The place was cozy. It was modern; but intricate antiques had been nestled here and there to flourish a sense of character. A warm golden glow from small antique chandeliers bathed the subdued bar, dancing with the wisps of jasmine fragrance trailing from the carefully placed incense sticks. A hazy, comfortable ambience blanketed the room. He’d chosen well.

Elle Moreaux looked across the small table to the twenty-something year-old man, whose eyes crinkled cheerfully as he smiled at her. With neat black hair, brown eyes and a strong jaw line, he was undeniably good looking. But there was something unnerving in the way he was so unfamiliar without his normal pinstripe business suit.

Elle had nearly smacked into him in her haste to be punctual to a business meeting six days ago. She had recognized him as the intern her father had employed eighteen months before he passed away. He had recognized her as his former boss’s daughter – who, since inheriting his entire empire, was now his boss.

He’d asked her out for drinks within ten minutes.

“You look stunning tonight, Elle.”

The alabaster goddess smiled. Glorious crimson curls had been carelessly swept up into a messy bun; her collarbones and shoulders bare due to the strapless black dress she’d chosen in haste barely forty-five minutes ago. It fitted against her form well; the shiny ebony fabric making her periwinkle blue patent leather shoes – which matched those dazzling eyes - pop.

“Thank you, Matt.”

“Not that you don’t always look stunning.”

The way he smiled her, slightly cheeky but still so earnest - it was inevitable that Elle would feel compelled to grin shyly in response.

The strumming of a guitar broke the relative silence that had hovered over the semi-full bar. Elle had not noticed the man sitting on the stage in the corner, only a short distance away from their table. But now a single light shone upon the musician as fingers toyed with the strings, creating a haunting melody. A microphone on a stand had been lowered so he could comfortable reach it from his place on the battered old bar stool he sat upon.

“I should never think,
What's in your heart;
What's in our home.
So I won't.”

“So are you enjoying work, Matt?”

The businessman, looking significantly more casual than normal in a pair of dark jeans and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled back to his elbows, tilted his head to the side slightly and studied his employer with a quizzical smile.

“You really want to talk about work?”

“Do you not?”

“I’m sure you’d rather hear about something more interesting.”

”You'll learn to hate me,
But still call me baby.
Oh love,
So call me by my name.”

The musician’s voice was smooth, but still slightly husky in the way not every word was pronounced perfectly. It just seemed to flow; a physical manifestation of the raw emotion that had compelled the composer to create something. Elle liked the way the words whispered against her ears.

“How did you find this place then?”

The man – Matt – seemed slightly more pleased by that. His fingertips lightly stroked the thin stem of his martini glass as he let his eyes carelessly sweep across the bar. “Strange little story actually. I worked as bar tender here when I was in college – back when it was a smoke-filled dump whose only customers were bikies, drug dealers and broken men. But I loved it. They tipped generously and someone always had a story to tell you.”

Elle smiled gently. It was so... Refreshing, to listen to someone with such enthusiasm, with such life. She almost envied him for the way he could look back at his past in fondness, and communicate such warmth and genuine affection for something in the simple way he chose to speak. She knew from the business meeting last week that he had the tendency to fidget when he became involved in something; and she noted in quiet glee the way his fingers would tap on the tabletop in their own private harmony.

”And save your soul,
Save your soul.
Before you're too far gone,
Before nothing can be done.”

“But you know, finished college and moved away from the area; never thought of this place at all again. But then just the other week I was talking to an old friend of mine. He does a bit of this and that, invests in different things...”

But Elle had stopped listening. Her gaze had slipped away from his easy-going smile and past his shoulder, to the man on stage. He still just sat there, blue eyes hidden beneath a mess of blond hair as he crooned into the microphone. But she could see the way he shoulders slumped forward just slightly, the way his mouth tugged downwards in sadness as he let whatever he was singing about consume him.

“And he was going on about this old pub he’d bought and done up recently. Raving on and on, and I told him that he gave me a couple of free drinks; I’d make the trip across town to check it out – which he agreed to...”

”I'll try to decide when,
She'll lie in the end.
I ain't got no fight in me-
In this whole damn world.
Tell you to hold off,
You choose to hold on.
It's the one thing that I've known.”

Elle couldn’t even here Matt now. He mind had completely de-registered the fact that he was sitting across from her now, hands inching closer and closer to hers. All she could see, smell and hear were those words; those murmured lyrics that hammered against her ears as if the singer was screaming. The words that collided against the sound of her own breathing – the sound of her own heartbeat inside her head. She could hear it, heard her heartbeat becoming irregular and her breathing becoming ragged – but in her trance-like state, Elle could think of no way to make it all stop.

”Once I put my coat on,
I'm coming out in this all wrong.
She's standing outside holding me,
Saying “oh please,
I'm in love.”
I'm in love.”

Her blue eyes stung with the sudden tears that rimmed them, as a wave of abrupt and long-forgotten emotion surged forward; smashing against her frail body like a wave and crushing her. She clutched a hand to her chest as she felt her ribs quake from the sudden sob that had risen to her throat. She let the tears slips down her pale cheeks as she squeezed her eyes shut, trying to block out his goddamn voice. The angelic crooning of sadness and heartache that was ripping her apart.

”Girl save your soul,
Go on save your soul.
Before it's too far gone,
And before nothing can be done.”

“Elle?”

Her blue eyes flew open, and through the thick fog that was clouding her mind, she realised that she’d stood up; knocking her chair to the floor behind her. She could see Matt, brow knitted into a concerned frown; but he was so far away. His voice was barely a breeze, he was so far into the distance.

“Elle, are you alright?”

”'Cause without me,
You got it all.
So hold on.”

“Elle? Elle look at me. What did I say?”

”Without me you got it all,
So hold on.”

“Elle!”

The sudden brush of a hand against her arm brought Elle spinning back to reality, and she lurched forward in a dry wretch as a sudden wave of nausea made her entire body tremble; goosebumps scattered across her doll-like flesh.

”Without me you got it all.”

“Elle, do you need me to call a doctor?”

Inhaling shakily, she looked up to Matt through a blurred mess of tears. His face had crumpled in concern, brown eyes expressing distress at his own inability to soothe her anguish. He hated himself for thinking that even in her hysteria, she was so wretchedly beautiful.

”Without me you got it all,
So hold on.”

“I need to leave.”

“Why? I mean- do you want me to take you home?”

”Without me you got it all,
So hold on.”

Elle shook her head, shoulders quaking with another sob that made her chest ache. “No Matt. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I...” She trailed off. She couldn’t finish because she simply didn’t know how. She gave him one last glance before, blinded by agony, she broke away from the table and stumbled through the bar into the cold New York night.

Still lost in her own torment, Elle turned in she didn’t know which direction, and – with arms wrapped around herself to stop her body breaking from the inside out – set off down the dark and empty street.


Hoping, praying, that the shadows would just swallow her whole.






Without me you got it all.
So hold on.
Hold on.