I carefully brought the glass back to my lips and took a small sip. He was right. The next sip was easier.
He turned sideways and his breath skimmed the shell of my ear as he said, “Good girl.”
The words made me shudder and our eyes locked. Two lonely souls in a dark bar on a cold winter night. Suddenly, I desperately wanted to feel his warmth.
“So…” I’d never had a one-night stand, but there was a first time for everything. Besides, I wanted to forget. Just for one night, I wanted to feel free, worshiped… adored. Except, how could I proposition this man without risking rejection?
“You’re Greek?” I asked instead.
“Yes.”
I nodded. “I’m American.”
He let out a sardonic breath. “You don’t say.”
“Yeah.”
“So, Violet… what brings you to this bar?”
The innocuous question cut deeper than he could have known. Pain at the memory of my sister slashed through my chest, and I felt myself nosedive straight into fight or flight.
“If you don’t mind,” I said after some measured breaths, “I’d rather not go there.”
I forced a small smile that didn’t quite reach my eyes and tilted my glass slightly in his direction.
“Maybe you can tell me why you’re herealoneinstead.”
For a split second, something dark flickered across his face. Bitterness, maybe even regret. It vanished almost as quickly as it appeared, replaced by an easy, crooked smile.
“Actually,” he said, swirling the cloudy liquid until I was sure it would slosh over the edge, “I’d rather not go there either, golden one.”
Golden one.
The nickname should have sounded off coming from a stranger, but somehow it didn’t.
I nodded in quiet understanding.
For several breaths—or maybe several minutes—we sat in silence. The din of the bar swelled around us: laughter, clinking glasses, music thrumming from the speakers. And yet, my world narrowed to this man.
We stared into our respective drinks as if the answers to life’s mysteries resided at the bottom of the glass.
“How old are you, Violet?”
His voice broke the taut silence, and I snapped my head in his direction.
“Why?” I asked, narrowing my eyes slightly.
He lifted one shoulder in a lazy shrug.
“I didn’t know what else to ask,” he admitted. “Seems better than the two of us sitting here, wrestling our demons.”
He had a point.
“Twenty-one,” I said, dragging my finger through the condensation pooling on the bar top. “Old enough to drink, thank God.”
“Thank God for small mercies,” he agreed.
“And you?”
