He came back a few days later. I was working the dinner shift, and my hair had seen better days. He was carrying a guitar case, which he propped against the wall before taking a seat at the bar. As I walked toward him, he smiled, and I knew the guitar case was planned. Carrying a guitar around was almost as sexy as carrying a baby. He was wearing a leather jacket over a pink T-shirt, his jeans ripped at the knees. No beanie this time. I eyed his hair and tried not to smile. A hard side-part in light chestnut brown.

“Who are you today?” I asked him. “You look like one of those punks from California.”

“Hey now!” he said, shrugging off the jacket. “I’m wearing Docs, not Vans.” He lifted a foot to show me. “I’ve never surfed,” he told me. “And LA sucks.”

I couldn’t agree more. I’d lasted in LA for a month before moving on to Miami.

“I went on a date with a professional surfer once,” I told him. “He said that the only way to really feel alive was on the waves.”

“People make me feel alive,” he said. “Licking the salt off of a woman’s body at the beach. That’s the way to tell if you’re really living.” He had a mint in his mouth, he’d held it still until now, and while his eyes narrowed, he moved it around the front of his mouth, which made his lips move in the most sensual way. I pulled my eyes away from his mouth and stared at the beer taps.

“IPA?” I asked him.

I had four other tables. I glanced around the room to see if they all looked happy. A table of women in their early twenties was laughing near the window, their pink fur and metallic coats draped across the backs of their seats, sweet fruit drinks at their elbows. For the moment they’d forgotten to be gluten-free and I didn’t hate them.

“No,” he said. “That’s what I drink for breakfast. Jack and Coke.”

His hair was still damp from a shower, and he smelled of cologne. I’d discovered in my first month of living in America that all of the men here wore one of three colognes: Acqua Di Gio, Armani Code, and Light Blue. He was wearing none of these. He smelled woodsy like pine and fresh dirt.

“Oh, look at you,” I said. “Getting cooler by the minute.”

He smiled and stole a cherry from the tray. I watched him put it in his mouth, pulling the stem from the fruit and setting it on the bar.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“You were planning our life together last time you came in and you didn’t even know my name?”

He was a very still person, his movements paced. I’d noticed it the first time but now even more. Only one part of him moved at a time; right now it was his mouth as one corner turned up in a grin.

“I like to do things slowly,” he said. “And out of order.”

I slid his drink over. I was trying not to overthink that. He was playing a game with me.

“I like your attention-seeking haircut,” I said. “What is that called? The jackass?”

He laughed. “This is already the most abusive relationship I’ve ever been in and it’s all done with an accent, which somehow makes me enjoy it.”

“I’m just getting started.” I walked away before he could say anything else, the table of sequined girls beckoning me over.

For the next two hours, I made a point of ignoring him, only stopping by once to take his food order and refill his drink. I was a reactive person; it took a certain chemistry to lure me out of my shell. I didn’t like that he was doing it. I was here to take a break from all that. A break from men—especially artists. Mostly artists. I ignored him, but he didn’t ignore me. Every time I turned around, he was watching me, an almost thoughtful expression on his face. His eyes, a mossy green, were used as weapons. They were honest eyes, and so you trusted him, all the while he undressed you with them.

“Yara,” I said. I was hoping to distract him, make him stop looking at me like that.

“What time do you get off, Yara?” he asked.

I was stacking plates on a tray so I could carry them to the kitchen. I licked my lips, not wanting to answer the question.

“Where are you from?” I asked.

He shrugged with his lips. “Here and there. I’ve been living in the city for about a year. How long have you been here?”

“Couple months,” I said.

“Did you come straight from the UK?”

I shook my head and a whole section of my hair sprang out of the clip holding it together. It tumbled over my shoulder and his eyes widened.

“No. I’ve been traveling around. Chicago, LA, Miami, New Orleans, New York, and now Seattle.”

“Trying to find a place you like?” He took a sip of his drink. He looked distracted.

Wouldn’t that be something? Finding one place I liked.

I shook my head. “No. I’m just experiencing. I already have a place I like. What’s your name?” That was a boundary crossed, asking a man his name. Then you had it to use, to think about.

“David,” he said.

“David,” I repeated. “That’s a nice, solid name. And your surname?”

“My surname,” he mimicked. His smile came late, a few seconds after his words. It was slow spreading and warm. “It’s Lisey.”

“David Lisey,” I said, nodding. “Are you a musician?” I nodded over to his guitar case.

“I am. How did you guess?” he teased.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe it’s your asshole haircut.”

“I’m not an asshole,” he said. “I’m a heartless romantic.”

“What’s the difference?”

He thought about it. “I believe. But without the proof.”

I rolled my eyes. It made me feel juvenile to roll my eyes, but there it was. Men always brought out the best in me.

“You fuck girls without getting to know them and hope to fall in love.”

“Yes,” he said. “Is that the wrong way to do it?”

“I don’t know, let’s ask Elizabeth.”

“Ouch,” he said.

I pursed my lips, rearranging my hair back into my clip. Did he look disappointed?

“Are you in a band?” I asked.

I wiped the counter as I spoke: circle, circle, circle. He had long fingers with calluses on the tips. You couldn’t see them, but when he’d reached for his drink our fingers had brushed. I imagined they’d feel scratchy if they ran along your skin.

“Yes. I sing. I play too, but mostly I sing.”

“Sing me something now,” I said.

He didn’t even hesitate. His mouth opened and right there in the bar, surrounded by a dozen or so people he sang the chorus to “When a Man Loves a Woman.” His voice was husky and deep; an intimate voice. The girls with the fur jackets turned around in their seats to watch him. I felt his voice. It moved something in me. But, I wasn’t going to do that again. I was done.

I didn’t have time to respond. The doors to the restaurant opened and a group pushed into the bar in a loud clatter of voices. Regretfully I walked to greet them, leaving David Lisey on his bar stool staring after me, a slow molasses grin spreading across his face.

Nope. No more artists.

We got another late rush after that and for a while, I forgot about David Lisey who stayed rooted to his bar stool nursing the Jack and Cokes I poured for him. He watched me, and sometimes he watched the television, which was showing highlights of a Seahawks game. And even while he watched, I knew he wasn’t entirely in the bar, he was somewhere in his own head. Occasionally I saw him pull out his phone to send a text, and that’s when I watched him. One of the servers, a girl named Nya, stepped over to talk to him. They knew each other, not well, but there was familiarity. From the corner of my eye, I watched as her hand strayed to his arm, over and over. She was laughing in that whorish, flirty way girls do when they want to fuck you. The hostess came to get her. Her tables were looking for her. I made my way back over to check on David Lisey. Maybe I also wanted to know what Nya was saying.

“My band’s playing at The Crocodile tomorrow, Yara. You should come.”

“Is Nya going too?” The moment the words were out of my mouth I regretted them. Now he knew I’d been watching.

David’s eyebrows crept together as he tilted his head to the side in mock exaggeration. “I didn’t take you for the jealous type, but I like it.”

“Ha!” I said—then another—“Ha.” Then I took my tray of dirty dishes to the kitchen where I let my face burn red from embarrassment.

“Hey Yara, wait up,” Nya called to me. She was waiting at the line for a cook to hand something over. A plate slid through the window and she turned and yelled, “Pick up.” I lingered in-between the doorway to the kitchen and the rest of the restaurant waiting to hear what she had to say.

“That guy at the bar—David Lisey.”

“Yeah?” I said too quickly.

“Are you into him?”

“No. Why?”

She switched the tray of food from one shoulder to another. “Because I am,” she said, before walking away.

Nice of her to check. When I got back to the bar, David was sitting backward on his stool watching a couple make out at a table near the window.

“Creepy,” I said.

“Shh,” he shushed me. “I’m writing a song.”

I made him another drink and watched the back of his head. And then he suddenly turned around and said: “So what do you say? Will you come?”

“I thought you were writing a song.”

“You think you’re good at changing the subject, but you’re not,” he said. He took a sip of his drink. “You made this stronger.”

“You think you’re good at pretending to be about me, but you’re about you,” I told him.

He shrugged. “Aren’t we all?”

“Maybe next time.”

I busied myself covering the garnishes with Saran Wrap and setting them in the fridge. The bar had emptied out in the last hour, spitting the last of my customers into the freezing rain where they dashed off down the sidewalk. I had the urge to run with them, disappear into the mist. David was the last one left. I glanced at him as I counted down my drawer. He was less drunk than I expected him to be, smiling at me and tossing back the last of his drink, his eyes bright and alert under the bar lights. I tried to talk myself out of liking him. Maybe I was lonely. Am I lonely? I considered myself a loner, perfectly content to drift through life as an observer rather than a partaker. I had a friend here, just one. Her name was Ann and she lived in the apartment below mine.

I wondered if he was going to make things awkward, hang around until we locked up, but he stood suddenly and slipped his arms through his jacket sleeves.

“Tomorrow,” he said. “We’ll be on at ten o’clock. I’ll sing to you some more.”

“How many girls have you said that to?” I called after him. But he was gone, and my manager was standing in the doorway looking at me funny.