Kiss, Bite, Lick – Chapter 1 – The Second Look

My life used to be a closed loop, a track I’d worn so smooth with repetition I could navigate it in my sleep. 

Wake up. Shower. Work at the dead-end data entry job that paid for my sad little one-bedroom apartment. Grocery store for the same three things – yogurt, salad mix, a bottle of cheap white wine I’d drink alone while watching reality TV. Home. Sleep. Repeat. 

I was the background music in everyone else’s movie. The extra you don’t even notice is there until you watch the film for the third time and go, “Huh, I guess there was a person standing there.” 

I have grey eyes that blended into office walls, a frame so small I could turn sideways and disappear, and lips so thin they looked like they’d been drawn on with a sharpened pencil. 

I wasn’t invisible, but I was close enough. I was the kind of person you’d apologize to after bumping into me, even though you were the one who wasn’t looking.

Then one day, at a bar I only went to because my therapist said I needed to “get out more,” he looked at me.Not the polite, fleeting glance people give when they’re scanning a room for someone actually interesting. This was a fucking anchor. His eyes, this intense, almost unnerving shade of blue, locked onto mine from across the crowded, sticky-floored space and held. It was a look that said, *I see you*. Not the “oh, there’s a person” kind of seeing, but the “I see the cracks in your foundation and I know exactly where to press” kind. 

I physically flinched, my head whipping to the side on instinct, certain there was a supermodel, a movie star, *anyone* more deserving of that kind of gravitational pull standing right behind me. There wasn’t. Just a scuffed-up brick wall and a neon sign for a beer I’d never heard of.

When he looked away, I could finally breathe again. My heart was doing this frantic little tap dance against my ribs, a rhythm it hadn’t felt in years. 

I took a shaky sip of my gin and tonic, trying to convince myself it was a fluke, a trick of the dim lighting. 

But then he was moving, weaving through the throng of loud, laughing people with an effortless confidence that made the crowd part for him like he was fucking Moses. 

He wasn’t conventionally handsome – his nose was a little too crooked, his jaw a bit too sharp – but he moved with the certainty of a man who’d never been told “no” in his life.

He slid onto the barstool next to me, his thigh brushing mine, and the contact sent a jolt through me that was part electricity, part pure, unadulterated panic. 

He smelled like expensive cologne and something else, something metallic and sharp, like ozone before a storm.

“That’s a terrible drink,” he said, his voice a low rumble that vibrated right through the wood of the bar and into my bones. 

He wasn’t asking. He was stating a fact, like he was an authority on my poor life choices.

I blinked, my mouth suddenly dry. “It’s… gin.”

“It’s gin and tonic,” he corrected, a smirk playing on his lips. 

“The tonic’s flat. The lime is old. You’re basically drinking pine-scented disappointment.” 

He gestured to the bartender, a flick of his fingers that was both casual and commanding.

 “Two whiskeys. Neat.”

The bartender scurried to obey. 

I just stared at him, at the way the dim bar lights caught in his dark hair, at the confident set of his shoulders. He wasn’t just loud in his movements; he was loud in his stillness.

“I’m Robert,” he said, turning his full attention back to me.

 And god, what a thing it was, to have that much focus directed at you. It felt like standing under a spotlight, naked and exposed.

“Sarah,” I managed, my voice barely a whisper. It sounded pathetic even to my own ears.

“Sarah,” he repeated, and my name sounded different in his mouth. It sounded like it had weight, like it meant something.

 “So, Sarah, what’s a woman who clearly hates gin and tonic doing in a shithole like this on a Tuesday night?”

I felt a flush creep up my neck. “My therapist said I should get out more.”

He let out a short, sharp laugh that was surprisingly genuine. 

“Fucking therapists. Always trying to fix what isn’t broken.” 

He leaned in closer, his elbow on the bar, his body angled toward mine, creating this little bubble of intimacy in the middle of the chaos.

 “Or maybe they’re trying to fix what is, but they don’t know how.”

The bartender set down two glasses of amber liquid. Robert pushed one toward me. 

“Here. This is better than disappointment.”

I looked at the whiskey, then at him. 

“I don’t really drink whiskey.”

“You do tonight,” he said, not unkindly. 

It wasn’t a suggestion. It was a gentle command. And the fucked-up part was, I wanted to obey. I wanted to see what would happen if I just did what he said.

I wrapped my hand around the heavy glass, the condensation cool against my skin. I took a tentative sip. It burned all the way down, a slow, hot fire that bloomed in my chest. It was awful. It was also the most alive thing I’d tasted in years.

He watched me, a knowing look in his blue eyes. 

“See? Better.”

We fell into a strange, easy conversation after that. He talked about his job – something in finance that sounded complicated and boring and important – and I found myself nodding, hanging on his every word. 

He asked me about my job, and when I described the mind-numbing world of data entry, he didn’t look bored or sympathetic. He looked… interested.

“No, seriously,” he said, leaning in even closer, his knee now pressing firmly against mine. 

“Tell me about the most boring spreadsheet you ever had to create. I want to understand the sheer fucking tragedy of it.”

And so I did.

 I told him about the Q3 expense reports, about the endless columns of numbers that blurred together until my eyes burned. 

I told him about the gray cubicle and the flickering fluorescent lights and the way the coffee tasted like burnt regret. 

And the whole time, he watched me with this intense, unwavering focus, like I was telling him the most fascinating story he’d ever heard.

At some point, he reached out and tucked a stray strand of hair behind my ear. His fingers brushed against my cheek, and the contact was so gentle, so deliberate, it sent a shiver down my spine. 

It was the first time in years a man had touched me with anything other than a clumsy, accidental bump in a crowded space.

“You have incredible eyes,” he said softly, his voice dropping to a near whisper. 

“They’re like a storm cloud right before it rains.”

My heart hammered against my ribs. “They’re grey.”

“They’re not just grey,” he insisted, his gaze dropping to my lips for a fraction of a second before snapping back to my eyes. 

“There’s a whole world in there. People are just too fucking stupid to see it.”

I felt something warm and dangerous unfurl in my chest. 

It was hope. It was stupid, reckless, utterly insane hope. For the first time in as long as I could remember, someone was looking at me and not seeing through me. They were just *seeing*.

The bar started to thin out, the noise level dropping to a dull roar. I lost all track of time, caught in the bubble he had created around us. When he finally glanced at his watch, it was almost midnight.

“Fuck,” he muttered, running a hand through his hair. 

“I have to be up at five.” 

He looked at me, and for the first time all night, his confident smirk faltered, replaced by something that looked almost like genuine regret.

 “I don’t want this to end.”

My stomach did a little flip. 

“Me neither.”

He pulled out his phone.

 “Give me your number. I’m taking you out this weekend. A real date. Not this…” 

He gestured around the bar. 

“Not this therapist-mandated bullshit.”

I rattled off my number, my fingers trembling slightly as I typed it into his contacts. He saved it under “Sarah,” then stood up, pulling me with him. He was taller than I thought, and I had to crane my neck to look up at him.

“It was nice to meet you, Sarah,” he said, his voice low and serious. 

And then he leaned in and kissed me. 

It wasn’t a passionate, earth-shattering kiss. It was just a soft, firm press of his lips against mine, a promise of things to come. It tasted like whiskey and possibility.

He pulled away, his blue eyes locking with mine. 

“I’ll call you tomorrow.”

And then he was gone, disappearing into the night as suddenly as he’d arrived, leaving me standing there in the middle of the emptying bar, my lips tingling, my head spinning, and the taste of him still on my tongue. 

I touched my lips with my fingertips, a dizzying sense of disbelief washing over me.

It felt like someone had just kissed a part of my life that had always been cold. And I had a terrible, wonderful feeling that it was never going to be cold again.

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