I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor
"Stop making the eyes at me,
I'll stop making my eyes at you.
What it is that surprises me is that I don't really want you to."
-Arctic Monkeys
"C'mon, Sam, it'll be fun."
"Paragliding is fun. Scrabble is fun. Getting groped by random strangers? That's not fun."
Ruby crossed her arms over her petite chest. For a woman of her five-four stature, she had one hell of an intimidating character. "Don't be a killjoy, Sam. Besides, you need to get out more."
"I get out every day," Sam argued, "I go to the store, grab the weekly crossword, head down to Starbucks and scribble 'impinge' for twenty-three across."
"Yeah, well maybe you should be impinging on someone outside of your textbooks."
Sam scoffed, causing a long strand of hair to fall over his large pensive forehead. He had to remember that using his 174-on-the-LSAT talk wasn't going to get him very far. That was actually how they met. Ruby was enrolled in the same law division at Stanford. It was hard not to hear about her when she got a perfect 180 on her test. He doesn't remember a time when their professor, Mr. Masters, had stopped boasting about his prized scholar. Even after she dropped out of the program, he never stopped completely hearing her name. His professor was still using her picture in his PowerPoints as motivation for the Johnny-come-latelies.
Now the two were standing in the corridor outside of Sam's class (the one that Ruby dropped because, according to her, "law was a fucking joke"). Her motive behind the conversation was to get her best friend to go clubbing with her tonight. Ruby was a regular at this place called Purgatory Palace, a shady discotheque on the East corner across from Crowley's Cantina. He never understood how Ruby could be snorting oxy and hooking up with strange men almost every other weekend and still had time to be a straight-laced student. Sam was just as smart as her (or so that's what she and his older brother Dean had tried to convince him), and he studied just as hard (even though he suspected that his friend was using some kind of witchcraft to get perfect scores), but he actually cared about his future. He didn't want to piss away seventy thousand dollars' worth of tuition on one night that he may or may not get satisfaction out of.
"Sorry, Rubes," he said, shrugging his shoulders in his best apologetic manner. He began picking up his textbooks again. Ruby caught his arm.
"Wait—uh, what if I told you that Jessica Moore was going to be there?"
This caught the taller man's attention. "Jess goes there?" he said, trying not to sound too obvious of his infatuation for the girl (not like Ruby didn't already know). He didn't know Jessica on a personal level, but he'd be damned if she hadn't caught his eye. Jessica had a rented a locker next to his, but Sam never actually approached her with an intelligent sentence. Oftentimes, he found himself lost in her hazelnut eyes or the way her straw-colored ringlets fell perfectly over her face or sometimes—the worst one because he would lose all feeling in his legs—when she greeted him with warm smile before sauntering off to her next lecture. She was the most beautiful girl he had ever laid his eyes on. But she was a free-spirit. His wings were strapped down by copious amounts of schoolwork and a lack of self-confidence.
Ruby's eyes perked up. "Did I hear a yes in that question?"
"Yeah, fine, I'll go," Sam said reluctantly. Ruby beamed at him with all of her teeth and threw her arms around the law student. Sam distinctively wrapped his arms around her small diaphragm. (She did this a lot when she got overzealous.) She pulled back quickly, collecting herself a little bit more.
"Alright, I'll pick you up around eight, the club opens at—"
"Whoa, there, sweetheart; I'm the man, I'll drive," he said.
Ruby nudged his shoulder, unable to conceal a smile. "That's the kind of courtesy that'll win her over." She began walking with him to his next seminar (which, thanks to his best friend, he had twenty minutes to get to instead of thirty), when she stopped him short again. Her gloating features were more serious now. "Listen, don't get yourself so worked up that you ruin your mascara. You're a great guy. Any girl would kill to have you."
If only Sam believed her.
