Chapter 3
Eleanor lifted her head, vision swimming slightly as she focused on a clean, youthful face. He looked around twenty, sharp-featured with a playful glint in his eyes and a lazy smirk that gave him a mischievous edge.
Wearing a black casual jacket over a plain white tee, he had his collar loosened just enough to show a hint of his collarbone.
Relaxed and unapologetically carefree, he was the complete opposite of Ryan's rigid, polished elite demeanor.
"What's it to you?" Eleanor replied, her voice softer and weaker than usual, carrying no sharp edge at all.
The young man laughed, pulled out the seat beside her, and sat down. He snapped his fingers toward the bartender. "Get her a glass of warm water, please."
Eleanor blinked in surprise.
"Long Island Iced Tea hits harder than you think. You feel fine now, but you'll crash hard in thirty minutes," he explained casually.
"You... know a lot about cocktails," Eleanor muttered.
"I've tried just about every drink there is." He grinned, easy and playful. "I've got that cocktail all figured out."
Eleanor couldn't help but let a faint smile tug at her lips, though she quickly suppressed it.
"What's your name?" she asked.
"Lucas Reed. And you?"
Eleanor parted her lips to give her full name, yet the words that came out were unplanned. "Just call me Ellie."
Ellie. Only her mother had ever called her that. Ryan had used the nickname barely a handful of times in three years.
"Ellie." Lucas rolled the name off his tongue, his eyes lighting up. "It fits you perfectly."
"How old are you?" Eleanor asked on impulse.
"Twenty-two."
Five years younger than her. A quiet jolt of disbelief washed over Eleanor. She must have lost her mind, sitting in a bar chatting with a twenty-two-year-old stranger.
"You're upset about something, aren't you, Ellie?" Lucas tilted his head to study her, his gaze direct and open, no hidden judgment or sly undertones.
"No," Eleanor replied.
"You're lying. Your eyes are all red and puffy," he said plainly.
Eleanor lifted a hand to touch her eyes instinctively. They felt dry, yet her eye sockets burned with suppressed emotion.
Lucas didn't push her to explain.
He switched topics effortlessly, talking freely about his own life: graduating from an international boarding school, sent out by his family to gain real-world experience, stuck in an entry-level corporate job they'd forced on him.
"They call it training me up, really, they just don't want me hanging around the house getting in their way," he said with easy self-deprecation, his casual remarks drawing quiet smiles from her now and then.
Slowly, the tight tension in Eleanor's shoulders unwound completely.
She hadn't talked like this to anyone in years.
Ryan never made time for casual small talk. Their conversations were always transactional and cold: would he be home for dinner, weekend plans, what his mother had nagged about on the phone.
Two parallel lives, touching briefly now and then before drifting apart again.
"Ellie, are you married?" Lucas leaned in slightly.
Eleanor's fingers stilled on her glass.
She glanced down at her left hand, the wedding band glinting with tiny diamonds in the dim bar light.
"Yes," she said quietly.
Lucas hummed softly, his expression unchanged, as if he'd already guessed the truth.
"Where's your husband?" he asked.
Eleanor fell silent for a beat before saying, "Off having dinner with someone else."
Her tone was unnervingly calm, even to her own ears. Lucas caught the quiet sorrow beneath her words instantly. The playful glint faded from his eyes, replaced by quiet, earnest gravity.
"Then he's an idiot," Lucas said.
A genuine, unforced smile slipped past Eleanor's lips.
She never drank the warm water he'd ordered. Instead, Lucas ordered her an orange juice with a slice of lemon perched on the rim.
Holding the glass, she sipped slowly, listening to him ramble about random, trivial things, chiming in with quiet replies every now and then.
Dusk fell fast outside the bar windows.
The venue filled up gradually, music growing louder and more upbeat. Alcohol's heavy aftereffect washed over Eleanor, her head growing foggy and heavy.
As she leaned against the bar counter, her eyelids felt weighted down with lead.
"Ellie, where do you live? I'll drive you home." Lucas' voice sounded distant, muffled by the haze in her brain.
She shook her head, then nodded again, confused even by her own reaction.
Memories of the rest of the night blurred into fragmented snapshots.
She remembered Lucas helping her out of the bar, the night wind cutting sharply against her skin, before his warm jacket was draped gently over her shoulders.
She remembered him asking for her address, and the quiet pause when he realized it was far out of his way.
She remembered the sudden surge of reluctance in her heart, no desire to return to that empty place where no one waited for her.
"I don't want to go home," she mumbled, her voice muffled by drink and quiet hurt.
Lucas stared at her for a long moment, streetlights glinting like tiny stars in his eyes.
"Alright. Then we won't go home," he said softly.
The rest of the night blurred beyond clear recollection.
She only remembered the soft hotel bed, the curtains drawn loosely enough to let a thin sliver of moonlight slip through, painting a faint white line across the floor.
Eleanor remembered Lucas being surprisingly gentle, nothing like his carefree, playful exterior; he was cautious and tender, as if handling something fragile and easily broken.
She remembered him pausing at one quiet moment, gazing down at her seriously to ask, "Do you know who I am?"
Staring up at his youthful, clear features in the dim room light, she whispered his name without hesitation, "Lucas."
That name stuck with her.
He smiled softly, leaning down to press the lightest, softest kiss to her forehead.
Eleanor felt no regret over what happened that night.
She knew she'd made a mistake. Yet if given the chance to go back, she wasn't sure she would have chosen differently.