When you caught your boyfriend Eric in bed with someone in your apartment— the one you let him live in because he was in between jobs, working as a door dash driver— it felt like your world crumbled.

But not in the sort of, sky is falling, everything is over, sort of way. More like the fog had lifted and you suddenly realized what a piece of shit he was, way.

Still, you weren't the type to rebound quickly so you focused on yourself and work for a while. Two months, to be exact, before Chase Vesci walked into the veterinary clinic you work at 10 pm, just before closing. His dog Ace— one of two German Shepard— was cut himself on a wire fence when he got off his leash during a walk and chased a squirrel down a dark alleyway.

You had to keep the clinic closed another hour to take X-rays, administer pain medicine, a sterilization shot, and wrap his paw. But you didn't mind. Chase felt badly, though, so he offered to make a reservation for you and a friend or someone else you knew at one of the best restaurants in town. Which he happened to work at.

That was an offer you couldn't refuse.

You took your best friend and he even came out to check on your meal, to which your friend wouldn't stop raving about...and him, once he left.

You weren't too sure about rushing into a relationship after the last one ended so abruptly, but when he had the waiter write his phone number on the bill, which he paid, you couldn't not call him.

Chase spent almost every night in the back of a kitchen, but in the days to follow, he spent his time visiting you at work, asking you to come to dog park with him, taking you to the movies. It was a level of consistency that Eric never had. In fact, the only thing consistent about him was the narcissistic tendencies of him.

Two months after the break up and two weeks after you started seeing Chase, Eric somehow found out and call you got was unpleasant to say the least. He started raging about how you were supposed to come back after taking time apart, how you had betrayed him in some twisted way, how you were a run through slut and stuck up bitch...

That was as much as you heard before Chase grabbed the phone out of your hand and told Eric, with an almost scarily calm voice, that if he ever called you again, he'd track him down and beat him until he was so unrecognizable that he'd need a new drivers license picture.

And Chase looked like he could do it, too— buff, tall, covered in tattoos, with a few piercings on his ears, eyebrow, and tongue. But you knew even though he was capable of it, he wouldn't. Probably.

Chase was a romantic. The guy who remembered details, brought flowers, opened doors. Even though he worked as a chef, spending all evening cooking over a hot stove, he still made you dinner.

Anything you asked for.

"I'm pretty rusty, I don't think I've cooked Chinese food since I worked at Panda Express as a teenager," he confessed, setting down and entire plate of perfectly made sushi for you. "And that was just pressing buttons on a rice cooker."

You watched Chase pour some sauces into a bowl and then come back with egg rolls, dumplings, fried rice, and chow mein. Which was pretty much enough to cover his entire dining room in his apartment.

"If this is what you call rusty, I'd like to request whatever you think you're good at for next time," you muttered in awe, mouth agape as he set down some chopsticks and sat down. "I'm never getting take out Chinese again."

He chuckled, appreciative of the comment, even though you weren't hard to impress. "Thank you, sweetheart," he replied, the endearment rolling off his tongue with ease. It had been doing that more and more often. "This is baijiu," he noted, pointing to a bottle of alcohol. "No idea if it's your thing, but I thought you might want to try it."

He purposely left out the part where he mentioned that baijiu was notoriously expensive because he didn't want you to feel bad if you didn't like it.

You nodded. "I never say no to alcohol," you remarked, pausing and scrunching your nose. "Wait, no, that didn't sound right."

"Don't worry, I got what you meant," Chase responded, pouring you some in a tiny glass meant to be finished in one sip. He watched as you sniffed it, nose wrinkling at the strong smell before downing it and putting the glass back down on the table. "Well?" He questioned curiously.