The rain drummed against the slanted roof of my little apartment, finding every loose patch of tin, every uneven surface, until the sound was everywhere.
Nights like this were supposed to be comforting. However, today, the rain only dragged me into my own head, making me think too much about things I'd rather leave alone.
Several weeks had passed since that car ride, but I still couldn't get it out of my head. I couldn't forget the way he'd looked at me. The slight curve of his mouth. How nervous I'd been. And most of all - his scent, the one that washed over me when he opened the door.
We'd been so close. Too close for me to breathe normally.
Damn, weeks had gone by since that moment, and I hadn't seen him once. He never came back to the bar. I didn't run into him on the street. He'd simply vanished.
Аll that time, I kept replaying that day over and over in my head until I couldn't tell where reality ended, and my imagination began.
I went over everything I had said that day. Maybe I'd said too much. Maybe I'd sounded like a loser. Or maybe my words had been too vague, and he'd thought I was hiding something. Which, honestly, I was, but was that really so bad? Had that been my mistake?
Or maybe I'd asked the wrong question. Maybe I'd pushed at something I shouldn't have. It crossed my mind that it might have been too personal, but I wasn't so sure. All I'd asked was where he worked. So that couldn't be the reason.
Especially since I still knew almost nothing about him.
Well, one fact I knew for certain. He was rich. That much was obvious. His car alone cost more than anything I'd ever touched in my life.
People without money do not ride around with drivers, right?
Rich people had always looked at me from above, even when I was a kid trailing behind my mother. Back then, she told me not to pay attention to the way their eyes slid over us, as if we were something they stepped around on the sidewalk.
"Don't lower your head," she used to say. "Remember, your worth isn't in your status or your origin. It's in what kind of person you choose to be. And it doesn't matter who you are, human, beastkin, or hybrid. The way they look at you is nothing but arrogance. It doesn't make you worse than them."
And I believed her.
I believed every word for as long as she was alive, for as long as she stood between me and the world, shielding me from its uglier parts, from its cruelty, from those stares, from everything they could do.
But after she was gone… everything changed.
The fear had grown many times stronger. The looks caused almost physical pain. The wealthy people with power seemed terrifyingly dangerous. So dangerous that I needed to stay as far away from them as I possibly could.
And look at me now, lying awake in the middle of the night, replaying every moment connected to the man who clearly had enough money to pay for a personal driver.
Despite this, I believed that he was different.
…Or maybe I just wanted him to be.
If he really was different, then why did I still know nothing about him? He had not even told me his name. Not that I had asked, but still, he knew mine.
Wait. Did he even know my name?
Come to think of it, I kept thinking of him as him, or that man, or something like that, and he called me bartender. It seemed there was an invisible line drawn between us, and somehow that really bothered me.
I lay there, wasting precious sleep on thoughts about the man who did not even know my name, or, if he did, saw no reason to say it out loud.
Once again, I came back to the same realization. I did not know a damn thing about him.
All I had were a few miserable fragments I had picked up here and there. It was a handful of insignificant details. They meant nothing. They should have meant nothing. And yet, pulled by some unexplainable attraction, I kept returning to them.
I didn't only think about them; I wanted more.
I wanted to know what kind of tea he drinks. Did he even drink tea? Maybe coffee? Or he didn't touch caffeine at all. Maybe he was the type to favor water or fresh juice.
Did he like the rain? Or did he hate it because rain could ruin his polished shoes? I tried to picture him walking under a storm with his hair damp. The picture was comical, and I'd love to see it in real life.
What about the sun? Did he spend his days surrounded by light, or locked in his office, hidden behind glass walls with other men of his kind?
He must have people who respected him. People who followed his lead, who trusted him without hesitation.
He probably had everything he could ever want.
So why come to our bar?
The question chased itself in circles. I had no answer. Maybe his life was dull, and he needed a distraction. Maybe the bar was his way of reminding himself that not everything had to be pristine, that life could be messy and loud.
Or maybe it was all because of me… Maybe I was nothing more than a convenient toy… Something interesting to keep his attention for a moment, something he could drop without a second thought once the entertainment wore off.
I wanted to be angry at him. I wanted to be angry at his money, at his arrogance, at his questions, at all of it. I wanted to fear him the same way I feared other rich people and anyone who had even a little power.
I wanted to. But when I tried, none of it felt real. It seemed unnatural, like I was pretending.
"God, I'm going crazy," I muttered, pulling the blanket up over my head.
As if answering me, the rain grew louder, wailing harder against the roof.
Enough.
Somewhere out there, he was sitting in his beautiful tower, living his beautiful life. And I had to work to survive. I needed sleep. Morning would come fast, and with it, another shift.
So enough of these useless thoughts.