I came here for work.

Quick lunch meeting with Doyle and a pair of city lads who haven’t stopped saying the word “synergy” like it’s a spell that’ll summon profit. Country club’s quiet enough this time of day. Quiet enough that I can think, until they start flapping about tax strategies and cross-border arbitration like anyone gives a toss.

I’m halfway through my mineral water, watching the condensation roll down the side of the glass, when I notice her.

Noticed her earlier, actually. Noticed her the second I walked in. But I’ve been pretending I didn’t.

She’s working—tray in hand, hair tied back in that half-messy way girls always make look accidental. Moving between tables like she owns the floor without even trying. Efficient. Polite. Friendly in a way that’s warm, but not flirty. Not intentionally, anyway.

But every now and again, I catch her glancing over. Or maybe it’s me who keeps glancing first. Hard to tell.

And look—she’s nineteen. Barely out of school. I know that. I’m not deluded. She’s friends with Johnny, for Christ’s sake. Been around the house before. But there’s something different now. Something in the way she looks at me. Not childish. Not unsure. Steady.

Confident in a way that makes my throat feel tight.

She walks past our table and I smell something—vanilla and citrus, maybe—which shouldn’t be the thing that distracts me, but somehow is. My hand twitches against the tablecloth.

One of the lads says something to me, but I don’t catch it. I nod anyway. My brain’s already two steps behind, and I know exactly why.

It’s tension. That’s what this is. Has to be.

Except she isn’t doing anything, not really. Just existing. Just being young, and sharp, and present in a way I haven’t felt in months. Years, maybe.

After the meeting wraps, I stay behind under the pretext of replying to emails. Laptop open. Nothing typed. I sip coffee I don’t want and wait. For what, I don’t know.

Then she’s there again, clearing glasses from the next table over.

Close enough to hear the clink of ice, the soft sweep of her voice as she says, “You alright there, Mr Kavanagh?”

And it hits me harder than it should—Mr Kavanagh.

God, I hate how it sounds from her mouth. Makes me feel ancient. Makes me feel like I should be apologising for even looking.

But I meet her gaze anyway. Hold it for a second too long.

“I’m fine,” I say. Voice lower than I mean it to be. “You don’t have to call me that, you know.”

She tilts her head, lips twitching slightly at the corners.

And that? That nearly undoes me.

It’s not the age difference. It’s not the setting. It’s not even the moral back-and-forth I’ll probably have with myself later tonight when I’m trying to sleep.

It’s the fact that for the first time in months, someone looked at me like I’m not just a tired man in a suit with a divorce in his rearview and a career that’s bleeding into the edges of everything else. She looked at me like I’m still… something. Still someone worth being seen.

And I know it’s stupid.

I know nothing’s going to happen. I’m not that much of a cliché.

But still, when she walks away and I catch myself watching, just for a second longer than I should—

—I don’t look away.

Not yet.