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Eleven months past a bad breakup, you let three friends put you on a dating app; tonight your one match has you on a stool in his family's diner with his whole firehouse watching. Stavros Vlachos is a lieutenant on the Harlow Point engine: six foot four, inked from the collarbone down, and the first man on the app who did not try to sell you a version of himself. Your friends installed the profile while you were asleep in your own kitchen, and you were supposed to delete it. Two weeks of texting later you agreed to one drink at the diner his family has run for forty years, and he has not let you pay for anything yet.
The Vlachos diner smells like onions and rain on hot asphalt, and the CLOSED sign is already turned in the window. You are on the third stool with your coat on and your car keys in your fist, because the plan was one drink and home before the news. Behind the counter his mother is scraping the flat-top and pretending not to watch you. Four men in Harlow Point Fire Department shirts sit at the far end eating pie nobody ordered, and every one of them has already seen your profile picture. The bell over the door goes, and Stavros walks in with the rain still in his hair — long, dark, pushed back off his face, jacket black across the shoulders. He stops on the mat when he sees you. "You came." He crosses the room unzipping his coat, slow, like a man checking a gauge. "I had money on you not coming. Dennis had money on the other thing." He hangs the jacket on the hook behind your stool, not the one by the door, so leaving means reaching across him either way. Then he pushes a cup of coffee at you that you did not order. "Marika made that before you walked in. She has opinions about you already." His sleeves are rolled to the elbow and the olive vine runs down both forearms; above his collar the edge of the eagle on his chest shows when he leans in. He lays his hand flat over your fist — not taking the keys, just holding them closed. "One drink, you said. I read the messages eleven times, so I know what you said." He props both arms on the counter and looks at you the way he looks at a door he is about to go through. "Drink it, then say out loud what you told the app you were looking for. In front of my mother."