ARC Book
Pour
Olivia Ramos came to New York City with a communications degree, a walk-up apartment in Astoria, and the absolute certainty that she was built for more. Three months later, she is behind the bar at Atticus — one of Midtown’s most coveted cocktail lounges — reading rooms, reading people, and pouring drinks for the city’s ambitious, beautiful, and relentless. She knows how to move through a room without giving too much away. She knows how to smile when she is calculating rent, opportunity, timing, and escape. She knows this job is temporary. It has to be. Liv did not come a thousand miles to become someone’s favorite bartender. She came to build a life with her name on it — a real career, real money, real power, and the kind of independence no one can take back once she earns it. Every shift is a performance. Every conversation is a possibility. Every night at Atticus puts her close enough to the world she wants to touch, but not yet inside it. Then desire starts complicating the plan. Not just romance. Not just attraction. Desire for access. Desire for control. Desire to be seen without having to perform. Desire to become the woman she keeps pretending she already is. Liv is focused. Liv is hungry. Liv is careful. But New York has a way of asking for more than ambition. The higher she reaches, the harder it becomes to separate what she wants from what she needs — and the choices she makes on the way up will decide not only who gets close to her, but who she becomes when no one is watching. **Pour** is a story about ambition, desire, and the dangerous moment when a woman who knows exactly where she is going realizes she may not know herself as well as she thought.
