Enter: The Girl

Boy, meet girl.

He knows he drinks too much. It's a calculated decision on his part. Sobriety is a threat to his mental well being, and he honestly doesn't know what to do without that warm fuzzy feeling in his belly at the end of the night anymore. Not to say he can't go a day without drinking, because he can and he has. But it's his natural state at this point, and he's a creature of comfort.

“Alcoholic”, the little voice in the back of his mind accuses.

The extra shot he buys on his next round quiets it. Not permanently, he knows better, but at least temporarily. Even his subconscious needs a fix every now and then.

He scouts out the venue as he nurses a beer(can't get too drunk before he drives home after all). His wingman absconded a while back, back to the safety of their s****y second floor apartment, and he's gotten bored enough and tipsy enough to hit up a stranger to fill the lack of company that's ensued. A couple seats down from where he is he sees a pretty brunette nursing her own cocktail. Some blue colored concoction with an orange peel in a martini glass.

“Her third”, his subconscious supplies.

She's on her own, which is the first thing that attracts his attention. So she's either waiting on a friend to get out of the bathroom or she's waiting for the right guy to approach her. If she was just here to wind down after a shift at wherever she worked, she would have left by now and he doubts she'd be wearing the little black number that she's in. But you never know. Sometimes it's nice to dress up, if only just to pretend there's a reason. He waits a good 10 minutes to eye the playing field. No friend emerges from the shadows to join her, but plenty of Joe's come and go in their attempts to woo her out of her clothes, none of which succeed.

He waits a couple more minutes for good measure before he wanders over, beer in hand. She gives no response when he sits next to her. Giving off an air of disinterest which implies that she's either an alcoholic, which she doesn't have the figure for, or that she's playing hard to get. At least in his mind. Like most men, he chooses to believe the second option. The third option of her not being interested scrambles to jump to the more logical part of his consciousness but is quickly escorted out back and politely asked to leave.

“So what's your story?”, he leads with.

She glances over at him, the rim of her glass raised on the brink of taking a sip.

“What makes you think I have one? Maybe I just wanted a drink.”, her tone is far from friendly.

It's possible. He isn't buying it though. Something in her demeanor suggests otherwise. The thought that she might be playing for the home team crosses your mind briefly.

“And maybe I just wanted a conversation”, he responds. “I'm a bit of a regular here and you don't look too familiar, lady.”

“Is this some roundabout way of saying that I'm not welcome here?”

She sounds more annoyed than he expected. Way to go, genius.

“No, not at all”, he backpedals, “If anything, we could use more beautiful women such as yourself here. It's like a breath of fresh air in this dive. I was just building up to inquiring why you were here is all. IF I may be so bold.”

“And that's your business because....?”, the raised eyebrow and dragged out silence scream out her poor impression of him so far. He knows he's got basically no chance with her now. The first couple responses often determine the course of a conversation, he's found. But his stubbornness kicks in and now he's determined to at least have a real conversation with her. If for no other reason than because the dudes before him gave up after 5 minutes, and he loves to leave an impression. Not that he was paying attention.

“It's not. I'm just curious. If you don't want to talk to me, then don't.”

For a while that seems like exactly what she plans to do. She returns to nursing her drink and ignoring his presence. He tunes back into the train of thought he'd been following before he decided to meander over to her neck of the woods and loses himself in the dregs of his beer.

“I was supposed to meet a guy here tonight.”

The statement catches him off-guard, and he blurts out the first thing that crosses his mind.

“Maybe he got lost or something.”

“Maybe if I told you to get lost, you'd find him?”

“Maybe I would. But maybe I wouldn't tell him where to find you so I could come back and make a better impression.”

She slides her eyes over to him, appraising him. It's a different look than the one that she'd been giving him just moments ago. He can tell. He's gotten very good at translating “looks”.

“Sarah.”

“Never been with a sarah before.” he thinks.

“Just call me Doe. John Doe.”

She snorts out a laugh.

“Never heard anyone actually introduce himself as that. That's not your real name is it?”, the question comes out as more of a statement than anything. He turns halfway towards her to smirk.

“My parents weren't very creative, what can I say. They probably thought it was funny.”

Her eyebrows raise. She might actually be starting to not disbelieve him at this point.

“OR maybe you're right and I am lying. Only my friends know me well enough to tell.”, he's quick to correct. He turns to fully face her, smirk deepening into a crooked smile. “Do you want to be my friend and find out?”

The smile he sees her try to fight down tells him more than whatever she could say to him ever would. Not that she says anything anyway. That would spoil the game. Looks like he might just have a shot after all. Just goes to show that the worst anyone can say when you try is some variation of “F**K OFF”.

“Maybe.”

They sink into what might be considered companionable silence for a few minutes. He orders a whiskey, because why not, and she continues to nurse whatever cocktail she's drinking. He sees her glance at him and wrinkle her nose slightly as he takes a sip of his new drink.

He laughs a little. “Not a fan I'm guessing?”

“No, not really. Always came off as a bit too harsh to enjoy, in my experience.”

“Well your experience would be right. All good religious boys are taught that our sins will be punished in the afterlife, but some of us...”, he trails off. “Some of us can't wait that long. So we take to self-discipline. Like harsh tasting liquor.”

He raises his glass to her briefly, “Cheers”. He takes a slightly larger sip to prove his point.

“You're religious”. There it is. The statement disguised as a question. Man's most deviously crafted weapon. Not always the most effective though.

“No. I'm not.”

Her gaze changes into something of a more personal nature than it was before. He catches it out of the corner of his eye as he makes a point to not make eye contact. Nothing provokes more questions than eye contact, he's found. He's also found that nothing provokes interest more than lack of eye contact. Depending on the situation, of course. So it's a bit of a lost cause in either either case.

“What's your angle here?”

Yet another question that takes him off-guard. Not one that he didn't have an answer to, however.

“I told you. Maybe I just wanted a conversation. It really so hard to believe that not every man is out to try to talk you into going home with him?”, he looks over at her. She doesn't look away. “Maybe I thought you just wanted a drink to wind down and other men seeing you talking to me would make them keep their distance.”

One eyebrow raises in response. She doesn't buy it. “Or maybe you're lying.”

He smirks in response. They both know the game. “Maybe I am lying. Only my friends know me well enough to tell.”

She doesn't fight to keep down the smile this time.

Author's Note

This was just a scene I tried to write a while back to work on dialogue and character interaction, which I suck at. Hopefully this came off as slightly realistic. Compliments are nice, and flames are welcome. Criticism even more so. Let me have it. Trying to improve my writing skill/tweak my style.