Chapter 3
The Lion and the Ginger Ale
For Liam, New York City was not a concrete jungle to be survived; it was a savannah to be ruled.
At twenty-eight, he walked the streets with the easy, predatory grace of a young male lion in his prime.
The rain that lashed against the pavement on Friday nights didn't bother him.
While other men huddled under umbrellas or sprinted for cabs, ruining their suede shoes in puddles, Liam walked.
The water slicked his dark hair back even further, emphasizing the sharp, aristocratic angles of his face. He wore the weather like he wore his tailored suits—effortlessly. To him, the storm was just another layer of texture in the city he was busy rebuilding, one blueprint at a time.
His mother, calling from the coast, had a different opinion.
"You're a monk, Liam," she had grumbled on the phone earlier that afternoon, her voice tinny with static. "A handsome, successful, six-foot-three monk. It’s a waste of genetic material. Are you eating? Are you lonely? You sound lonely."
"I'm eating, Ma. And I'm not lonely. I'm busy."
"Busy is just a word for empty," she had snapped, channeling the energy of a grumpy granny despite being a vibrant woman in her fifties. "Go out. Drink something that isn't green tea. Meet a girl who doesn't wear a hard hat."
He had hung up with a smile, but the word lonely had bounced around his empty, luxurious penthouse for a moment before he drowned it out with the roar of his Harley’s engine—or, in tonight’s case, the roar of the city rain.
He wasn't lonely. He was selective. He was the King of Savannah.
But even Kings needed a court.
The bar in Tribeca was called The Draftsman, a cheeky nod to the clientele that frequented it—mostly architects, graphic designers, and the occasional lost hedge fund manager.
The lighting was low and amber-hued, bouncing off the polished mahogany bar and the condensation on the glasses.
It smelled of expensive bourbon, rain-damp wool, and fried truffle oil.
Liam slid onto the leather bar stool, his height commanding immediate attention from the bartender, who nodded and slid a glass of ginger ale over ice toward him without asking.
"You're a buzzkill, you know that?" James said, slapping Liam on the back.
James was Liam's best friend, a chaotic counterweight to Liam’s structure.
While Liam was all sharp lines and silence, James was a messy scribble of enthusiasm and noise.
Sitting next to them were Henry and Clark, two other colleagues from the firm.
Henry was an architect who spent more time adjusting his glasses than drawing, and Clark was from the IT department, a man who viewed human interaction as a software bug he couldn't patch.
"It's vintage ginger ale," Liam deadpanned, taking a sip. The bubbles bit pleasantly at his tongue. "Very rare. 2024 vintage."
"It's sugar water," Henry muttered into his IPA. "You have the constitution of a toddler, Liam."
"And the liver of a saint," Clark added, raising his own lager. "Cheers to the designated walker."
The group settled into the comfortable rhythm of a Friday night. This was their ritual. They would sit here for three hours, dissecting the week, complaining about clients, and, inevitably, talking about women.
Usually, Liam tuned this part out. He would nod at the appropriate intervals, offer a generic "sounds rough, man," and let his mind drift back to the problem of the load-bearing wall on the 40th floor of the Kyocera project.
He was the observer, the untouched idol in the center of their messy lives.
"I saw Emma on Instagram," James sighed, staring mournfully into the foam of his beer.
Emma was the ex-girlfriend James had broken up with two years ago but discussed as if she were a fallen comrade in a great war.
"She got a dog. A golden retriever. We always talked about getting a golden retriever. "
"She’s moving on, James," Henry said, not unkindly. "You should too. It’s the dog phase. Next comes the engagement ring photo."
"Don't say that," James groaned, dropping his head onto the bar. "I’m not ready for the ring photo."
"You broke up with her because she chewed too loud," Clark pointed out.
"It was a texture thing!" James defended himself.
Liam swirled his ginger ale, watching the ice cubes clink against the glass. Usually, this was the moment he would check his watch. Usually, he would be planning his exit strategy, eager to get back to his silence and his books.
But tonight, the silence felt different. Tonight, the silence had a texture. It felt like grey concrete and smelled like Peter Stuyvesant cigarettes.
"I met someone," Liam said.
The words were spoken softly, almost lost under the thrum of the bass from the speakers, but the effect was instantaneous.
James’s head snapped up off the bar. Henry choked on his IPA. Clark actually put down his phone.
The three men stared at Liam as if he had just announced he was leaving architecture to become a professional mime.
"I'm sorry," James said, blinking rapidly. "I think I have beer in my ears. Did the King just say he met someone?"
Liam kept his eyes on his glass, a small, unbidden smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "I didn't say I met someone in the dating sense. I just... I had a conversation."
"With a woman?" Henry asked, leaning in. "A real, human woman? Not a Siri prompt?"
"Yes, Henry. A woman."
"Who?" James demanded, spinning his stool to face Liam fully. "Is she a model? An actress? Please tell me she's not another client. Remember the fiasco with the hotel heiress?"
"She works in the building," Liam said. He took another sip of ginger ale, enjoying the sudden shift in the room's gravity. He wasn't just the observer anymore; he was the narrator.
"She’s the Finance Manager."
"Finance?" Clark wrinkled his nose. "Like... spreadsheets? Budgets? The people who tell us we can't buy the good chairs?"
"Emi," Liam said. The name felt heavy and sweet on his tongue, like a drop of honey. "Her name is Emi."
James’s eyes widened. "Wait. Emi? The tall one? The one who looks like she could kill you with a single glance and then charge you for the funeral?"
"She has a... presence," Liam admitted.
"A presence?" James laughed, clapping his hands together. "Liam, that woman is terrifying! I tried to expense a team lunch with her once—"
"The sushi incident," Liam interrupted, his smile widening. "She told me."
"She told you?" James looked delighted. "You guys are sharing inside jokes? Oh, this is huge. This is monumental. The Monk has left the monastery!"
"It was just a talk," Liam said, trying to downplay the sudden warmth in his chest. "We were in the emergency stairwell. She was reading."
"Reading what?" Henry asked. "The tax code?"
"A romance novel," Liam said softly. "Something about ruthless people."
The table went quiet for a second. The image of the stoic, terrifying Finance Manager sitting on a dirty concrete step reading a romance novel was hard to reconcile with the woman who rejected their expense reports.
"She smokes," Liam added, almost to himself. "Peter Stuyvesant. She looked..." He paused, searching for the architectural term, the right word to describe the structural integrity of her sadness. "She looked like she was waiting for something that already happened."
James watched his best friend carefully. He had known Liam for a decade. He knew the look of Liam analyzing a building, and he knew the look of Liam bored by a date. He had never seen this look. It was a look of curiosity, mixed with a profound sense of recognition.
"She’s different, isn't she?" James asked, his voice dropping the joking tone.
Liam nodded slowly. "Yeah. She's not trying to impress anyone. I stood there, in my tie, with my 'Architect of the Year' vibes or whatever you guys call it, and she didn't care. She just asked if I was okay."
"And were you?" Clark asked.
"I don't know," Liam admitted. "But after talking to her... I was."
He looked at his reflection in the mirror behind the bar. The sharp eyebrows, the flawless skin, the "male model" exterior that kept the world at bay. Emi hadn't looked at that. She had looked right through it, straight at the exhausted man hiding in the stairwell.
"She calls me 'Architect,'" Liam said.
"That's literally your job title," Henry pointed out.
"It sounded different when she said it," Liam insisted. "It didn't sound like a job. It sounded like... a name."
James raised his beer bottle high. "Well, to the Finance Manager. To Emi. If she can make Liam the Lion drink a ginger ale and smile like a schoolboy on a Friday night, she must be a witch."
"To Emi," Henry and Clark chorused.
Liam raised his glass of golden, fizzing soda. "To Emi."
They drank, and the conversation eventually drifted back to sports and office politics, but the shift had occurred. The seed had been planted in the fertile soil of a rainy Friday night.
When the group finally broke up around midnight, the rain had turned into a soft, misty drizzle. James stumbled into a cab, waving enthusiastically. Henry and Clark headed for the subway.
Liam walked to his motorcycle, which was parked under the awning. He didn't get on it immediately. He stood there, looking up at the skyline of the Upper East Side, the buildings he had helped shape piercing the clouds.
He thought about the stairwell. He thought about the smell of vanilla and smoke. He thought about the 2:00 PM appointment he had silently made with himself for Monday.
His mother was wrong. He wasn't a monk, and he wasn't lonely.
He was just a man who had finally found a puzzle he couldn't solve with a calculator.
And for the first time in seven years, the King of the Savannah wasn't looking for new territory to conquer.
He was looking for a specific tree, in a specific corner of the jungle, where he might just find a place to rest his head.
He pulled his helmet on, the visor snapping shut, sealing him in his own world. But as he kicked the Harley into gear and roared out into the wet streets of New York, Liam knew his world had just gotten a little bit bigger.