Disclaimer: I do not own the Clique.
I'm sitting here in Kemp's Bar and Lounge at the counter with a screwdriver in my hand and a lot on my mind. I just came from my girl Layne's apartment and I knew that I needed a drink. I think she's been cheating on me. Whenever I go over, her sheets seem too rumpled and there are always two wineglasses in the drain board. We just had a fight; I knew that I whiffed something other then Polo Black on her shirt. She vehemently denies, but I know what I know.
"How ya holdin' up Joshy?" Kemp comes over as he wipes out a glass. Business is pretty slow for a Saturday night. It'll probably fill up later.
"Not too well." I rub the back of my neck. I've been feeling great strain lately.
He nods knowingly and asks if I need another drink. I figure I'm already in a mess, so I accept. I let the citrus burn my tongue and the alcohol burn my throat when a pretty girl sits next to me at the bar. I know that I know her from somewhere, but I just can't seem to place her. Of course I don't want to get caught staring, so I look down, but she caught a glimpse of me and she smiles. God, I KNOW that smile. But from where?
"Sorry" I murmur inwardly. I don't need to be thought of as a perv.
"Don't be." she smiles easily as she asks Kemp for an appletini. Ah, women and their cocktails. Layne usually gets a cosmopolitan.
That smile is just haunting me as this point so I ask her if we've met before.
"I don't think so." she looks at me and her pretty brown hair swings slightly "I think I'd remember someone as cute as you."
I blush and look down, but I can tell a smile has crept up on my face.
"Don't be shy now." she grins as she grabs a few pretzels.
"I have a girlfriend." I don't know why I blurted that so outwardly, but the second the words left my lips, Kemp omitted an obnoxious snort.
"Well I had a boyfriend, but that didn't stop me from coming to bars, and it doesn't seem to be stopping you." she added matter-o-factly as she sipped her cocktail.
"You're right...excuse me." I got up to move to a table before she hung her head backwards like it was too heavy for her swanlike neck.
"Come on don't leave...I need someone to talk to...God knows Kemp isn't good company."
Either Kemp didn't hear this, or he chose just to ignore it, but I let that roll off of my back. I knew I shouldn't have even looked at this girl, but it was just killing me that I couldn't place her. So I sat down and asked if she was from around here.
"I tend to bounce around a lot." she nodded her head as she took another sip. Kemp snorted like a pig again.
"Yeah, who've you been bouncing around with THIS week?" he asked as he wiped the counter by where we were sitting.
"Chris." she smiled like a naughty child who was up to mischief.
"AGAIN?" Kemp rolled his eyes. "Lord, woman that man has some sort of spell over you."
"Well not anymore, he left for Chicago yesterday."
"Yeah, talk to me again in two weeks." Kemp shook his head and went to the back.
I twirled my finger around my drink having not had any place in that conversation. I guess she and Kemp knew each other well enough if they would speak to each other that way. Maybe I'd seen her here before? Yeah, maybe that was it.
"Sorry about your guy." I couldn't think of anything else to say as I finished the dregs of my drink.
"Ah, don't worry about it, he and I are like two cats, one minute hissing at each other, the next snuggling in a little furry heap. It's actually quite disgusting." she raised her eyebrow and I smiled at that last part. "But you said you had a girl yourself...what's she like?" she nodded in my direction.
"Oh, well we've been together since we were about five, childhood sweethearts." I sucked on my ice cube.
"I see, then why aren't you off in a coloring book with her somewhere instead of drinking with a complete stranger?" This haunted me because I KNEW she wasn't a stranger. I KNEW her...I just knew I did.
"Sometimes you just need to get out a little bit."
"Trouble at home?"
I looked up at her quickly as she said that. Whoever this woman was, she had quite some nerve.
"Excuse me?"
"What?" she asked innocently.
"What right have you to just ask me about my personal business that way?"
"Whoa, I guess there is some trouble then." she stirred her green potion.
"Excuse me?"
"You wouldn't be so testy if everything was as perfect as you would have me believe."
God, now I was getting psychology from this girl I didn't even know. Well this girl I DID know but didn't know I knew. I guess my silence gave her the answer she was seeking because she just said simply "What's going on?"
"I'll have you know I love her, and even if I didn't I certainly wouldn't tell YOU about it."
"Cone on, I'm just a stranger with a cocktail, you can tell me anything, it doesn't matter." her eyes twinkled. This woman was so baffling.
"I...I don't even know your name." I pointed out as I drank from my glass.
"What's it to you?" she asked with a shrug.
"I'm not going to tell someone whose name I don't even know about my romantic relationships."
She considered this before saying, "You tell me first."
"Josh." I nodded.
"Call me Em." she stirred her drink some more. "Now tell me Josh, what's the problem in your cutesy little courtship?"
I really didn't feel like spilling my guts about Layne, especially because I was so suspicious lately. Plus this girl might be some distant friend of Layne's who would just get me in huge trouble. No way was I saying a word. "Why don't you tell me about this Chris first?"
She didn't look offended or anything else by this question, she just simple asked "why?"
"Well if you think it's so acceptable for me to tell you anything, you have to be willing to share just as much."
She considered this before asking, "What do you want to know?"
I was actually pretty taken aback when she said this. I had fully expected her to either get extremely offended and just move out of disgust, or she'd see how inappropriate her question really was and retreat to more neutral subject matter. I never in a million years expected her to just openly be cool with me asking anything.
"Well why do you have such and on-off thing with him?"
She thought about this, but not for as long as I'd have hoped she would. "Good sex, bad conversations."
I blinked. "What?"
"Well I don't mean that he's an airhead or anything, but we definitely do not see eye to eye. We'll disagree on something, and then calmly part ways, kind of knowing we'll always end up back in each other's beds by the end of the month. I guess it's just what you'd call true love."
If this mystery familiar girl hadn't baffled or surprised me before, she certainly did now. She didn't even KNOW me and she was telling me about her hot sex. Plus, I couldn't imagine anybody's views on true love being so skewed.
"That's not true love." I just could not keep my comment to myself.
Still, she wasn't offended and just calmly glanced at me. "Why do you say?"
"True love is more then a familiar sexual partner."
"That may be, but it sure helps in the quest to prevent herpes."
My mouth just hung open. I couldn't believe that I couldn't recall this girl, because I know I certainly would have remembered someone with a mouth this fresh.
"Well, then tell me what is true love?"
I didn't really know where to start...how could you properly explain the concept of love in a bar on a Saturday night after you've been drowning the possibility of your girlfriend having slept with someone else?
"I don't know...it's just something you feel when you've known a person for your whole life and want to keep being with them. It's knowing you're going to marry someone when you're ten years old."
She tilted her head at this then said, "I can see our thoughts are quite different."
I could certainly say so. This woman was a complete flake! I guess she sensed that I was partly glaring at her so she said,
"I think it certainly is true love."
"Playing cat and mouse every two seconds then going off to date other people? THAT'S true love to you?" I was pretty disgusted so I chugged another glass. Then she looked at me seriously, but not sternly. There was a certain soft feminine calmness that she exuded that really made my stomach turn.
"No, because we know that we'll always end up together."
At this point I felt like a complete jerk. As outward as this woman was, I still don't have any right to pass judgment about her admittedly uncommon love life.
"Sorry." I looked back down at my drink.
"Nothing to be sorry about." she scrunched her face genuinely. "I'm the one spilling my guts. Now tell me, what's with you and this little girl of yours?"
I don't know whether it was her example, the fact that this woman may just be my long lost best friend, or that this was just a girl in a bar, but I sighed.
"Her name's Layne..." I then remembered my earlier reasoning "do you know anyone named Layne?"
She shook her head no and willed me to continue.
"I think she's been seeing someone else." I twirled my finger again, not sure that I could look this girl in the eye.
"Whoa Real World Confessions much." Kemp guffawed as he handed Em another cocktail. She shushed him and looked at me expectantly again.
"How long?" she asked softly.
"A month." I couldn't believe that I really just said that
"Dump her." she said it with such quiet yet grave seriousness that I was actually pretty startled.
"W...what?"
"Dump her," she repeated as she sipped from her drink, eyes on nothing but me. She had such unique eyes that I couldn't believe I couldn't remember their owner.
"I couldn't do that...I love her."
"That may be the case, but now you're in a bar drinking your heart out talking to a complete stranger about your heartache."
"So are you." I retorted because I took a bit of offence from that.
"Listen Josh; you just seem like a really nice guy who shouldn't be cheated on. I can tell you deserve much better."
"She's the best girl I've ever known." by now I was sulking.
"Josh, don't sell yourself short." she gave me a little smile. It didn't feel weird, it didn't feel desperate, it was just level. And odd as it sounds, it was that little inkling of a smile that really got me thinking. Was I just being played?
"But you don't know me."
"Yeah, but I know your situation. I promise I've seen this before. Do what's right for you, but don't make a big mistake, because before you know it, too much time has gone by to correct it."
By now I was really wrapped up in thought. She was right. This pretty little thing with a streak in her hair and a skirt up her thigh was telling me the truth. I just had to be at peace with it. I then looked up from my moment of silence and she was digging through her bag.
"Listen I've got to go. It was really nice talking to you Josh." she left some money on the counter and yelled to the back "Goodnight Kemp." She then patted me on the shoulder and said much softer "Goodnight Josh, and good luck."
It took a minute after she left for me to realize that I still hadn't figured out who she was. Just then Kemp swooped in to collect his tip.
"Kemp who WAS that girl?"
Kemp looked up at me and smirked a little bit. He could see by the conversation he had caught and the look in my eyes what my identity crisis was. He didn't say a word but he slid the latest issue of Us Weekly into my grasp. I didn't see what reading about Brangelina for the millionth time was going to do for me. I looked up at him inquisitively and he motioned for me to flip it over.
I did and I got the shock of my life. Staring up at me was Em in a CoverGirl ad with her unique eyes sparkling and that same white smile. She was Massie Block! I couldn't believe that I hadn't placed her before. She was the Be Pretty Cosmetics girl! And now she was modeling for CoverGirl! I looked up at Kemp wide eyed and he just nodded and went down the bar to serve a pair of best friends.
I jumped off the bar stool to go find her, but Massie had already gone. I had just met the hottest model of the moment and I didn't even know it! But I guess I learned something that night. Sometimes all you have to do is open your eyes, whether it be to the fact that your girlfriend just isn't right for you, or to see that there is someone extraordinary sitting right in front of you.