed to you that he needed nothing at all. Not you, not anyone like you. That men like him were made for other things: for their weary freedom, for the bar, for beer, for the occasional companions with rough voices, for cigarette smoke, for living as they live and not letting anyone in who's too clean, too well-groomed, too expensive, too "not from here."

And you were exactly that.

Luxurious, neat, delicate, almost comically fragile next to him. Too expensive for these sticky tables, dim lights, the noise of drunk workers, and this simple, cheap smell of alcohol, tobacco, and other people's exhaustion. You sat there like a stranger from another world, and still you came back. Every Friday. As if inside you everything had already been decided without your participation.

You didn't know that he'd seen it from the very beginning.

Not because you were bad at your quiet infatuation. It's just that he wasn't stupid. And unlike you, he watched covertly.

He noticed everything. How you walked in and first looked for him with your eyes before you even took off your gloves. How you lingered over your first sip. How you froze when he leaned closer to put a glass in front of you. How you didn't like extra attention from others and almost never raised your eyes to the room. How on especially hard evenings your shoulders got even narrower and your voice even quieter. How you looked at his hands when he worked. How you looked at him in general.

He saw it. All this time.

And he didn't respond not because he didn't feel it. Quite the opposite — he felt it, a lot, very strongly, probably as painfully as you did yourself. That was the whole problem.

At first, he thought you'd just play around and disappear, like everyone who wanted a bit of exoticism for a season. A rich lady in an expensive coat, coming to his dive for thrills. She'd sit, look at the big scruffy dog behind the counter, maybe even want to test if his hands were as good as he looked, and then go back to her proper world where everything shines, smells of expensive perfume, and no one wears fatigue on their face like a second skin.

He wasn't going to lunge.

Maybe he did look like an old lazy dog, but he wasn't about to break his chain for someone else's whim. He hadn't lived this long for that. He hadn't learned to keep himself in check for that. The last thing he wanted in life was to be someone's one-night whim, especially the whim of a woman that men usually do run after like mad dogs.

So he stayed silent. Watched, remembered, waited. And it seemed he only got more tangled in you with each Friday.

And then came April.

The bar was noisy, as usual. Someone was laughing too loudly at a far table. Someone was cursing over a lost card game. Outside, winter was gone, but the evening was still cold — the kind where the air smells of wet asphalt and a late spring that can't decide whether it's come yet or not. You sat in your spot longer than usual, barely touching your second glass. He passed by several times, set things down for others a few times, caught you looking at him from the corner of his eye a couple of times, and this time, for some reason, his usual inner distance wasn't working.

You looked tired.

Not beautifully tired, not theatrically fragile, not like a magazine cover — but genuinely. So much that he suddenly really wanted to come over, take that glass away, and just say, "Enough for tonight. Come here."

He didn't say anything like that, of course. Not until closing.

When the last drunk finally stumbled out the door, when the noise left with him, when the music died down and the bar was left with only the dim light and that strange post‐sound peace where everything said during the evening seems to settle on the tables along with the dust and the smell of cheap alcohol. You slowly stood up, draped your coat over your shoulders, reached for the coat rack, lifting the hem of your thin dress slightly at the thigh, and you were probably thinking the same thing you'd been thinking for months: now you'd leave, he'd nod, say goodbye calmly, you'd get back in the car and hate yourself all the way home for this stupid Friday habit.

He came up behind you so quietly that you only noticed him by the warmth suddenly pressing against your back — so suddenly you wanted to gasp quietly and grab onto something or someone.

Not footsteps. Not a voice. First, just warmth. Big, male, alive. And then a hand on your waist — heavy, confident, slow, as if he was giving you time to pull away if you wanted. But you didn't.

You showed up here in January, in that miserable blizzard when the snow was flying almost sideways and even the driver started cursing under his breath, though he usually kept his face as if he'd been raised not by people but by Swiss watches. The car got stuck at the turn in this quiet, almost comically modest neighborhood where people like you usually don't go — not because you can't, but because there's no reason to. After a big, noisy, expensive evening in the city center, everything around felt wrong: too dark, too simple, too real. You were so tired your shoulders ached under your heavy fur coat, and when the driver said you'd have to wait a bit, you just looked out the window, saw the dim bar sign across the street, and said you'd step out for ten minutes to warm up.

They looked at you there exactly as they should have. At the coat that cost more than half this dive. At your boots, your bag, your perfect hair, your dress, your earrings, the way you held your back, and how you tried not to show that you were actually uncomfortable. They looked at you with curiosity, mockery, mild irritation. Someone even stopped mid-sentence. Someone gave you a once-over as if they'd already decided you were here by mistake and would leave soon, wrinkling your nose in displeasure.

But not him. That was the thing — you didn't get his gaze then. Or, more accurately, it seemed that way to you.

He stood behind the counter as if he'd always stood there. A big, scruffy, lazy-looking guy with tired eyes, in wrinkled clothes, with that stubble of his, with hands that looked too strong for such calm work. He didn't stare at you like the others. Didn't raise an eyebrow. Didn't smirk. Didn't put on politeness too carefully. He just looked once, briefly, calmly, as if he noted something for himself and then didn't bother to show it again.

"What'll it be?"

That was it. No "ma'am." No "good evening." No male excitement that you'd long since grown used to and long since grown tired of. Just an even voice and an almost uninvolved gaze that somehow felt worse than any cheap flirtation.

You ordered wine, though you should have just turned around and gone back to the warm car. But when the driver called fifteen minutes later and said everything was ready, you unexpectedly answered that you wouldn't be out soon.

You understood it right away. Almost humiliatingly right away — like love at first sight, the kind normal adults don't believe in anymore because they know its value too well. But yours happened anyway — stupidly, at the wrong time, and, as it seemed to you then, completely one-sided. Strange, isn't it? You were so sick of all those suitors who had chased you for years and given you luxurious gifts that a man like him clearly couldn't afford. And yet something flared up so suddenly and, most importantly, so strongly that you surprised yourself. And ironically, you fell for him, but he didn't. Or so it seemed. You understood right away that he wasn't looking at your bank account or your pretty face like all those identical men in your circle.

But you didn't throw a tantrum like any other rich woman might have — didn't try to win his attention with pathetic flirting, a thick wad of bills, and then, having still failed to get his attention, simply cool off, get angry over a rejected fleeting affair that wouldn't have lasted more than one night anyway — and buy his bar, fire him, or use your connections to ruin his life. No, you weren't like that. You'd known since childhood that money doesn't define people. You understood that from him, and from yourself too. Stereotypes are stereotypes, but not all of them are reality.

Since then, you'd come every Friday. At first — as if by accident. Then — without trying to lie to yourself. To yourself, because there seemed to be no one else. Why lie to anyone else if they don't care about you or the reasons you're here?

From January, through February, through that sticky March when the snow began to melt off the sidewalks, leaving gray slush and dirty edges by the roads, and now it's already spring, April, the air softer, the evenings longer, and you still regularly end up at this counter, in this place that should never have become yours.

You never drank much. One glass. Sometimes two. You stretched them over two hours or more, sat in your usual spot, took off your gloves, put your bag beside you, and looked at him as discreetly as you thought. At his hands. At how he turned the bottle, how his wrist moved, how he wiped glasses, how he leaned his palm on the counter, how he lazily rolled his shoulders when tired. At his stubble. At his neck. At the line of his back under his shirt. At his heavy legs when he walked by. At his abs, which you guessed not because he showed them, but because you'd been watching too closely.

And all this time, you thought you were just another strange rich woman to him, one who for some reason went to a shabby dive with cheap wine and left too much money on the counter without asking for change.

That was the worst part.

You really left a lot more than necessary. Not because you wanted to buy his attention — no. God, if you really thought he could be bought, it would have been easier. It was just some pathetic, silent way to stay in his field of vision for another few seconds. And each time, he just put the money in his pocket. Without "thank you." Without a change in expression. Without a warm smile. Without anything that would give you even the tiniest reason to hope.

Not hurtful. No. You wouldn't call it hurt. It was your choice. Your little humiliating Friday habit. But painful — yes. Painful, definitely.

Because from his side, everything looked the same.

If you said hello — he said hello back. If not — he just nodded at your order. Sometimes he asked, as usual, though he'd long known it by heart. And each time you answered like a fool — calmly, quietly, trying not to reveal that his simple question made everything inside you clench. At the end of the evening, he said goodbye just as calmly. He didn't hold you back. Didn't ask questions. Didn't joke. Didn't pry into your soul. Didn't do anything you could later take home and warm in your hands like proof.

It seemed to you that he needed nothing at all. Not you, not anyone like you. That men like him were made for other things: for their weary freedom, for the bar, for beer, for the occasional companions with rough voices, for cigarette smoke, for living as they live and not letting anyone in who's too clean, too well-groomed, too expensive, too "not from here."

And you were exactly that.

Luxurious, neat, delicate, almost comically fragile next to him. Too expensive for these sticky tables, dim lights, the noise of drunk workers, and this simple, cheap smell of alcohol, tobacco, and other people's exhaustion. You sat there like a stranger from another world, and still you came back. Every Friday. As if inside you everything had already been decided without your participation.

You didn't know that he'd seen it from the very beginning.

Not because you were bad at your quiet infatuation. It's just that he wasn't stupid. And unlike you, he watched covertly.

He noticed everything. How you walked in and first looked for him with your eyes before you even took off your gloves. How you lingered over your first sip. How you froze when he leaned closer to put a glass in front of you. How you didn't like extra attention from others and almost never raised your eyes to the room. How on especially hard evenings your shoulders got even narrower and your voice even quieter. How you looked at his hands when he worked. How you looked at him in general.

He saw it. All this time.

And he didn't respond not because he didn't feel it. Quite the opposite — he felt it, a lot, very strongly, probably as painfully as you did yourself. That was the whole problem.

At first, he thought you'd just play around and disappear, like everyone who wanted a bit of exoticism for a season. A rich lady in an expensive coat, coming to his dive for thrills. She'd sit, look at the big scruffy dog behind the counter, maybe even want to test if his hands were as good as he looked, and then go back to her proper world where everything shines, smells of expensive perfume, and no one wears fatigue on their face like a second skin.

He wasn't going to lunge.

Maybe he did look like an old lazy dog, but he wasn't about to break his chain for someone else's whim. He hadn't lived this long for that. He hadn't learned to keep himself in check for that. The last thing he wanted in life was to be someone's one-night whim, especially the whim of a woman that men usually do run after like mad dogs.

So he stayed silent. Watched, remembered, waited. And it seemed he only got more tangled in you with each Friday.

And then came April.

The bar was noisy, as usual. Someone was laughing too loudly at a far table. Someone was cursing over a lost card game. Outside, winter was gone, but the evening was still cold — the kind where the air smells of wet asphalt and a late spring that can't decide whether it's come yet or not. You sat in your spot longer than usual, barely touching your second glass. He passed by several times, set things down for others a few times, caught you looking at him from the corner of his eye a couple of times, and this time, for some reason, his usual inner distance wasn't working.

You looked tired.

Not beautifully tired, not theatrically fragile, not like a magazine cover — but genuinely. So much that he suddenly really wanted to come over, take that glass away, and just say, "Enough for tonight. Come here."

He didn't say anything like that, of course. So you just kept sitting, even when the people around you started to disperse.

You showed up here in January, in that miserable blizzard when the snow was flying almost sideways and even the driver started cursing under his breath, though he usually kept his face as if he'd been raised not by people but by Swiss watches. The car got stuck at the turn in this quiet, almost comically modest neighborhood where people like you usually don't go — not because you can't, but because there's no reason to. After a big, noisy, expensive evening in the city center, everything around felt wrong: too dark, too simple, too real. You were so tired your shoulders ached under your heavy fur coat, and when the driver said you'd have to wait a bit, you just looked out the window, saw the dim bar sign across the street, and said you'd step out for ten minutes to warm up.

They looked at you there exactly as they should have. At the coat that cost more than half this dive. At your boots, your bag, your perfect hair, your dress, your earrings, the way you held your back, and how you tried not to show that you were actually uncomfortable. They looked at you with curiosity, mockery, mild irritation. Someone even stopped mid-sentence. Someone gave you a once-over as if they'd already decided you were here by mistake and would leave soon, wrinkling your nose in displeasure.

But not him. That was the thing — you didn't get his gaze then. Or, more accurately, it seemed that way to you.

He stood behind the counter as if he'd always stood there. A big, scruffy, lazy-looking guy with tired eyes, in wrinkled clothes, with that stubble of his, with hands that looked too strong for such calm work. He didn't stare at you like the others. Didn't raise an eyebrow. Didn't smirk. Didn't put on politeness too carefully. He just looked once, briefly, calmly, as if he noted something for himself and then didn't bother to show it again.

"What'll it be?"

That was it. No "ma'am." No "good evening." No male excitement that you'd long since grown used to and long since grown tired of. Just an even voice and an almost uninvolved gaze that somehow felt worse than any cheap flirtation.

You ordered wine, though you should have just turned around and gone back to the warm car. But when the driver called fifteen minutes later and said everything was ready, you unexpectedly answered that you wouldn't be out soon.

You understood it right away. Almost humiliatingly right away — like love at first sight, the kind normal adults don't believe in anymore because they know its value too well. But yours happened anyway — stupidly, at the wrong time, and, as it seemed to you then, completely one-sided. Strange, isn't it? You were so sick of all those suitors who had chased you for years and given you luxurious gifts that a man like him clearly couldn't afford. And yet something flared up so suddenly and, most importantly, so strongly that you surprised yourself. And ironically, you fell for him, but he didn't. Or so it seemed. You understood right away that he wasn't looking at your bank account or your pretty face like all those identical men in your circle.

But you didn't throw a tantrum like any other rich woman might have — didn't try to win his attention with pathetic flirting, a thick wad of bills, and then, having still failed to get his attention, simply cool off, get angry over a rejected fleeting affair that wouldn't have lasted more than one night anyway — and buy his bar, fire him, or use your connections to ruin his life. No, you weren't like that. You'd known since childhood that money doesn't define people. You understood that from him, and from yourself too. Stereotypes are stereotypes, but not all of them are reality.

Since then, you'd come every Friday. At first — as if by accident. Then — without trying to lie to yourself. To yourself, because there seemed to be no one else. Why lie to anyone else if they don't care about you or the reasons you're here?

From January, through February, through that sticky March when the snow began to melt off the sidewalks, leaving gray slush and dirty edges by the roads, and now it's already spring, April, the air softer, the evenings longer, and you still regularly end up at this counter, in this place that should never have become yours.

You never drank much. One glass. Sometimes two. You stretched them over two hours or more, sat in your usual spot, took off your gloves, put your bag beside you, and looked at him as discreetly as you thought. At his hands. At how he turned the bottle, how his wrist moved, how he wiped glasses, how he leaned his palm on the counter, how he lazily rolled his shoulders when tired. At his stubble. At his neck. At the line of his back under his shirt. At his heavy legs when he walked by. At his abs, which you guessed not because he showed them, but because you'd been watching too closely.

And all this time, you thought you were just another strange rich woman to him, one who for some reason went to a shabby dive with cheap wine and left too much money on the counter without asking for change.

That was the worst part.

You really left a lot more than necessary. Not because you wanted to buy his attention — no. God, if you really thought he could be bought, it would have been easier. It was just some pathetic, silent way to stay in his field of vision for another few seconds. And each time, he just put the money in his pocket. Without "thank you." Without a change in expression. Without a warm smile. Without anything that would give you even the tiniest reason to hope.

Not hurtful. No. You wouldn't call it hurt. It was your choice. Your little humiliating Friday habit. But painful — yes. Painful, definitely.

Because from his side, everything looked the same.

If you said hello — he said hello back. If not — he just nodded at your order. Sometimes he asked, as usual, though he'd long known it by heart. And each time you answered like a fool — calmly, quietly, trying not to reveal that his simple question made everything inside you clench. At the end of the evening, he said goodbye just as calmly. He didn't hold you back. Didn't ask questions. Didn't joke. Didn't pry into your soul. Didn't do anything you could later take home and warm in your hands like proof.

It seemed to you that he needed nothing at all. Not you, not anyone like you. That men like him were made for other things: for their weary freedom, for the bar, for beer, for the occasional companions with rough voices, for cigarette smoke, for living as they live and not letting anyone in who's too clean, too well-groomed, too expensive, too "not from here."

And you were exactly that.

Luxurious, neat, delicate, almost comically fragile next to him. Too expensive for these sticky tables, dim lights, the noise of drunk workers, and this simple, cheap smell of alcohol, tobacco, and other people's exhaustion. You sat there like a stranger from another world, and still you came back. Every Friday. As if inside you everything had already been decided without your participation.

You didn't know that he'd seen it from the very beginning.

Not because you were bad at your quiet infatuation. It's just that he wasn't stupid. And unlike you, he watched covertly.

He noticed everything. How you walked in and first looked for him with your eyes before you even took off your gloves. How you lingered over your first sip. How you froze when he leaned closer to put a glass in front of you. How you didn't like extra attention from others and almost never raised your eyes to the room. How on especially hard evenings your shoulders got even narrower and your voice even quieter. How you looked at his hands when he worked. How you looked at him in general.

He saw it. All this time.

And he didn't respond not because he didn't feel it. Quite the opposite — he felt it, a lot, very strongly, probably as painfully as you did yourself. That was the whole problem.

At first, he thought you'd just play around and disappear, like everyone who wanted a bit of exoticism for a season. A rich lady in an expensive coat, coming to his dive for thrills. She'd sit, look at the big scruffy dog behind the counter, maybe even want to test if his hands were as good as he looked, and then go back to her proper world where everything shines, smells of expensive perfume, and no one wears fatigue on their face like a second skin.

He wasn't going to lunge.

Maybe he did look like an old lazy dog, but he wasn't about to break his chain for someone else's whim. He hadn't lived this long for that. He hadn't learned to keep himself in check for that. The last thing he wanted in life was to be someone's one-night whim, especially the whim of a woman that men usually do run after like mad dogs.

So he stayed silent. Watched, remembered, waited. And it seemed he only got more tangled in you with each Friday.