The promise of a sympathetic ear had led them to a dark bar on a sleazy street in the Bronx. It was the kind of street that made even the most hardened cops double check their pieces, looking for the safety of the cold metal against their palms. The bar was equally as seedy, an unlabeled hole in a brick wall. No windows, no signs in welcoming neon lights. Just a wood door speckled with bullet holes and poor patching jobs. It was the kind of bar where you came to get shit-faced and you didn't leave until you had succeeded. Or you left in a body bag.
He had arrived first, staking out his usual territory in a dark corner. If any of the guys sharing the small, smoky room figured out he was a cop, they'd kill him without a second thought. Not that he cared. He thought Maybe tonight each time he set foot in the dark cesspool mislabeled as a drinking establishment. When he arrived, he already had a slight buzz going, having polished off a few beers when he'd got home. And then the fight happened. Well fuck her he thought, letting his apathy consume him. He'd walked out her and come here, calling her on the way. She'd do all the talking, spilling her tragically flawed guts out to him while letting him drink without expecting anything from him. She wouldn't ask questions or try to feed him optimistic and encouraging bullshit.
And there she was. She screamed cop, but the guys in the bar didn't see her as one. They saw her as a piece of meant begging to be devoured. Her cinnamon hair cascaded over her shoulders; her green eyes scanned the dark room. She waltzed over and stood next to the slimy table, tilting her head in the same way he often did. He glanced up quickly, and then knocked back the rest of his drink.
"You can sit, you know. You're making me feel short," he half mumbled, half slurred. His voice was hoarse from the drinking and the yelling, having long lost it's usual warm undertones.
"Now you know how everyone else feels next to you," she said, raising an eyebrow and sitting across from him. "What're you drinking?" Reaching out with her left hand, she grabbed the bottle, and turned it to read the label.
"I don't know." His words were strung together and barely distinguishable from one another, clipped off at the end and not inviting further comment. He plucked the bottle from her hand and filled his glass again. She shrugged and took the bottle back, putting it to her lips. She sucked down a good portion of what was left in the bottle, trying to catch up to him.
Just as he hoped, she started talking, filling the silence with her tales of how she'd become numb and hollow this time, stories of heartache and angst that, compared to what he was feeling, seemed like fairy tales parent's told their children.
An hour later, they were in her apartment, pressed up against the door and furiously trying to devour each other's mouths. His despair, anger, and depression needed an outlet. His soul felt like ash, the charred remains of whom he used to be and what he used to believe in, but as he pressed himself harder against her hips, everything else melted into a mere annoyance in the back of his brain. He didn't even care that tomorrow, they would cease to be friends. Tonight, she was a mindless fuck, the personification of desire and lust. He didn't even notice he'd called her by the wrong name, by the name of the woman he'd walked out on hours earlier. There would be no reconciling after this. Too many hearts had been torn to shreds and tossed to the side in a careless, selfish night filled with a never-ending darkness. All he had to do was finish this drunken foray into rough fornication and escape. Escape back to his apartment to put an end to everything. Escape his personal hell.