Janice and Lacey laughed hysterically as they watched the dancers out on the dance floor. Lacey hadn't felt this good since...well...she couldn't remember when. Janice ordered another round of drinks. The bartender poured them some pinocoladas and walked down the other end of the bar to get somebody else a drink. The club was loud with voices and music. The strobe lights came on and a pulse-beating rhythm filled the room. Janice sat her drink down and tugged Lacey to the dance floor. They giggled and started to dance, gyrating arms and body-parts made it hard to do any real dance moves. Lacey nearly got her eye poked out by an elbow. Janice bumped her back into someone and they began shouting.
"This is too crowded!" Lacey shouted at Janice.
Janice looked around and nodded, still moving her feet to the beat. "What?" Janice shouted above the roar of the crowd and the music. Apparently she hadn't heard what Lacey had said after all.
Lacey tried again. "Janice I think it's too crowded! I think we should go sit back down before someone drinks our drinks." She turned and grabbing Janice's hand, walked back to their stools and their drinks.
"Heya, I don't mind being dragged out of that mess, but you could at least tell me your name cutie." Lacey quickly dropped the hand she was holding.
"You're not Janice."
"I know." He leered at her. "I'm Joe. Now tell me your name sweet lips."
'Gah, men actually thought lines like the ones he was using on her really worked?' She turned her back on him and stepped up to the bar. Grabbing her pinacolada without looking, she took a drink. "Ack!" Her drink had a cigarette butt floating in it.
"Hey cutie, you still haven't told me your name." Joe was still there when she turned around.
She flew past him heading for the bathroom, clutching her hand to her mouth. Joe shrugged and walked to a new group of women. He ran his hand through his hair and 'pimped' himself up.
Janice found Lacey rinsing her mouth out at the sink. She patted her friend on the back and went in to one of the stalls, locking the door. "So I saw you with that guy at the bar?" Lacey mumbled something as she spit a mouthful of water into the sink. "Yea I know, one minute you were there dancing on the dance floor and the next minute I see you dragging some guy off to the bar. I thought you finally had the nerve to ask someone out." She flushed the toilet and came out of the stall to wash her hands. "You never go out with men. It took you six drinks for you to get the courage up to ask for the waiter's phone number."
"I've had dates." Lacey reminded her of the two men she had 'dated' last year. "There was Larry from accounting and Anthony from the mail room."
Janice rolled her eyes. "Those weren't dates. Those were pitiful. Do you remember how they ended up?" Lacey looked at Janice stubbornly. "Larry made you fall asleep during the soup portion of the meal. You almost drowned." Janice laughed still feeling her buzz.
Lacey choked on her tongue, laughing so hard. "I did not."
"And Anthony is just a kid. He was still wet behind the ears." They both gasped, clutching their sides, tears streaming down their cheeks. "Anthony drove you home in his mother's four-door sedan."
Lacey sobered a little. "Aw...he was cute though he wanted to take me to his graduation dance." She held the face for a moment and then they both burst out laughing again. "Come on. I need another drink that last one left a bad taste in my mouth."
They left the ladies room and after a few rum and cokes, they also left the club. Lacey and Janice wobbled out of the club arm in arm. "I have a question..." Lacey tried to form her question precisely, but found her mind was all over the place.
"Hmmm?" Janice was considering taking off her heals and running home through the park. "Ha!" She plucked a penny out of the crack in the sidewalk. "Find a penny... I forget." She giggled and tossed the penny at Lacey. "What ya want to know?"
Lacey braced herself against a light post, rubbing her temples. "How did you get promoted to my position so fast?" Her head leaned back as she watched the stars. For a moment she thought she saw one disappear. She shook her head to clear her mind.
Janice had sat on the curb. Flipping her hair over her shoulder she sat back and glanced between her friend and the stars. She licked her lips nervously. Lacey came over and sat next to her, clicking her heals like Dorothy out of Wizard of Oz. Janice took a deep breath and began. "Well you know how there have been rumors about Mr. Moorley for the last two years?" Lacey didn't answer. "Lacey wake up will ya." Janice shook Lacey, a little worried about her friend. "Don't go falling asleep on me. We have to get you home if you're going to be falling asleep in the gutter." She heard Lacey giggle and sighed. "Well his wife left him about two months ago. She found him in his office with another woman."
Lacey frowned. She remembered the time well. It was when Mr. Moorley had started giving her more work and more clients. She had wondered at the time why he had been so preoccupied. Now she knew he was preoccupied not with work, but with home life. "What's this got to do with you getting a promotion in less than a month? It took me three years with the company to get where I am...was...am...whatever." Her head rolled on her shoulder, her mouth hanging open. She turned back to Janice and raised an eyebrow.
"Well, I was the other woman." Janice said with a nervous laugh. After a long silence Janice slumped. "Aren't you going to say anything?"
It took a few seconds for Lacey to absorb what her best friend, in the whole world, had just said. It had a very sobering effect, something like getting slapped in the face with a bag of ice. She couldn't look at Janice just yet. Her eyes roamed the street and then locked on her shoes. "Did you know he was going to fire me?"
"No, I had no idea. I guess with his problems at work and with his wife filing for divorce..."
"So you're going to tell me it was stress that made him humiliate me?" Lacey remembered the scene in Mr. Moorley's office and a mixture of emotions washed over her. "Why did he give you my old job then?"
"There wasn't anyone more qualified than me." She shrugged. "That's what he told me anyways."
"So, you weren't involved in any way in that decision?" Janice shook her head no. Lacey tucked a curl behind her ear and stood up. "Well friend, let's go get some more drinks before I have to go to work tomorrow."
"You're not mad at me?" Janice stumbled behind her.
"Why should I be? You just slept with the man it's not like you committed murder...although it does say in the bible...something or other about coveting and adultery."
Janice laughed. "You might want to brush up on your bible."
"It's not anything worth losing a friend over. By the way, was he any good?" Lacey raised an eyebrow at her friend.
"Nothing to brag about. Actually he wasn't all that good. He kept fumbling and he has sweaty hands." Janice and Lacey laughed all the way to the next bar.
Lacey removed the key from her purse as she reached her apartment door. Her neighbor, Mrs. Riccollili stuck her head out of her door just as she unlocked her own door. 'Damn I'm caught.' Lacey didn't have anything in common with Mrs. Riccollili. She didn't dislike her. It was just sort of an annoying habit of her neighbor, to pry into other people's business, which irritated her. Usually when Lacey walked in late, she would walk as silently as a mouse past her neighbor's door. The woman must have had ears like a bat. Lacey made herself smile at the old lady. "Hi Mrs. Ricco. Shouldn't you be in bed? It's pretty late."
"Sort of a late night for you isn't it Miss Keegle?" Mrs. Riccollili ignored Lacey's comment. "Did you have a big date tonight? Why didn't you bring him home with you? You're not still a virgin are you?" Lacey blushed at the old woman's obtuseness. She figured her curiosity was caused by lack of family. Oh she had family and lots of it, but since her husband 'God rest his soul' had passed on and her kids had moved away, she was left alone with a lot of time on her hands. Most of it went to spreading gossip and giving advice where it wasn't needed. 'No wonder her kids had moved out of state.' Lacey opened her apartment door to go in, but Mrs. Riccollili went on talking. "Lacey darling don't you think it's about time you got married and had some kids?"
Lacey felt a lecture coming on about how today's women just didn't have time to juggle a career and kids and then she felt a bubble of laughter at the thought of literally juggling kids and all the tools of her trade. She cleared her throat. "No I hadn't Mrs. Riccollili."
"You know I have a son about your age and he's a single doctor." Lacey shifted uncomfortably. She knew Mrs. Riccollili's son the doctor and knew he was more than 10 years her senior, fat, bald, and depressing. "I also have a grandson, who is about five years younger than you, who is a lawyer. Of course you being older shouldn't matter, since I think you've kept your shape pretty well for being an older woman."
Lacey groaned. She also had met Mrs. Riccollili's grandson and he wasn't five years younger than Lacey. He was five 'months' younger and he was a pompous ass who liked to one-up everyone with his useless facts and brag endlessly about all the stuff he had. It was then that she remembered something. "Isn't your grandson getting married next week?"
"This goes to show you that you're way behind on that account. Speaking of accounts..."
Lacey knew if she let this go on much longer she would be stuck in the hall all night and wouldn't get any sleep before work tomorrow. As it was she was running low on hours before eight. "Excuse me I have to get up for wok in five hours."
"Oh. You finally found another job? That's another reason to get married, because once you get married you wouldn't have to work anymore. Let the man worry about the bills and all you would have to do is take care of the babies..."
Lacey entered her apartment and closed the door firmly on Mrs. Riccollili. "That woman is enough to make anyone nuts."
Lifting her shirt over her head, she walked in to her bedroom and kicked off her shoes. She slipped out of her skirt and slip intending to take a nice hot shower. Lacey grabbed a fresh towel off the floor where she had stuck them in her rush to get her apartment "looking" clean before leaving with Janice. She stood in front of the bathroom mirror as she let the shower heat up. Steam was already filling the tiny room and she had to wipe a towel over the mirror to see herself. Her eyes looked bloodshot and her red curls looked messy and plastered to her forehead. Her head tilted to one side and then the other trying to catch a glimpse at what men saw in her, or more to the point, what they didn't. It was true she hadn't had as many dates in her lifetime as Janice did in a month. She stretched the skin on her face trying to see what she would look like without the small wrinkles she hadn't remembered getting or the bags under her eyes that looked like they held a closet full of clothes each. After another minute of scrutinizing every little flaw on her face, she unhooked her bra and shimmied out of her white cotton panties.
She got in the shower. "Mmmm warm." Lacey reached for the shampoo without opening her eyes. She opened it and squeezed the vanilla scented stuff into her palm. "Yummy." She took her time in the shower letting the water wash away all her problems from the last few weeks. The bill collectors...gone. The worries about money...gone. It would have been easy to fall asleep standing there under the hot water. She rinsed her hair and bent over to get her shaver that fell in the bottom of the tub and nearly fell on her face.
Drying off with her extra fluffy pink towel, she walked in to her bedroom again and switched off all the lights. She flopped onto the bed with an exhale and a towel still wrapped around her wet hair. She was fast asleep, not bothering to get under the heavy covers. She didn't even notice the man at the foot of her bed watching her intently.
To Sesshomaru she smelled heavenly, but he wouldn't let that thought cross his mind. Nope, not this Sesshomaru. All humans were below contempt, especially weak females. He wouldn't allow thoughts like how hard she had made him when he had seen her in her undergarments that did nothing to conceal her lovely shape, or how he had nearly been panting over her alluring femininity as she washed her hair and her perfectly rounded breasts had risen when she raised her arms over her head and stretched in the shower. No, he wouldn't admit to thinking things like that about anyone especially a human female. 'Stupid bitch. She acted like she didn't even care that she was walking around completely nude in front of him.' But then again, she hadn't even noticed he was there. He growled low in his throat. 'Another moment of this and I might as well just hand her my sword so she can kill me. I must be getting weak. She must be a witch like that old woman.' He thought he heard her murmur something, but he didn't know what. It didn't sound like any language he knew. 'Using her body to get me to do what she wants no doubt. It won't work. I'll just have to kill her before she wakes up again and can put me in another spell.' Even to his own mind he sounded reluctant and he growled again at his own stupidity. He unsheathed Tokijin. The darkness of the sword repelled the light that filtered in through the curtains and through the doorway.
She moaned and rolled over on her stomach. He bent over her and removed the soaking wet towel from her red locks, inhaling the sweet scent that assaulted his nose, and the underlying scent of alcohol still on her breath. Lord Sesshomaru couldn't kill her while she was sleeping. There was no honor in killing a sleeping, defenseless woman. He tossed the wet rag across the room and stood with his back to her in indignation. His contempt for humans could not wipe out the nagging tingle in his spine that prevented him from killing the woman where she lay. 'Had that witch told the truth?' He turned when he heard her roll out of bed and stand up. He held Tokijin to her throat, ready to hack her head off now that she was awake. 'Damn you woman something prevents me.' His cold exterior held firm although his resolve was wavering in the face of this female. Sesshomaru actually felt 'butterflies' in his stomach.
Lacey stood up sleepily, still half drunk and faced the man shadow that held the sword so unwaveringly to her throat. "Ha! How could I have forgotten to brush my teeth?" Her hand touched the blade of the sword that threatened her, and deftly pushed it away from her throat. With weary eyes she stumbled into the bathroom and grabbed her toothbrush. She reached in to the cabinet and pulled out the toothpaste. She looked down at her hand in dawning terror, the toothbrush dangled from her numb and bleeding fingers. "Blood?" She thought she might pass out at the sight of the blood coating her hand and toothbrush, staining the bristles red. Trembling, she raised her hand to look at the deep gashes and the meaty flesh that was now exposed and pumping blood in rhythm with each heartbeat. "I thought I was hallucinating." She stared at her hand and the cuts that gushed anew with each pulse. Her hand blurred before her eyes and she felt the darkness take her.
Sesshomaru re-sheathed Tokijin and growled in frustration. 'Damn her and damn him for not killing her.' The smell of her blood and utter realization of what had just happened mingled and he tried to not rush to her side when her horror at seeing her own blood hit him like a fist to the gut. He heard the tremble in her voice and the hesitant steps she took before blacking out and he did rush to her side as she was dragged into unconsciousness. He caught and held her before she hit the floor. He held her in his arms wondering what he should do with her. The iron grip on his emotions softened when he saw the pallor of her skin and the way her breathing had become rapid. "What are you doing to me witch?" He should kill her now. 'Why?' his mind asked the question he dared not ask aloud. 'Why kill her? She is just a human and can't harm you in any way so why kill her? Is your hate for all things so complete?' He closed his eyes and felt her shudder against him.