Page 7 of Ashen Souls

“I suppose,” I said. Correcting him felt like explaining the deep sea to someone happy in a puddle.

“You must be into those old dead poet guys.” He rested his forearms comfortably on the table. “Like Shakespeare.”

“I’m more into mythology.”

An amused little smirk touched his lips. “Like… Zeus and stuff?”

“Like… yes.” I did not have the energy to explain the vast difference between classical mythology and Zeus and stuff.

“I always thought those stories were kind of ridiculous.”

“They’re not ridiculous,” I replied, the words snapping out quicker than I intended.

He lifted his hands in mock surrender. “Hey, I’m just saying. People use them to justify toxic relationships. ‘He’s possessive because he loves me.’ That kind of thing.”

He wasn’t wrong. But the smugness in his voice reduced centuries of human terror and longing to a cheap punchline.

“Myths are…”

“Symbolic,” he cut in. “Yeah. Metaphors.”

The server returned, setting the two glasses of deep red Malbec between us. Lucas raised his.

“To finally meeting in person.”

The same script. We’d met on a dating app, and I already knew the dialogue by heart.

“To meeting,” I echoed, staring down at the dark wine.

The Malbec was heavy and dry, settling on my tongue like dusted velvet.

Then he launched into a monologue about his marketing job: the clients, the campaigns, and a promotion he was guaranteed if his boss would stop being “such a control freak.” He talked about an apartment he’d almost rented in Paris. He offered unsolicited opinions on productivity podcasts, protein powders, and why everyone needed to invest early because “time is literally money.”

I listened. I nodded. I offered hollow questions whenever silence threatened to make things awkward.

When he finally asked about my family, it sounded like a perfunctory checkbox on a performance review.

“Do you have siblings?” he asked, reaching for the charcuterie.

“Yes. A younger brother and sister.”

“Cute. So you’re the responsible one.”

I watched him chew. “Am I?”

He shrugged dismissively. “You seem like it. You’ve got that vibe.”

A vibe.

I almost laughed in his face. I wanted to lean across the table and tell him he’d mistaken my composed posture for actual stability. That most days, I felt like fragile paper held together by caffeine and denial.

Instead, I just smiled. I’m exceptionally good at that.

As he kept speaking, my mind wandered to a version of this scene that wasn’t so painfully beige.

Lucas reached across the table and laid his hand over mine, acting as if he’d decided it was time for the romantic beat of the evening.

“You’re really pretty,” he said softly.