Based on a prompt given on Tumblr.
Warning: contains a mention of attempted sexual assault
One drop of Tequila Sunrise landed on my thigh, and it was when I realized I was drinking at a faster pace than my body could handle. The loud music coming out of the gigantic speaker near me shook the small paddle of alcohol, which trickled down the leather of my pants, leaving a sticky trail.
It was all because of Paul, an irresponsible friend of mine, who had left me on my devices as soon as we set foot in the club half an hour ago. I didn't hate him. He was a one-of-a-kind guy, whose spontaneity was both his strength and shortcoming. But it was him, who'd dragged me out of my house and to this nightclub, insisting I'd turn into a fossilized poop if I stayed in my cushion fort anymore. He should be with me, instead of dancing to Sia's Cheap Thrills and sharing a nasty beer with strangers.
I spent the whole song to finish my drink. When the last note was drowned out by the next song's intro, Paul came back, landing a drunkenly powerful smack on my back.
"Damn, what're you doing here all by yourself?" His beard glistened with alcohol and sweat. "Come dance with me, Grumpy. Life is happening right now."
"I just got out o' a relationship. Let me be salty."
"Ok, ok. I got it," He said, taking a last swig of my watered down cocktail. "Let's be salty together. You and me both, two attractive people with broken hearts."
"You aren't heartbroken."
With his pedantic grimace, he put his scrawny arm around my shoulder and made me turn around in the seat, pointing in the direction of the bar. "You see that girl over there? Long blonde hair, black flowery dress, sipping wine alone?"
It wasn't hard to find who he was referring to. Although the floor was packed, the blonde woman stood out. Whether it was her sophisticated manner or her extraordinary beauty, everyone seemed to keep a distance like there was a bubble around her.
And then, she raised her gaze and looked at me right in the eye. I don't know why, but I couldn't look away. Something in me told me not to, told me to stare back and wait for her to look away first. Her eyes, they were tender, hypnotic, and enigmatic.
"I tried to befriend her, thought she was unbelievably pretty, right?" Paul said. "So I'm like, 'Can I buy you a drink?' and she's like, 'No thanks.' Now I'm completely heartbroken."
"No kiddin'." I looked down and forced a smile, though he couldn't see.
He put his hand on his chest. "I have a soul of a poet. You have no idea."
"Your heart is more sensitive than a baby's skin," I said, but what had just happened left me quivering inside.
It didn't worry or frightened me. It was just the biggest what-would-have that made me fidget. What would've happened if I'd continued to stare?
To avoid getting caught in the bizarre staring contest again, I stole a glance at her. Her eyes were trained on her wine glass. I heaved a sigh of relief.
"C'mon, I wanna play pool," I said to Paul. I got off the stool and headed to the pool tables at the other end of the room, walking right behind the blonde woman.
###
For the next thirty minutes, we played there. Some old friend of mine joined in, Paul's new friends joined in, some more cocktails and shots went down my throat, and the night became much easier.
Once in a while, I would catch the enigmatic blonde looking at me. Her expression was always completely indecipherable. Whether she was judging me or interested in me, I couldn't tell, and maybe because of this undetermined power dynamics between us, I felt a strong pull toward her.
After a while, I glanced again and realized two guys, both with clean cuts and dressed in pastel-colored shorts, had approached her and now were inside her bubble. They stood on either side of her seat, sandwiching her so she couldn't escape. Even then, her facial expression hardly changed as she quietly observed the ripples inside her glass.
"Misty, it's your turn. Are you playing?"
I hummed as a response.
Then one of the guys, the taller one in blue, whispered something in her ear. The woman lifted her face and looked up at him, with just enough sparks in her eyes to tell that it was meant to be a glare. The brief moment her eyes left her drink, the other guy in green leaned in and reached for her glass, putting something. The place was too dark for me to see what it was, but the smirks on both of the guys gave away their sinister, criminal intentions.
"Yo, Grumpy, what are y—"
Keeping my eyes on the guys, I pressed the cue stick I was holding into Paul's chest and dashed. There was an ocean of people between us, gamboling and roaring like wild animals on loose. I loved the crowdedness of nightclubs. It was one of my favorite things about them, but in that moment, there was nothing more irksome.
When I got to the other side of the mass at last, the blonde woman had her glass in her hand, her upper lip about to touch the rim. Dashing with all the energy my drunken legs could have, I snatched it out of her grip by a hair without a word. Had I been calmer, perhaps I would've thrown these guys a death glare, chased them away, called the police and that was it. But my blood was boiling, maybe from all the alcohol in my veins, maybe from the disgust towards the despicable act, or maybe both. I splashed the wine on the taller guy's smug face, stabbed his foot with the heel of my boot, put my hand on his shoulder and kicked him in the crotch. He collapsed there on the spot covering his balls, pathetic groans spilling out of his throat, red wine dripping from his clean cut.
Next was the shorter one. His eyes were wide in shock as he watched his co-rapist on the floor, and they got even wider when our eyes met. I grabbed him by the collar and pushed him into the edge of the bar counter. He whined like a child throwing a fit.
"Yeah, whine all you want while you can, you piece of shit, because your mommy won't be there once you're in jail."
I said some more threatening things to him. Though I don't remember exactly what my exact wording was, it sure cornered him to the verge of tears. He was slightly taller than me, but his balls were smaller than my thumbs.
One of the bodyguards, who happened to be my friend, came between us. He took the guys away after I told him what'd happened, and it was when I realized people had stopped dancing and now were watching me. The loud music kept vibrating the air. Nobody moving. It felt fairly odd.
"Excuse me," the blonde woman said. Despite having witnessed the clash up close, she was composed, albeit a little confused perhaps. "That was my drink."
Her eyes were different colors. One brown, and the other pale blue.
"Yeah, um—sorry 'bout that," I said. "These guys were spiking your drink. You didn't wanna drink that."
She looked down at the red puddle at my feet, her face ever blank. "Oh…thanks."
Her lack of visible emotions rather creeped me out. "Know what? It's still true that I took your drink away. I'll buy you another one."
Her eyes, especially the pale blue one, sent shivers down my spine. "…And how would I know you wouldn't spike it like they did? You are a stranger, too."
I couldn't believe she'd just accused me of being a potential rapist. I stared at her with my mouth agape as she took her phone out. This was the answer to my previous question; how enthusiastic is she for a company, my company? The answer: Not at all.
"Well, you have a point," I said. I took a ten dollar bill out of my pocket anyway, sliding it across the counter. "Get yourself something with this, ok?"
As I turned on my heels, her lips parted to protest, but the music drowned out whatever she had to say.
###
It had to be around two in the morning, because the club was literally as crammed as a poultry farm under foul-management. Everyone was drunk and dancing like maniacs, and it literally smelt like a chicken farm.
Paul had left me again after reuniting with his ex-boyfriend, telling me not to drink too much as he kissed me on the cheek. Some friends had gone home, some grinding on strangers on the dance floor, some drunk-calling their exes.
I was testing how many jello shots I could put in my mouth at a time with my friend whose name I couldn't remember. She wasn't exactly my friend, but a friend of my friend or something like that.
We were exchanging weird stories and laughing our butts off. With empty shot cups scattered about in front of us, we laughed hysterically to the point breathing became hard.
And the next thing I knew, I was holding her hair and stroking her back as she hunched over the toilet.
"Alright, let it all out," I said. "I mean, it's certainly an experience, right? To laugh until you throw up."
The girl let out some weak laughs. Though her face was still pale, she didn't have the I'm-going-to-be-sick hiccups anymore.
"Looks like you're done, huh?" I reached for toilet paper to wipe a puke residue off the corner of her mouth, only to find out there was none left. I knocked on the barrier between us and the next stall, where I saw a pair of pretty black heels from under the partition. "Hey, could you pass some paper? We're out in here."
A hand appeared from under the partition, and I took the offered paper. After getting her face cleaned, I followed her out of the stall.
"Chloe, are you ok?" another girl came into the bathroom and asked the disheveled girl, Chloe, who barely had the energy to nod. "Good, we were leaving. You coming with us, right?" she said, and Chloe nodded again.
They walked out with each other in their arms, equally wobbly.
Feeling myself sobering up, I turned to look in the mirror. My eyes met with the bi-colored ones of the blonde woman.
"Oh— hi," I said. The alcohol had pushed the incident between us to the corner of my mind, the very edge of oblivion, and I was taken aback to see the pair of enigmatic eyes again. I turned to look at the empty stall next to the one I'd been just in, and I looked at her feet. Black heels. "Oh, you—" I vaguely gestured towards the door, which the drunken Chloe had walked through. The woman nodded without having to hear the rest of what I had to say. "Thanks, um, for that."
She raised her hand, pointing at one place on her left chest while holding her gaze on mine. "You got a little…"
Looking myself in the mirror, I found a stain, a small token of gratitude from Chloe, on my right chest. "Oh, yeah. It's nothin'. It happens a lot more often than you might think." I bend over the sink to wet my hand in a half-assed effort to remove the stain.
"Here, let me," she said, taking a handkerchief out of her bag. She moistened the cloth and patted my shirt clean with it.
The proximity was new to me, and under the bright lights instead of the neon lights, her skin appeared even paler. In fact, everything about her in that moment was more or less different from my first impressions. Her blonde hair was darker than mine, she was only shorter than me by a couple inches, and in her eyes was a little hint of humanness.
She smelt good, not like cheap perfumes I was familiar with, but something more modest, more delicate.
Her eyes rose to meet mine a few times, and each time, she would look down with a slight grimace.
"What do you mean that it happens often?" she asked after finishing her task, patting the now wet but clean spot on my shirt with her hand. "Do you come here a lot? Is that what you mean?"
It briefly crossed my mind that this woman was not in fact the same person who'd called me a potential sex offender. This one was so much nicer, so much human-like. Had my perception been so skewed, or did she have a twin who had eyes that looked exactly the same?
"Sort of," I said. "I used to come here like every weekend. But I stopped. This is actually the first time in, like, six months."
"Why?"
"My ex didn't like this kind of places, so…" I shrugged. "And then she dumped me yesterday, saying she'd fallen in love with someone else. So here I am."
Some thoughts crept across her face as I oh-so-casually came out, but like always, her expression was quite unreadable. "I'm sorry to hear that," she said.
"What 'bout yourself? What brought you here tonight?" I leaned against the sink, sticking my hands in the pockets of my pants. "You don't look the kind of person who likes clubbing."
"No, I'm not. I had never been to a place like this." Her eyes moved around, from the sticky sinks to the cold tiles in the walls to the thin door that barricaded us from all the drunkenness of the night. She let out a quiet sigh and shook her head, the lights shimmering on her platinum strands. "How did you know?"
Her flower dress, long enough to cover her knees, hid most of her outline except for the waist. Her arms, back, shoulders, chest, collarbones. They were all hidden under the black clothing. Around her freckle-covered neck was a delicate necklace with one single green stone twinkling modestly. If it wasn't for the loud music and the smell of alcohol coming from outside the bathroom door, I would've assumed she was on her way to a wedding or something. A nightclub was the last place the style made me think of.
"I've never seen you 'round, is all," I said.
"Yeah… My friend dragged me out of my house. She debuts as a DJ tonight apparently." She rolled her eyes like it was her last and only way of defiance, which happened to be the very first emotion that I could read.
"Hold on. Your friend…Is that Madison Montgomery?"
"You know her?" Her eyes widened a little—surprised. The second emotion. Then there was a tiny smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth—pleased with the sense of comradery. The third one. She was becoming more human by the second. "Well, I wouldn't exactly call her a friend. We just grew up together, but she's just…" The end of her sentence was another majestic eye rolling.
"That kind of people are the hardest to get rid of."
With her eyebrows knitted together, she curled her lips into a smile. "They are, aren't they?" Then a few soft chuckles escaped her mouth, mixed with mine, echoing in the small bathroom.
Despite my initial encounter with her, or perhaps because of it, I was greatly affected by her smile. It was rewarding. It was intoxicating. I felt the alcohol in my veins making my head spin again. And her eyes, they were a pair of jewelry, twinkling like the stone of her necklace as they looked into mine.
"I need to apologize," she said and hang her head low. "I was a bitch to you earlier. I was…just so fed up because Madison left me alone when she promised not to. And those strangers pretending to be nice to me, thinking they could get laid. I'm sorry for taking it out on you. I thought if I kept ignoring them, they'd give up and leave me alone, but…"
Lifting myself off the sink, I walked closer to her. "I think what's important is that you're safe."
"Because you saved me."
I shrugged, suddenly overwhelmed by her attention and the way she looked up at me as I almost towered over her. "I mean—yeah, that's what I do."
"That's what you do." She gave me a smile which my skewed perception registered as teasing and flirtatious. "Like a superwoman."
"At your disposal."
Her white teeth shone as she bit her bottom lip, giggles spilling out. In the moment, I knew her smile was my favorite thing of the night, the sound of her giggles the second favorite. Seeing that part of her felt somehow so surreal and so private, making the thump of my heart stronger and faster than alcohol ever could.
"Can I ask you a favor, then, Miss Superwoman?" she asked.
"Always."
"Could you possibly spend the rest of the night by my side? I don't want to hear another terrible pick-up line."
So much could happen in a matter of a few hours, I mused. At the beginning I was a potential criminal, and now I was her knight in shining armor. Maybe she was only asking me that because I wasn't as much of a jackass as she'd thought at first. It might not have been because she deemed me trustworthy. But it didn't matter.
"Ok," I said. "But only on one condition."
"What is that?"
"Tell me the worst pick-up line you heard tonight."
Her chuckles filled the bathroom. "Oh God, um…" She knotted her brows with her lip-biting thing again, then let out a dry snort. "That'd be, 'I tried every antidepressant but nothing worked. Why didn't anybody tell me I could find you here?'"
If I'd had something in my mouth, it definitely would've made me spit. "That's a good one. I mean, a bad one. A really bad one."
"I know," she said as she scrunched her nose up.
"You know what I think? I sometimes think men have balls on the outside of the body so we could kick them in there. I think they secretly like it."
With her teasing smile, she shook her head at me. "I don't know about that, but I did like how you knock these guys down." A string of giggles escaped her lips as she seemed to be revisiting the fight.
Had I known a simple action of kicking one bad guy in the balls could make her laugh like this, I'd done the same thing to the other guy.
Then, her bi-colored eyes looked into mine. "Let me buy you a drink. I still have that ten dollars you gave me."
"I'd like that very much," I said, walking to the door and holding it for her. "After you." My voice was nearly drowned out by the music now that there was no barrier between the two rooms.
"Thank you very much," she said and walked past me.
But before her figure was completely engulfed in the neon dark, I stopped her. "Wait, I didn't catch your name."
While Sia's Chandelier was blasting around us, I heard her say, "It's Cordelia."
"Well, Miss Cordelia, it's very nice to meet you officially. I'm Misty Day."
"Misty." She raised her perfect eyebrows. "It's a wonderful name. It suits you."
And she walked out of the bathroom, into the ocean of neon lights and people. And maybe my perception was skewed, because I thought she turned around and winked at me.