Logan didn’t flinch, didn’t even look down at the ring. His voice was cold, direct. “Drink.” Tension hung in the air. “Then you can go back and find your chip fuck for tonight. I wonder… what would that be this time, huh? The hot dick over there,” and he nudged his head toward the guy the bartender had just chatted with, now leaning in and laughing with his friends, “or some fine pussy?”
“And I wonder why a rich motherfucker like you,” the bartender said, leaning over the bar with a smirk, “someone who wears a suit that costs at least five thousand dollars, comes to this cheap-ass bar, night after night, drinking himself into oblivion, wasting away until he can barely stand, instead of going home to your little wife?”
Logan’s chest tightened. He hated the way the bartender’s cocky grin stretched across his face, the daring glint in his eyes. It was too much, like a needle driving straight into his pride. “I just saw someone throwing up inthe restroom,” Logan shot back, trying to deflect. “Shouldn’t you go clean that up?”
The bartender chuckled, shaking his head. “You’re so pathetic… Not only do you spend every miserable night of your life here, in this rotten bar, alone, but you’re also jacking off on someone’s Facebook page.”
The words hit like a slap. Logan froze, as if time itself had stopped. His face went blank, his body went still. He’d heard the insult, but the sting of it pierced deeper than anything he had expected. The weight of his own shame crashed down on him, and the ache that had never fully left him surged back, raw and real. He was drunk, but not drunk enough to miss the venom in those words.
For a long moment, all he could do was sit there, the bartender’s daring gaze boring into him, waiting for some kind of response. But Logan couldn’t speak. The words tangled in his throat, and instead, he stood up, pushed his chair back with a sharp scrape. Without a word, he grabbed his wallet and tossed a few bills onto the counter.
The bartender’s expression shifted, a flicker of disappointment crossing his face as he realized Logan wasn’t about to say anything else. But there was nothing more for Logan to say. As he left, the sound of his footsteps echoed in his mind, the weight of the night too much to carry.
Outside, he climbed into the first cab he could find, muttering the address to the driver as he tried to shake off the moment. The sting of the bartender’s words followed him like a shadow, clinging to him with each passing second.
When Logan finally arrived home, he paid the driver and added a generous tip, an apology without the words, though he couldn’t quite explain why.
The house was dark and still, a hollow thing breathing around him. He let himself in, and the silence rose to meet him, thick and tender as fog. It pressed against his skin, against his ribs, until it almost felt like comfort. These were the only moments that belonged to him, small mercies of quiet, fragments of peace. He had learned to crave them the way some men crave touch. They were sacred.
He stood in the hallway, the air heavy with sleep and dust, the taste of whiskey bitter on his tongue. The world seemed to pause, holding its breath with him. There was no sound but the faint hum of the refrigerator, no witness but the dark. He felt that strange, aching joy that comes from being unseen, unneeded, forgotten.
Sometimes, when the night was this soft, he let himself slip into the lie. He would close his eyes and summon the vision: Adrian waiting upstairs, wrapped in lamplight, sheets warm with life. He could almost hear the rustle of his breath, the hush of skin against cotton. He could almost believe he had come home to a love he was capable of returning, to the right heart. As if he could imagine that his body still remembered how to want what it was given, that the warmth waiting upstairs was meant for him and not wasted on a man already half gone. As if love could rise again from bone and soul, instead of the dull habit it had withered into, stripped of all its merit, emptied of grace.
The dream pulsed in him like blood. He saw himself climbing the stairs, steady, sober, the air bright with early evening light. Adrian turning, smiling that small, knowing smile that undid him. No guilt. No whiskey. Just the quiet gravity of love, unbroken and real.
He let it swell, let it fill every hollow in his chest until it hurt. Then, as always, he opened his eyes. The house stood indifferent, the dark swallowing his breath.
Upstairs, Sandy was already asleep, the soft rise and fall of her breath a stark contrast to the turbulence swirling in his chest. He kicked off his shoes, shrugged out of his jacket, and collapsed onto the bed. The softness of the sheets felt foreign now, a stark reminder of the life he had chosen, the life he could never fully inhabit.
His eyes grew heavy with exhaustion, the need for sleep overwhelming him. As he turned on his side, he heard Sandy’s voice, barely a whisper in the darkness.
“You stink of alcohol and cigarettes,” she murmured, not even bothering to look at him.
Logan paused, allowing a moment of silence to envelop him as he took a deep breath, steeling his thoughts. “We closed a deal,” he finally voiced the lie. With a deliberate motion, he turned to face the wall, hiding from the world. “The guys wanted to go celebrate.”
“Yeah… again?” she said, her voice flat, already resigned to his silence. She didn’t expect him to answer, and when he didn’t, it didn’t surprise her. The weight of the night hung between them, but neither of them knew how to lift it.
The next morning, Logan woke early, as he always did. The same feelings of pounding head and dry mouth, a constant in his life now, accompaniedhim this morning as well. He showered and shaved, trying to scrub the night off his skin, and donned a suit that cost more than some people made in a month. He left the house while Sandy slept, her steady breath the only sign of life in the still house. Outside, the world appeared too bright and too pristine. He then called a cab to return to the bar.
The parking lot was nearly empty, silent except for the buzz of a flickering streetlight. His car stood alone, dew gathering on the windshield, an accusation in plain sight. In daylight, the place looked stripped of its excuses. He remembered the noise, the laughter that wasn’t his, the burn of whiskey that had dulled nothing.
By midmorning, he was in the office; by noon, two meetings done, two weeks of overseas work already scheduled. The hours slid past, indistinct, one bleeding into the next. Something inside shifted, barely, but enough. For the first time in months, he left early. He drove past the bar and kept going, straight home. He couldn’t bring himself back there after what had happened the night before.
When he arrived, it was a quiet relief to find Sandy wasn’t home yet, and he was thankful that the staff only arrived during the mornings a couple of days a week. A detail he heard in passing from Sandy.
She’d recently opened her own clothing store, pouring herself into it like it was the only thing that made sense anymore. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been present in her life, the last time they’d really seen each other.
He shed his suit, letting it slip from his shoulders like another life. The fabric, once sharp and tailored, now hung too loose at the chest, too long in the sleeves. It had been only a few months since the last resizing, and already it felt like wearing someone else’s skin.
He stepped into the shower, letting the water cascade over him like a gentle embrace, before enveloping himself in more comfortable attire. Yet, as he gazed into the mirror, a profound disconnection washed over him; the figure reflected back was a stranger. His face, once robust, had collapsed inward; the flesh drawn tight over bone, the eyes shadowed and sleepless. He looked like a man who had strangled his own life and was forced to watch it leak away, thick and slow, through his hands. What seeped from him was not light but blood, not grace but rot—a quiet, unending hemorrhage that no prayer could stop. Within the cloister’s stone silence, he carried the stench of something dying, something that had once been love and now clung to him like ash. His body had withered, bones jutting out like fragile twigs, and he struggled to recall the last time he had a truly nourishing meal. The suits were the only ones keeping count. Every few months, he took them all in—hemming, trimming, adjusting the fabric to match the body that kept shrinking, the life that kept folding in on itself.
As he poured himself a drink in the kitchen, the sound of the door opening echoed through the house, followed by Sandy’s heels clicking against the floor. Logan walked toward the living room just in time to see her setting down her handbag, a picture of her busy day etched in her tired posture. The photo gallery above the desk caught his eye, wedding pictures, smiling faces and him with his forced fake smile that somehow fooled everyone.
Had they really not seen through the mask, the fake smile that never quite reached his eyes, or had they simply been careless, too wrapped up in their own worlds to notice the cracks forming around him?
“Oh my God, Logan!” She gasped when she noticed him standing there. “You scared me. What are you doing home so early?” She put a hand over her chest, breathing in.
Logan glanced at the clock. Barely four-thirty.Is she always home this early?The question hung in the air, unfamiliar, like a forgotten thought. He’d never asked. And now, watching her stunned expression, he felt the weight of that silence between them. She hadn’t expected him to be here.
