She arrived at your apartment around ten-thirty with a bottle of vodka and that grin on her face that makes your knees go weak. You opened the window for her and Porrim climbed in off your fire escape. Her hand rests on your shoulder for a moment and your breath is taken away for just a second before she asks if you were ready to go to the canal.
You nod and slip your shoes on, fixing your hair as she pockets her keys and turns off the lights in your apartment for you.
You both took your car, Porrim sitting next to you as you drive to the part where you know that you can walk down under the loc and smoke without being disturbed. She commandeers the AUX cord and plays music that you don't enjoy, but she loves them and you don't have it in you to tell her to change the station.
When you get to your stop, she hops out and swishes her hair back into place, it curling so prettily down her back, just as her tattoos do. She pulls out a cigarette box and a lighter as she heads over to the steps and walks down. You rush to keep up with her as she lights her joint casually, the flame catching her lip ring in a way that only poetry could explain how your heart tightened.
"It's pretty down here, ain't it?" you ask, wanting Porrim's attention to be on you even though your mouth was dry.
She glances up just before you both went under the loc and pauses before leaning back against your arm gently and smiles, "It's definitely pretty… Come on, Cronus, I thought you were going to smoke this with me?"
She takes your hand in her's and pulls you along so gently that you couldn't help but go with her. You smoke together and walk the length under the loc and down to where there are more stars to come back up again as you joke about coworkers and friends, her arm slowly looping more around your's until it's practically hugging your's and your stomach is full of butterflies.
You walk back to your car with her on your arm before Porrim tugs you down towards the grass and she lays you out, using your arm as a pillow as she points back up at the sky, telling you right off the top of her head what constellations were what.
When she got bored of that and wanted to do something else, mostly because it was warm and gross in the sticky Rochester weather, despite the muggy and humid day having already passed, you both piled back in your car, Porrim taking over your AUX cord again as you both just randomly drove through the city, choosing different directions and streets to go down. You talk about hopes and dreams, her telling you that she wants to own her own tattoo and piercing parlor, maybe also design clothing and stuff like that as you tell her that you've always been into music. Porrim just grins at you and tells you that she thinks you might make it. You've certainly got the attitude for it and an award-winning grin.
You know that you've turned bright red and you don't say anything else as she goes on and on about all the different body mods she still wants and what kinds of clothing she was thinking of making. Her music makes your car throb a little, but you hardly notice it, because you're trying to remember everything she's saying while also trying to not to show how nervous and dumb you are to be getting so red over one stupid little comment that she probably only said to be-
"Yo, you should pull right up here and park it."
"Where are we?"
"U of R, I just remembered that I still have that bottle," she grins at you before rummaging in your back seat for it. You glance at your clock and it's already past two- where did the time go?
She uncaps it and drinks it right out of the bottle when you look back at her.
Your mouth and throat aches in sympathy, but she is completely unperturbed.
She hands the bottle to you and you hesitate for a second, noticing the lipstick on the lip, despite her's being absolutely perfect in ways that make your head spin and your pulse quicken in maddening ways, but you end up taking a shot, holding back a cough as you hand it back to her. You turn off the car as the bottle keeps getting handed back and forth and she lights up another joint.
Around half an hour later, she taps your shoulder and points out a fire escape ladder.
"... What about it?"
"I think that leads to the library roof."
"Porrim, I don't think-"
She was already getting out of the car.
"Porrim! There's a fence-!"
She was already scaling the fence, telling you to hurry up as she carried the bottle of vodka up with her in one hand. You close up your car and lock it before you go to follow her, Porrim already dismounting off the other side, stumbling and almost falling on her ass before she tells you to hurry up, smiling very proudly at herself before looking both ways to make sure that no one was watching you both.
When you land solidly on your feet, she takes your hand and drags you to the fire escape. She goes on up first and you follow her, both of you stopping every few windows to see if anyone was looking outside and would alert campus security or the cops.
Surprisingly, you weren't caught and soon the two of you were laying on the roof above the library, smoking and drinking as you looked out over the town for a bit. The bottle was soon emptied and you both lay down and looked up at the sky and watched the planes pass, nothing much being said between the two of you as your hands meet.
You're not certain how long you two had been lying there, but the sky was slowly gaining a lighter color. You didn't want this night to end, but the sky had other ideas.
Porrim slowly sits up and pushes her hair out of her face before smiling down at you. Your heart skips a beat and she leans in awfully close to your face- then presses her face into your shoulder.
You hold her there for a few minutes before you break the silence, asking her what you were, "I mean- Things aren't going to be weird at work, are they? Are we- You know? Boyfriend girlfriend or…?
Nothing happens for a solid minute.
Then another.
Just when you were about to ask if you said the wrong thing, she sits up and cups your cheek with a grin on her face, the same dumb grin that she has been flashing you all night long, and she tilts her head to the side, the grin almost turning into a puppy-dog face. Her pout is making you feel like you have wronged her so badly and you want nothing more than to kiss her and make it all up to her when she answers you, "Oh, Cronus… You're really pretty. You're so very pretty, but, you see, I just am not into dating… I don't think I ever could date you, sorry."
"... I understand."
You don't hold hands as you cross back to the fence.
You don't talk the whole car ride back to your place.
She blasts her music once again the whole way there.
Once you're at your place, she hops out of the car, waves a goodbye, then drives off in her own car.
You go back to your room and smoke a cigarette as you try to figure out how you could have prevented and fixed all of that, it had been such a perfect night, how could you have fucked up so bad?
You sleep and don't dream.