O’Malley’s Pub was the kind of establishment that actively resisted gentrification. It sat three blocks from the gleaming glass tower of Summit Strategies, a stubborn brick relic that smelled permanently of stale Guinness, fried onions, and bad decisions. The floor was perpetually sticky, the leather booths were held together by duct tape and prayers, and the neon Old Style sign in the window buzzed with a frequency that could induce a mild migraine.
Naturally, it was the agency’s favorite place on earth.
“I’m just saying,” Tyler the Intern announced, slamming a pitcher of cheap lager onto the center of their scarred wooden table, “if we had actually been in a 1920s bank heist, I would have been the wildcard. The loose cannon. The guy who drives the getaway car through a fruit stand.”
“Tyler, you drive a 2014 Honda Civic and you get anxious when you have to merge onto the Kennedy Expressway,” Sarah pointed out, expertly sliding a plastic cup from the stack and filling it with beer. “You would have been the guy who accidentally shoots himself in the foot while trying to open the vault.”
“I found the dynamite!” Tyler protested, looking wounded.
“It was plastic, Tyler. And you found it in a desk drawer that Ava had already unlocked,” Lena, the Head of Creative, said dryly. She took a sip of her beer and shuddered. “God, this tastes like pennies. Why do we come here?”
“Because a pint is four dollars and the bartender doesn’t judge me when I order a side of ranch dressing for my french fries,” Ava said, snagging a fry from the basket in the center of the table.
She was sitting in the corner of the curved booth, her blazer draped over the back of the seat, the sleeves of her silk blouse rolled up to her elbows. The adrenaline from the escape room-and the terrifying, breathless near-miss in the dark with Ethan-was finally beginning to ebb, replaced by the comfortable, familiar buzz of her team.
Ethan was sitting directly across from her. He had been relatively quiet since they arrived, nursing a bottle of IPA and watching the chaotic dynamic of the Summit team with a faint, amused smile. He had taken off his suit jacket, and the sleeves of his navy button-down were pushed up, revealing a dusting of dark hair on his forearms and, of course, the vintage watch.
Ava aggressively looked away from his forearms. She focused her attention on Lena.
“Actually, the escape room was a perfect metaphor for the Bean & Leaf campaign,” Ava said, shifting into her strategist persona. It was a comfortable armor. When she was talking about work, she was in control. “Think about it. Group A-you guys-were in the Teller’s Lobby. You had all the flashy, obvious clues. The big vault door, the fake money, the laser grid. That’s the creative side. That’s the TikTok campaigns, the influencer partnerships, the shiny new logo.”
Lena raised an eyebrow, intrigued. “And Group B?”
“Group B was in the back office,” Ava continued, leaning forward, her hands animating her words. “We had the ledgers, the receipts, the boring foundational stuff. But you couldn’t open the vault until we unlocked the manager’s door from the inside. Bean & Leaf is the same way. We can throw all the flashy creative we want at the Gen Z market, but if we don’t fix the foundational brand identity-the reason people actually walk into a coffee shop on a rainy Tuesday-the vault stays locked.”
The table went quiet for a moment. Even Tyler stopped chewing his fries.
“Damn,” Sarah said softly. “That was good. Did you just come up with that?”
“I had some time to think while I was trapped in a closet,” Ava said, shooting a pointed glare at Sarah.
“It’s brilliant,” Ethan said.
Ava’s eyes snapped to his. He wasn’t smiling anymore. He was looking at her with an expression of pure, unadulterated professional awe.
“Seriously,” Ethan continued, his voice cutting through the ambient noise of the bar. “That’s the pitch. That’s the core narrative. ‘We’re not just changing the paint on the walls; we’re rebuilding the foundation.’ It bridges the gap between the nostalgia demographic and the new market.”
Ava felt a flush creeping up her neck that had absolutely nothing to do with the cheap beer. Six years ago, when they were dating, she had been a junior copywriter. She had been brilliant, yes, but insecure. She used to read her pitches to Ethan in bed, agonizing over every word, constantly asking for his validation.
He was looking at her now not as a mentor, and not just as an ex-boyfriend. He was looking at her as an equal. As a powerhouse.
“Thanks,” Ava managed to say, her voice a little tighter than she would have liked. She cleared her throat. “Anyway. We need to map out the consumer journey by Thursday. Sarah, I need you to pull the demographic data on their suburban locations.”
“On it,” Sarah said, saluting with her plastic cup. “But first, I need to fix whatever auditory hate crime is currently playing on that jukebox. Is this… Norwegian death metal? Who plays this at a pub at six o’clock on a Tuesday?”
Sarah slid out of the booth, digging into her pocket for quarters, and marched across the sticky floor toward the glowing vintage jukebox in the corner.
Ava watched her go, grateful for the distraction. She took a long drink of her beer, trying to cool the heat in her cheeks.
By the jukebox, Sarah had come to an abrupt halt. A man was leaning against the machine, his arms crossed over a faded black t-shirt. He was tall-taller than Ethan-with a mess of dark, curly hair, a sharp jawline, and sleeves of intricate black-and-grey tattoos running down both arms. He looked like he belonged on the cover of a moody indie rock album, or possibly in a police lineup.
Ava couldn’t hear what Sarah said, but she saw her best friend gesture aggressively at the jukebox.
The tattooed man looked down at Sarah, his expression entirely unimpressed. He said something back, his face deadpan.
Sarah’s jaw dropped. She planted her hands on her hips, leaning in. The man didn’t flinch. He just stared at her, a slow, infuriating smirk spreading across his face. He tapped the glass of the jukebox, clearly indicating that his song was playing and she was just going to have to deal with it.
“Oh boy,” Lena muttered, following Ava’s gaze. “Sarah’s about to fight a hipster.”
“Should I go intervene?” Tyler asked, half-rising from his seat. “I took a semester of Krav Maga in college.”
“Sit down, Tyler, he would break you in half like a breadstick,” Lena said, pulling him back down by his shirt collar. “Let her handle it. It builds character.”
Across the bar, Sarah aggressively shoved a quarter into the machine, jabbing a button with enough force to crack the plastic. The tattooed man laughed-a deep, visible chuckle-and said one last thing that made Sarah’s face turn the color of a fire engine. She spun on her heel and marched back to the booth, radiating pure, unadulterated rage.
“I hate men,” Sarah announced, sliding violently back into the booth. “I hate all of them. Present company excluded, Tyler, you’re basically a golden retriever.”
“Thank you,” Tyler beamed.
“What happened?” Ava asked, hiding a smile behind her cup. “That… that lumberjack over there,” Sarah hissed, pointing a manicured finger at the man, who was now casually sipping a bourbon and watching them from across the room. “I asked him politely to skip the Norwegian death dirge so I could play some Chappell Roan, and do you know what he said to me?”
“What?” Ethan asked, looking highly amused.
“He said, ‘Pop music is the auditory equivalent of a lobotomy, and I’m not letting you lobotomize my Tuesday.’ And then he told me I looked like the kind of person who organizes their bookshelf by color!” Ava choked on her beer. “Do you organize your bookshelf by color?”
“That is entirely beside the point, Ava!” Sarah shrieked. “He’s a pretentious, brooding, tattooed menace and I hope he steps on a Lego.”
Just then, the heavy metal song faded out, replaced by the upbeat, synth-heavy intro of a Chappell Roan track.
Sarah blinked. She looked over at the jukebox. The tattooed man caught her eye, raised his glass of bourbon in a mocking toast, and walked out the front door of the pub.
“He… he played my song,” Sarah said, her voice a mix of confusion and lingering outrage. “He insulted me, and then he played my song.”
“Classic neg,” Tyler nodded sagely. “I read about it on Reddit.”
“I am going to find him,” Sarah vowed, her eyes narrowing at the door. “I am going to find him, and I am going to destroy him.”
“Okay, well, before you embark on your quest for vengeance, I need to use the restroom,” Lena said, sliding out of the booth. “Tyler, come help me carry the next pitcher. You need to earn your keep.”
“Sir, yes, sir,” Tyler said, scrambling after her.
Sarah, still muttering dark threats under her breath, pulled out her phone to aggressively text someone about the encounter.
Suddenly, the crowded booth felt very, very small.
Ava looked down at her hands, tracing the condensation on her plastic cup. The noise of the bar seemed to fade into the background, leaving only the heavy, magnetic pull of the man sitting across from her. Ethan shifted, sliding out of his side of the booth and moving around the table. Before Ava could process what he was doing, he slid into the empty space next to her. He didn’t crowd her, leaving a polite six inches of space between their thighs, but his proximity was overwhelming.
“Hi,” he said softly, his voice barely carrying over the pop music. “Hi,” Ava replied, her heart doing a complicated gymnastics routine
in her chest. “You’re on my side of the table.”
“I know. It was getting loud over there.” He turned his body slightly to face her, resting his arm on the back of the leather booth, just behind her shoulders. “I meant what I said earlier, Ava. About your strategy.”
Ava swallowed hard. “I know you did. You’re a terrible liar.”
“I’m serious,” Ethan said, his hazel eyes locking onto hers. The playful, charismatic mask he wore for the rest of the team was completely gone. This was just Ethan. The real Ethan. “You were always smart. You were always the best writer in the room. But watching you today… watching you command that meeting, and break down the campaign just now…” He shook his head slightly, a look of genuine wonder on his face. “You’re a powerhouse, Ava. You grew up.”
The words hit her right in the center of her chest, cracking a fissure in the armor she had worn all day.
It was one thing to have him look at her with desire in a dark escape room. Desire was easy. Desire was biology and history and proximity. But this? This deep, sincere professional respect? This was dangerous. This was the kind of thing that could actually break her heart all over again.
“I had to grow up,” Ava said quietly, looking down at the scarred wooden table. “Six years ago, I was waiting for someone else to build my life for me. When you left… I realized I had to build it myself. So I did.”
Ethan flinched slightly at the reminder of his departure, but he didn’t look away. “And you built something incredible. I’m… I’m really proud of you, Red.”
The nickname slipped out before he could stop it. Red. Because of her auburn hair, and because she used to turn bright red whenever he complimented her.
Ava’s breath hitched. She looked up at him. His eyes were dark, searching her face, silently asking for permission, for forgiveness, for something she wasn’t sure she was ready to give.
“Don’t call me that,” she whispered, though there was no real heat in it.
“Sorry,” he murmured, his gaze dropping to her mouth for a fraction of a second. “Old habit.”
“We have a lot of old habits, Ethan. We can’t afford to fall back into them. Not if we’re going to work together.”
“I know,” he said, his voice thick with something that sounded a lot like regret. He slowly pulled his arm back from the booth, putting a few more inches of distance between them. “Professional collaboration. I promised.”
“Right.” Ava picked up her beer, her hand trembling slightly. “Professional.”
Lena and Tyler returned a moment later, slamming a fresh pitcher of beer and a basket of questionable-looking onion rings onto the table. The spell was broken, the heavy, intimate bubble popping as the chaotic energy of the Summit team rushed back in.
Ethan slid back to his side of the booth, seamlessly re-engaging with Tyler’s bizarre theories about the stock market. But for the rest of the night, every time Ava looked up, she found Ethan already looking at her.
Two hours later, they all spilled out onto the cool, rain-slicked Chicago pavement. The streetlights reflected in the puddles, casting long, distorted shadows across the sidewalk.
“I’m calling an Uber,” Sarah announced, shivering in the autumn chill. “Ava, you want to split it?”
“Yeah, please,” Ava said, wrapping her blazer tighter around herself.
Ethan was standing a few feet away, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his slacks. He looked tired, but the good kind of tired. The kind of tired that came from a hard day’s work and a few good beers.
“Goodnight, Ava,” he said, his voice carrying over the sound of passing traffic.
“Goodnight, Ethan,” she replied.
She climbed into the back of Sarah’s Uber, pulling the door shut behind her. As the car pulled away from the curb, Ava looked out the window. Ethan was still standing on the sidewalk, watching the taillights of her car disappear into the Chicago night.
Ava leaned her head against the cool glass of the window and closed her eyes.
It had been exactly one day. One single day of a six-month contract. She was in so much trouble.