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I rolled my eyes. "Go chase some tail, Casanova. And make sure you wear a rubber."
Eric left, and I hopped up onto one of the stools, content to sip on my drink and people-watch with my back to the bar. This kind of place was so out of my element, filled as it was with half-dressed women (although I wasn't currently much more covered up) and men who tracked them like birds of prey. Everyone in here wore a kind of mask: a mask of skin, a mask of makeup and hair products, a mask of shiny fabric and rapacious glances. Everyone was here to be someone they weren't in their everyday lives.
"Can I get you another drink?"
I had to physically stop my eyes from rolling. That line was tired. Everything about this place seemed tired, and I had been here less than fifteen minutes. But I didn't want to go home, where I'd probably just flop on my futon and go to sleep. I wanted to be something besides tired. I wanted to stop feeling like shit.
"Sure," I replied, turning to the speaker.
His name was Marco, and he was a broker at Prudential. With olive skin and dark, slicked hair, he was only a little bit on the short side with a barrel-chested body that filled out his white Oxford shirt and navy suit pants quite nicely. With a hand at the small of my back like he owned me, he waved a hand at the bartender and sidled close, which was easy considering there were still people teeming for drinks on either side of us. I crossed my legs and turned to face the bar. Marco followed the movement of my legs hungrily.
"The bartender's a friend of mine from college," he assured me. "You in school?"
I shook my head. "Just graduated."
"Hey! Congratulations on entering the real world!" he replied jovially. "Now you have to let me buy you a drink. What school?"
I paused. There are certain kinds of men who can't handle women who are potentially smarter than them. I'd met them before, and when they found out I attended Harvard or had graduated summa cum laude from NYU, they were usually very uncomfortable, which meant they ignored me or made everything a competition of wits. Marco might have been one of those men, or he might not have been. I wasn't really interested in finding out.
"UMB," I stated over the blare of Salt N' Pepa, giving him the acronym for the Boston campus of the University of Massachusetts that mostly attracted locals.
Marco humored me with a smile that was at once condescending and thrilled. "That's great! I graduated from Amherst five years ago!"
I nodded and smiled back, hating the way my cheeks felt like they were about to crack. Come on, Crosby, this isn't you, I thought. But then I shook my head. "Me" wasn't working these days. So this would be fine for tonight.
"Let me guess," Marco was saying as the bartender came over. "You like vodka cranberries."
I was about to tell him I preferred whiskey, but then I stopped. Across the bar, Eric was leaning conspicuously close to a girl, a different one from brunette he'd seen before. She had a very pink drink in her hand and smiled when she caught me looking, like a cat who had just caught its prey. Eric looked up.
"You okay?" he mouthed.
I nodded and turned back to Marco. Why not have a different drink, the kind of drink that "girls who just want to have fun" would have?
"Vodka cranberry sounds great!" I said, trying to invest as much lightness into my voice as I could.
As fake as I felt, it seemed to work. Marco grinned again and ordered the drinks. I took a small sip. Holy shit, that was sweet!
"Something wrong with your drink?" he asked. "I know my friend makes them kind of strong."
This was strong? It tasted like cough syrup! "No, no, I'm fine. Just...haven't had one of these in a while."
Marco leered, probably thinking I didn't drink much and was thus an easy target. I smiled back and tossed down the rest of the syrupy sweet cocktail as quickly as I could.
"Damn," Marco said as he watched. "I guess you got used to it."
"I guess I did," I said, feeling lightheaded. I waved at the bartender. "Another round, please!"
I winked at Marco. It felt unnatural and strange, but he winked back.
"Next one's on me," I said.
Three vodka cranberries and two kamikaze shots later, and I didn't have to fake the winking or laughing anymore. With the pounding music and the roar of people, the world felt exactly as I wanted it: hazy, joyful. Distracting.
"Come on!"
I tugged Marco, who was getting just as sloshed as I was, off his barstool and toward the dance floor. He'd been moving progressively closer to me with every drink, and was more than eager for the physical contact. Grabbing his beer, he followed me eagerly until we were surrounded by people thrashing in the small space in front of the DJ booth.
The crowd had become even more raucous than before as the DJ put on more well-known hits. Ties had come off, skirts were hiked to the point of being indecent, and a lot of grinding was going on.
