A bar. The basics: you restock, pour, clean, pour some more, have entitled servers tap their fingers on the bar top you just wiped down while shooting you dirty looks.

“I need it now,” they say. “Can you hurry? I fucked up the order.”

You listen, you nod, you pour. You smile, and frown, and cut citrus until your fingers sting. You soak the guns, clean the speed racks, count your drawer. The coins go ting, ting, ting as they shuck out of your hand and into the plastic dividers. You tell off a server for ruining your liquor count with their overly generous pours, you ignore the manager who always looks at your tits unless he’s handing you your paycheck. You are extra nice to the hostess so she ushers the best people into your section. You eavesdrop on conversations that are none of your business.

I used to be into that sort of thing.

Her husband gave it to her then left.

I’m obsessed with that show. Have you seen it?

I’ve been trying to get rid of you for years.

Pass the salt, you salty bitch.

He fucking worships her, the cow.

One tit looks like a cantaloupe, one tit looks like an avocado.

At night I still hear them speaking, broken bits of their conversation passing through my dreams. I consider another occupation, but bar life is the only life I know, and I quite enjoy it. I’m offered a job at Bronte, right off Trafalgar Square and situated on the Strand. I worked with one of the managers before I left for the States, and he told me if I were to ever find myself in these parts again to look him up. It’s an airy setup with floor to ceiling windows, decorated with the sort of color palette that Posey’s grandmother would have worn on her face: peaches and golds. I imagine most of the writers of old would have steered clear of the place, but it made non-writers feel charming to come here and sip cocktails named Billy Bones or Sgt. Pepper.

I keep a low profile, but eventually my friends hear I’m back and pass through for drinks. Some of them come in twos; some come alone. People I went to school with, or worked with, or tried to forget. They all ask the same questions: What was New York like? Did I shag anyone famous? Seattle’s just like London, yeah? No, I think. Seattle has David. London is lacking.

I hear his song—my song—on the radio all the time. I want to shut it off, but I reckon I deserve the punishment. I listen each time, to the words, his hurt, his anger, and let the ache build in the pit of my stomach. If I listen too hard, I start to remember the way his lips felt—the soft, wet comfort of them. Fuck this life, I think.

“I love this song,” someone always says.

My name is in the song, but nobody notices. No one but Posey, who jokes one day as we’re having lunch in Camden Town: “Did you fuck the guy who wrote this song? While you were across the pond?”

I stare at her, and she sits up in her seat, ramrod straight, her eyes becoming large.

“You can’t just fuck celebrities and not tell me, Yara,” she says.

“He wasn’t one. Not then. He was just a guy who came into the bar and flirted with me.”

“And what did you do to deserve a song like that?”

I picked at the bun on my burger and stared at the floor.

“Look, I don’t want to talk about it,” I say. “It’s bad enough I have to hear the bloody song everywhere I go.”

“I’m so impressed,” says Posey. “I always knew you were a muse, but you got a song on the top ten. Epic shit right there.”

“Posey!”

“All right, all right. When you’re ready, yeah?”

“How are things with you and Samantha?” I ask, trying to change the subject.

She gives me the side-eye. “How many girlfriends have I had in the last five years?”

“Too many to count.”

She points her fork at me. “Exactly.”

“So what are you saying? You’re going to break up with her?”

I pictured them the night I was at her house for the party. They’d seemed really into each other: affectionate, comfortable. But, maybe I’d been too drunk to see the truth. And wasn’t Posey always affectionate? That was just her thing. Even if you weren’t a hugger and she forced you into one, you’d suddenly make an exception.

“I don’t know. For now we’re okay.”

I want to ask more, clarify what she means, but I don’t think she knows yet.

“Ethan talks about you a lot.”

The conversation shifts again, back to me. I hate this ritual of information sharing. When you’re a bartender you can listen to everyone’s dirt without having to be personally involved. That’s the way I like it. Can’t we just sit here in silence and enjoy each other’s company that way? She drains the last of her beer, slams the bottle on the table, and looks at me expectantly. I blink at her, not sure what to say. The morning after he spent the night I’d told him I had a dentist appointment and had to leave. He’d gotten dressed, and so had I, and then I walked him downstairs, waiting until he was around the corner before returning to my flat.

He’s called a couple times since then, texted too. But, I’ve been firm about my rejection. I am in no way, shape, or form willing to date someone. I don’t know that I ever have been. Most people move through life looking for some elusive soulmate experience. I am trying my hardest to avoid it. Does that make me fucked up or wise? Who knows, who cares?

“He’s not my type,” I say, looking around for the server. If Posey is going to be launching questions for the rest of lunch I need to top off my wine.

“So, this David Lisey guy is…was—?”

She’s baiting me. I shoot her a dirty look and slouch down in my seat.

“I don’t have a type. That’s the honest truth. I believe in connections, and yes, I had one with him.”

Posey has sleepy eyes. If you didn’t know her, she gave you the impression that she was incredibly bored with whatever you were saying. When she smoked pot her lids drooped even lower, and it looked like she was sneering at you. But, at the mention of David, her eyes are wide open, like someone has just thrown water in her face.

“Did you fuck him?”

It’s a trigger. I see myself lost beneath him as he moves over me. His smooth skin beneath my fingertips, hot and damp. He’s not constrained like other men, he’s not trying to be careful with his reactions. Each time he pushes into me, he moans, his face flashing expressions that ranged from pain, to relief, to shock. I felt like music the whole time. I was an instrument and he was reveling in the way I played.

“Yeah,” I tell Posey.

She smiles. It takes a minute for me to be back in this dingy pub, the windows filmed over with a layer of scum. I can still taste him on my lips, smell his skin.

“When did you run?”

I shrug.

“I’d always meant to. So, I just stuck with it.”

“Has he tried to find you?” She drained the last of her beer, licking her lips and staring at me expectantly.

“There’s no way, really. I don’t have a Facebook, my number changed when I moved home. He knows very little about me.”

“But, he wrote you that song,” she says. “He’s trying in his own way.”

I turn away. “He’s angry with me. That’s why he wrote the song.”

“He’s angry because you left. He’s not angry you’re you.”

“That is me, though, isn’t it? I leave.”

Posey’s mouth pulls into a tight line. “Stop trying to convince the world that you’re more damaged than anyone else, Yara.”

The words come out immediately, an electric denial. “I’m not,” I say. But, maybe that’s exactly the narcissistic thing I was trying to do.

“You broke a man’s heart because you thought your love was so important it would damage him beyond recognition. And what’s a true artist anyway, Yara? What you say it is?”

I don’t even know how she’s figured that. I guess one just has to listen to the lyrics of the song. I could be angry with him for outing me like that, but the truth is I deserve it.

“I don’t understand why you’re being like this. You asked and I told you. It’s not fair that you’re attacking me for it.”

Posey touches my face like she’s searching for me underneath my skin. I don’t like when people touch my face, but when Posey does it I don’t pull away. There are too many years, too much familiarity. Her finger is on my forehead, pressing.

“You’re too much in here. You want to be a poet and you’re not. By the time you realize you’re not doomed, your life is going to be over and you’ll never have taken any risks.”

“You’re paying today,” I tell her, snatching up my bag when she drops her hand. “I won’t pay to be tortured.”