Once again, past is in italics and present isn't. This chapter has been heavily edited, but it's all mostly the same, so you can skip it if you really want.
"Amy?" Shilloh stuttered- a habit she had picked up on her last visit home. Amy didn't pay any attention to her though, and she sucked in a breath, realizing that this request would cost her dearly.
"Amy? I've got an essay in French class that's due tomorrow, and I was... wondering… if…" She trailed off as Amy's face stuck out from underneath a pillow, one eye cracked open, and just staring.
Clearly, Amy wasn't impressed with being woken up for a simple French essay Jump. Sighing, Shilloh took in another breath, and readied herself for the incentive she knew would get Amy to go.
"And there's also that new club that opened up, I thought maybe, after I was done, we could go?" She saw Amy's eyes light up, and she bounced off to get ready for France, and dancing.
She loved Paris- she loved the lights, the food, the language, the art. And she loved the coffee.
Her essay had been finished faster than she thought it would- but she had help. Sitting in her favorite café, she had been mumbling to herself, trying to find the right suffix to make 'swim' into 'swam'. She was just about to give up, say, 'screw it all!' and turn it into 'swimming,' when the charming man next to her laughed, and asked in perfectly accented English, if he could help.
So she had spent the last two hours around charming men, lots of coffee, and delicious chocolate. But now her fun was over, and she had to let Amy know that she was ready to leave whenever that stupid club opened.
Amy, with her pixie-like chin and beautifully wavy black hair; Amy, with her siren-like topaz eyes and lusciously pink lips; Amy, with her golden complexion and just the right amount of freckles- the Amy that was a goddess amongst models- demanded that she dress up to go clubbing.
As if she wouldn't look like a troll playing pretty- pretty princess compared to Amy. There was no way. She would wear what she had come to France in, and that would be good enough.
Shilloh won out- she knew what sort of clothes Amy tried to dress her friends in. There had been one time, when Shilloh wasn't so lucky, and Amy had dressed her up for the day (Shilloh had lost a hand at poker). She had had to beat off three lecherous old men that day, and one overly-enthusiastic teenager
So it was, that when they made their way to the front of the line, Amy was able to just walk right in, and since Shilloh was with her, even in her unflashy outfit, she was able to just walk right in as well.
As soon as they entered, Shilloh glanced around, hoping to avoid Amy thrusting some poor man into dancing with her (people needed their toes, she kept telling Amy, but was always ignored).
Spotting the bar, she resolutely, and quickly, walked towards it, hearing the beginnings of Amy grumbling about how little fun she was.
"Hey, I said I would come, not that I would be entertaining," she shot back, before Amy could get a leg to stand on, and make Shilloh go out on the dance floor.
As she sat down on the stool in front of the barman, the man next to her turned around to attempt small talk. Now, it wasn't that she was trying to be mean, it was just that neither of them could really speak the other's language, so after a couple of minutes, she simply turned to the barman to order something.
However, she didn't know what to order, so she pointed to the first interesting-looking bottle she saw, which turned out to be a mistake.
She was on her second drink by the time the guy next to her got the hint that she wasn't interested in talking and finally left. As she moved on to her third drink, she had the disturbing notion that she was turning into an alcoholic. Really, it seemed like all her and Amy did was go to bars.
"Well fuck it, if I'm an alcoholic because of her, she's dead," she grumbled into her glass, and was startled by someone chuckling at her as they slid into the empty seat beside her.
The dark corners of her soul twanged with half-hearted remembrances from the sound of his laughter, and she knew right away that he was dangerous.
"Trouble with the missus?" he asked after ordering himself a drink.
Scowling in his direction, she smartly replied, "'with' would imply that it's a joint problem, and I don't much appreciate your implications." So she was crabby, but this place really had her on her toes- she hated the music, the crowd that forced her to be near everyone, and the way she felt like she resided within a world she hadn't been initiated into, didn't understand.
He raised his eyebrows at her, and with infuriatingly inappropriate timing, asked her something she had been trying to avoid all night, "care to dance?" She could easily imagine him losing his interest right away, and asking the same question of the girl next to him. The way his voice smoothed itself over the words reeked of familiarity, and she couldn't help but wonder how many women he had asked before, and how many he would ask once she turned him down.
Because she inevitably would, always, turn men like him down; the ones that felt too good in their own skin, the ones that alluded to their lack of permanence and smothered you with the way they could make you feel like you were finally living.
They were dangerous to her, and she wanted nothing to do with them.
"No, I can't dance," she replied, not missing a beat when Amy began walking towards her. Subtly shaking her head, Amy got the message and left the two alone- Shilloh was uncomfortable with him, but not threatened, so there was no need to interfere.
"Name's Griffin," he offered, but she didn't feel so inclined to share her own name.
"Knowing your name isn't going to make my dancing any better," she stated, and ordered a fourth drink, feeling fuzzy around the edges by this point. She could feel his smirk without having to look at him, and scrunching her nose, she turned towards him- which instantly set off another chuckle from him.
And she'd be damned, literally, if she ever let herself admit that, just this one time, she didn't mind it if some stranger was laughing at her expense- just so long as their laugh sounded like his.
She nursed her drink for twenty minutes before she once again glanced in his direction. He still wasn't gone.
Curiosity always got the better of her, she knew it was a weakness, but, well, she was always just too curious to care, and so she had to ask, "what are you still doing here?" Normally, she wouldn't have been so blunt, subtlety was something she was usually quite good at, but the drinks were starting to catch up to her.
"For you to get drunk enough to say yes," was his simple enough, and disturbingly honest, reply. He was in for quite the wait though, because she had a high tolerance level, and she knew her limits.
Huffing indignantly, she ordered her fifth drink, wondering when Amy was going to get bored so they could just go already.
"You know, you're pretty damned entertaining when you're drunk," she felt him, standing just about there, or maybe slightly to her left. She could feel his amusement and adrenaline, and could almost taste the self-confidence that radiated off of him; and yet she didn't open her eyes.
"Well it wasn't very gentlemanly of you to take advantage of someone that drunk," she replied, acting bored. Acting, for all the world, like she wasn't stuck in the middle of the desert with only him as her lifeline.
"Advantage? All we did was dance!"
"Yeah, but I'd already told you no, twice, if I remember correctly." Her eyes were open now, and the blaring sun hurt. She must have dozed off, because it was several degrees lower in the sky than she remembered it being.
"It was just dancing," he replied, feeling not in the least bit sorry for his past behavior.
"What you did today wasn't just dancing," her piercing gaze locked with his, and he could see how morbidly pissed off she was at him for interfering.
"No, that was saving your sorry hide."
"No, that was making my life even more difficult. Now I have no safe house, nowhere to go, and no friends. I was on my way to meet some people, people that might have been able to help me." Her eyes closed again, and she burrowed herself deeper into the sand, pressing her back against the cool rock behind her.
"But thanks, anyways," she shot at him.