She raised an eyebrow, croissant halfway to her mouth. “Which one of them?”
I grinned. “The one my father wanted me to marry.”
Valeria let out a short laugh. “Stasik? The oil goblin?”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah. Him. From what I heard, someone turned his face into abstract art in a bar bathroom.”
Valeria took a drag, held it, exhaled slowly. “Wow. What a fucking loser.”
I laughed. “Right?”
“But you know me, baby—I’m always down to party,” she said, flicking ash into her empty coffee cup. “How are you gonna get out?”
I leaned back, eyes on the gray sky. “I’ll ask my mom if I can go study at your place. Group project excuse. I’ll take her credit card too—say we’re ordering takeout and need to split the bill. Quiet night in. Laptops. Maybe a face mask.”
Valeria grinned. “You’re such a good little liar.”
“I could always sneak out through the service gate like I’ve done a hundred times before, but that route is better saved for emergencies. The more you use it, the higher the chance someone catches on.”
“Smart. But if we’re going out—where?”
“Not our usual spots,” I said. “I want it to be just you and me. I definitely don’t wanna hang out with Ruslan. So we need something different. Different crowd. Somewhere no one expects us to be.”
It had been weeks since I’d gone out with my best friend, and honestly, I needed it.I needed a night away from that house, away from my father’s plans to marry me off like I was part of a business deal. I wanted to celebrate the simple fact that, for now, I was still free. But I also needed to clear my head of Maksym. Because the infuriating man hadn’t said a word to me since that night. And even though I was furious at him—for standing there while my father slapped me, for participating in that disgusting orgy—I still couldn’t stop thinking about him. Which was exactly why I needed a drink. Or five.
Valeria tilted her head. “I might know a place.No Ruslan. Just us. And maybe some pretty strangers.”
I looked at her, that familiar rush bubbling under my skin. “Then it’s settled.”
Everything went according to plan.
The driver dropped me off at Valeria’s place just after seven. For the first couple of hours, we just sprawled on her couch, passed a joint between us, drank wine straight from the bottle, and bitched about the world.
By the time we started doing our makeup and choosing outfits, it was already past ten. I wore a sequined skirt that caught the light like broken glass—silver with flashes of gold—and a black silk dress shirt, open just enough to show the edges of the lace bra beneath. Valeria went with something red and reckless, short enough to draw stares from across the room. Her heels were impossibly high. Her perfume, dizzying.
The club was tucked behind a row of shuttered bakeries and half-lit storefronts somewhere east of the city center—the kind of place you pick specifically because nobody you know would ever be caught dead there. From the outside it already looked questionable. The sign above the door was cracked and crooked, blinking like it had lost the will to live sometime in the early 2000s.
I had asked for a place where nobody would recognize us.
Apparently my friend had taken that request very seriously.
The bouncer barely looked up before waving us in.
Inside was worse. Sticky floors, neon lights that tried very hard to look edgy, and music so loud it felt like someone punching my ribs from the inside. The kind of place that thought it was scandalous but mostly just looked… embarrassing.
I wrinkled my nose. “How do you even know this dump?”
Valeria just grinned like a little devil. “Guy who owns it sells me party favors. He said I could get us free drinks.”
“We’re literally rich,” I muttered, glancing around.
“Yeah, but free tastes better,” she said, already sliding onto a barstool.
She ordered two shots of vodka and handed me one. “To dead bastards.”
I smirked. “To clean slates.”
We clinked glasses.
