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I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to take that comment, so I just shrugged and smiled. Natalia, at least, looked vaguely uncomfortable at being thrown right into the middle of everything, seeing as she was even less confrontational than I was.
“She said I’d be good to work with Chairwoman Bells.” I offered, trying to keep my expression under control when Zoey snorted, but didn’t say anything else as she sipped the Cosmopolitan that she’d ordered. I drained my drink in one go, and my head was starting to swim as I gestured for the bartender to mix me another drink.
He placed it down in front of me and moved on without lingering this time, this Gimlet was a lot more lime forward—which told me that he’d given me a lighter pour of gin this time around.
“A gimlet huh?” A voice on my other side said, and when I turned I found a man leaning against the bar next to me. He was cute enough, I guessed, but he had covered his natural beta scent with alpha pheromones that made me choke on the wrongness of it. Lots of beta men, and women, chose to put on synthetic perfumes that were supposed to smell like an alpha or omega’s musk. But to me, they just smelled like plastic.
“Uhh, yeah, it’s my favorite.” It didn’t hurt to humor him a bit, besides it saved me from having to look at Zoey and open myself up to more snide comments.
“I’m more of a whiskey man myself, I don’t need any of that frou-frou syrup to enjoy my liquor.” I was sure that he thought he sounded like the most interesting man in the world, but in reality, he just sounded like a douche.Oh great, why do I always attract the biggest assholes?I thought as I sipped my drink, and tried to formulate a response to him that wouldn’t set him off, but would also get him to leave me alone.
“Gimlets are mine and my boyfriend's special drink,” I shout with a faux-friendly smile and watch him frown at my words. Did I have a boyfriend? Absolutely not. I haven’t dated anyone since my first year of college, and even that had been more of a friends-with-benefits situation that had ended in flames because I wasn’t interested in anything more than that.
“Boyfriend?” He shouted, and I nodded, sipping my drink and giving him a little wave before turning back around to look at Zoey again. At this point, she seemed like the lesser of two evils. At least Zoey didn’t want to get into my pants.
“I just don’tgetit,” Zoey said again, and I realized that at some point during my conversation with liquor guy, she’d ordered another round of shots, and had downed at least two of them herself. A pink flush had crept into her cheeks, and her blue eyes were glassy as she glared at me.
“Get what?” I asked, knowing that I was definitely going to regret asking this in about thirty seconds, andboywas I right.
Zoey gestured at me with a floppy hand. “You. You are the biggest people pleaser in the office, there’s no substance to you Maddie. You are just there to smile and look pretty—not to work with clients that actually matter—but I guess that’s why she thinks you’re perfect for Bells. You’ll be just another piece of pretty furniture in her office with no opinions.”
I knew that she was drunk and angry at being fired, but her words stung somewhere deep in my chest, and I reeled back from them like they were a physical blow. I knew that people didn’t think much of me in the office, and that was on purpose. I didn’twantto stick out like a sore thumb, being myself meant that people would leave me behind. It was easier to be happy, smiling Maddie, rather than Madeline with the stacks upon stacks of issues.
Of course, Madeline was also a lot meaner than Maddie.
“Oh fuck right off, Zoey.” The words slipped out of my mouth before I could formulate a nicer, less aggressive response. “You are forgetting that the whole reason that I have the Bells account is thatyouwere fired. I don’t know what you did, but if your attitude is any indication—you deserved it.”
The four women around me blinked in surprise at my words, Inevercursed in front of my coworkers, ever. Zoey was gaping at me like a fish trying to breathe in air, and then her face crumbled and she stood and hurried away from us in tears.
Yvonne and Marina shot me glares as they followed her and Natalia frowned at me. “That was really unkind of you, Madeline. I know Zoey can be a bitch, but she’s going through it right now.” With that, she turned and followed Yvonne and Marina in the direction that Zoey had left, leaving me all alone.
I sighed and resisted the urge to scrub my hands over my face. I may have been having a shitty night, but that didn’t mean that I should ruin my makeup and make it worse.
I picked up my Gimlet and knocked the rest of the liquid back, groaning at the bitterness that collected at the bottom of the glass.
It was bullshit that the one time that I responded with anything other than ‘happy and carefree,’ people got upset with me. It just showed that I was right for always putting on a bubbly attitude. Angry women with emotional baggage didn’t have any friends, well that was a lie. I was sure that, even if I was completely snarky and irritable with Tibby and Eloise, they would still love me, but they had their own growing families to deal with. A glance to my left told me that liquor guy had abandoned his conquest as well, so I guess there was at least one silver lining to this shitshow of a night.
Ten minutes passed, and the alcohol was definitely making my head feel more than fuzzy. Putting my hand in front of my face, I was surprised when I saw double the amount of fingers that should have been on my hand. Confused, I pushed away from the bar, and my legs wobbled, nearly buckling underneath me. This was definitely something more than normal drunk, I realized as I held onto the back of the stool for dear life, and tried not to vomit. I had read about women who’d been roofied during a night out, but I never actually considered it happening to me. I was usually incredibly careful about watching my drink, except tonight I hadn’t been. I’d been distracted by Zoey and her snarky comments, and now I was all alone. I forced myself to stand up straight, breathing heavily, and feeling like I was going to vomit at any minute while the club bustled around me. I needed to get to the bathroom, and fast. Stumbling blindly towards the bathroom, I prayed that my wobbly legs would hold up as I brushed past the laughing club patrons.
With every step, my head continued to get fuzzier and fuzzier until the thudding of the music had dulled to a low roar. By the time that I finally made it to the bathroom, it was blissfully empty. I just barely made it into a stall before my stomach twisted, and I vomited. By the time I finished, the pain from my wrenching gut had cleared my mind just the tiniest bit, and I shifted into survival mode. I didn’t know who had slipped something into my drink, but if I was a betting woman, I would put all of my money on liquor guy.
I needed to make it back to the bar and let one of the bartenders know what happened. They’d be able to take care of me and get me out of the club safely. I splashed some ice-cold water on my face and stared at my blurry image in the mirror. Darkness had begun to creep into the edges of my vision, and I couldn’t help the tiniest sliver of panic that had managed to worm its way through the addled fog that I was feeling.
“Okay, Madeline,” I whispered to myself. “You can do this, just walk out to the bar and get help.” My words, I realized, had come out slow and slurred. I splashed some more water on my face in vain, hoping that it would wake me up enough in order to get back to the bar. It didn’t.
Using the wall to keep myself upright, I opened the bathroom door and was immediately bombarded by lights, noise, and people. It took everything inside of me not to immediately crumple to the ground, and I fixed my blurry eyes in the general direction of the bar and began to inch my way there.
“There you are!” A droning voice said as an arm wrapped around me and my nose was pressed against a shirt that was absolutely soaked in synthetic alpha cologne. “I was looking for you everywhere, baby, let’s get you home.”
I pushed against him as he slung my arm over his shoulder and practically started to carry me. I used my hands to press into his chest, to try and get him away from me, but my limbs weren’t responding in the way that I wanted them to. Frustration and panic fully set in as we had nearly made it to the doors of the club.
“No,” I managed to say, “I don’t want to.”
“It’s okay, we’ll get you to a nice spot where you can rest.” He cooed in my ear, and it made my skin crawl like ants were stamping across it.
Darkness was just beginning to fill my vision almost entirely, when I heard a growl come from behind us, “I believe that the lady told you no.”
