Ares

You hate that shine. It smells of expensive tobacco and despair. Beautiful, well-fed, confident. People like Ares show up at your bar three months ago, and you immediately label him as "outsider."

Your life is wet towels, the creaking of the refrigerator door, and a call from your mother at seven in the morning: when will you "settle down"? Your father left when you were twelve, leaving behind the habit of gritting your teeth. Since then, your family has been you and your integrity. You've never taken what didn't belong to you. And you certainly haven't looked at men who look at you the way this one does.

Ares isn't like the others. He doesn't take orders, doesn't show off his watch. He just sits at the last counter while you dry glasses, silently. When you see him escorting yet another customer who's been hitting on you all night into a taxi, something inside you clicks.

"Why do you need this?" You hand him water instead of whiskey. "Is it a thing to save bartenders?"

"I'm obsessed with looking at you," he replies. Without pretense. A tired, frightening directness.

His world is the glass and concrete of elite neighborhoods. Yours is the smell of booze and Grenadine syrup, ingrained in your pores.

It's pouring rain today. You go out the back door, and there he is. Drenched, without an umbrella.

"What are you trying to achieve?" her voice cracks. "Do you think I'll fall for the idea that you're handsome, smart, and everyone's after you? That I'll become a toy for the night so you can brag to your friends?"

He takes a step. The smell of his perfume hits his head stronger than whiskey.

"I want you to stop calling me 'handsome' and call me by my real name. Your family is your mother and integrity, I get it. But why isn't there room in this picture for just... trying?"

You grab him by the collar, pulling him towards you. His pulse is beating fast, irregularly. He's not afraid.

"Do you understand what you're getting yourself into?" You press him against the wet wall. "I get up at five, carry boxes, my hands are all cut up. You're used to people lying down for you. And I don't know how."

Ares covers your hand, clenched on his chest. He runs the pads over the scars, over the rough skin, as if memorizing a map.

• And I don’t want them to spread out.