PART ONE

POV: Eva
Afternoon shifts in the bar are always slow, but somebody has to do them. I find it an easy way to get paid for pulling some pints and reading a few chapters of a good book. My grandparents have owned the little pub for years, and I have spent countless afternoons and nights of my early childhood sitting with them at the bar, or helping in the cellar. I thought bar work would be the easiest job over the summer; my first year at university had wreaked havoc on my bank balance, and this seemed like the perfect chance to top it up and gain some experience. After the first shift, I started feeling like a natural. I enjoyed the people and their conversations. I was young to be working in a pub that was so set in its ways; most of the people that came in were one, if not two, generations above me, and they offered interesting glimpses into the world they had grown up in with their stories and complaints.
The usual customers all sit in their usual places. My eyes glance over the bar before they connect with his, but we both look away quickly. Nikolai. He sits at the back, furthest away and always on his own at first, before a few of the guys come in to play pool. He is always the last to leave. Tall and broad, he towers above me whenever I serve him his drink. I have always recognised him, even as a child I would walk through and recognise the faces of the people who have been drinking here for years. But I had never noticed him until I began working here. Never noticed his height until he was stood right in front of me. Never noticed his hands, big and safe, until they made contact with mine when he handed the money over. Never noticed the quiet purr of his voice until he asked me what book I was reading. He is an older man, with fine lines of grey speckled in his black hair, faint creases of wrinkles in his skin when he laughs, though he looks quick and agile for his age, which I guess to be at about fifty-five. Overall he isn’t a man of astonishing beauty, and yet I have started to view every day at work as an opportunity to see him, share eye contact, make small talk.
He stands up from the chair he has been sat in, the one his long legs and body make look so small, and begins to stride towards the bar.
“No book today?” he asks, his eyes glancing towards me from under his eye lashes as he counts out the change in his hand.
I smile and lift up the book I hide beneath the bar, and he winks at me. Our secret.
I get his drink without needing to be reminded of it.

POV: Nikolai
She glances up at me every so often while she serves me my drink, huge round blue eyes peeking for a second and then darting back down to the half-filled pint glass in her hand. I take the book she’s been reading and turn it over to read the summary. A supernatural thriller. I almost roll my eyes. I thumb to the page she has bookmarked and start reading halfway through a sex scene. I don’t even have to look at her to know that she’s blushing.
I raise my eyebrows and shake the book at her. “Are you old enough for this?” I joke.
She snatches it from my hands, greedy little fingers clutching it tightly. “Of course I am!” She snaps in a way that conjures up an image of an angry child stomping her foot on the ground and pouting. A kitten pretending it’s a tiger.
She stands there in her little outfit: a floral pastel-coloured pencil skirt that wraps so tightly around her figure it makes me feel jealous, a white lace top with sleeves, and underneath I can see her white bra.