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“Um, I don’t think so,” she whispered back. The problem was that it was difficult for Jamie to lose herself in the story if her full-time job was question answerer.
She left the film she had very much wanted to see feeling like she’d just completed a school assignment. But Monique was beaming. That made the whole thing worth it, right? She threaded their fingers, and Mo squeezed her hand and hopped a little. She was a perpetual hopper. Lots of energy. That part was also cute.
“Hey, it’s only nine thirty. Want to hit up The Bishop’s House on Fourth? I know the door guy. He’ll take us to the front. We can do shots off the shovel.”
“The shovel?”
“You’ll see.”
Jamie blinked. Dating Monique had been a bit of a culture shock. First of all, she was seven years younger than Jamie, and it showed in how they approached their nightlife. Then again, Jamie had never been much of a partier at any age. Her mother once said she’d been forty years old since birth. “Sure. Let’s go. Just remember I have to work in the morning, pretty early.”
“I will have you home by midnight. Or maybe twelve thirty.” She stole a quick kiss and started typing away on her phone. “I’m telling Kelly and Layla to meet us there.” A pause. “She says they’re bringing Tom-Tom and that one girl Lorna who sells fruit and always looks at me strange, but it’s whatever. This place is fire, and we’re gonna rage.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“Oh, and Layla’s whole crew from the McDonald’s on Eighth Ave is swinging over. You met them at that one party with the big straws.”
“This is quite a group.” She didn’t mind. Much.
The Bishop’s House had a steady beat emanating from inside when they joined the line. The group of friends all seemed to locate each other rather quickly and chattered in shorthand. Jamie smiled and nodded along, doing her best to fit in but feeling a tad like an outsider. They said the wordvibea lot. She started to count how many times for fun. Mo moved like a social butterfly between the women, hugging, catching up, fist-bumping, and shouting names back at Jamie as a reminder of who each woman was. “Remember Skinny Drew with the pizza box drama?”
“I do. Hi!”
“What’s up, Jamie James!” Skinny Drew yelled, her hands cupped to her mouth. She had a lot of energy and apparently hated pizza boxes. There was a lot to keep up with in this friend group.
Jamie and Monique had been dating for five months now and had been an official couple for three. They’d met when Jamie joined Clarissa, Elise, and a few others for cocktails. Monique had approached her at the bar and offered to buy her a drink. Long dark hair, petite, and full of energy, Monique was a force Jamie was still learning to keep up with.
“Baby Jamie, I love your hair. Have I told you that?” Mo shouted the words because the music was so incredibly loud that Jamie could feel the beat pulsing through every inch of her body.
“Once or twice.”
“What?”
“Once or twice!” she yelled louder in Mo’s ear.
“Dark hair and light eyes? Good God, take me now.” Somehow the volume killed the romance, as did the dancing-slash-hopping while she said it. Mo was also now three shots in and a little handsy. She ran her fingers into Jamie’s hair, cupped her ass, and smiled.
Instinctively, her arms went around Mo’s waist. “We could go now.” She topped the comment with a smile that was only half playful because she really was missing her apartment and her bed about now. She wasn’t cut from the late-night-club cloth and never realized it more than in this moment.
“No way. We have to dance, like, eight more times.” Mo did a bouncy twirl to demonstrate.
“Do we?”
“Come on. Let’s do another shot.”
“You go ahead. I need to sneak into the restroom.” She didn’t actually, but she did need a slight breather from the wall-to-wall bodies and didn’t want to drink anymore with literally just hours until she needed to open the bar. The journey to the restroom took three times longer than it should have due to the lack of space, but once inside, she found the distance from the crowd allowed her to think clearly. Alone in the stall, she took a deep breath and then another, forcing herself to relax.
A few moments later as she washed her hands, a woman about her age called over her shoulder with a laugh. “We have no business in a club like this anymore. We belong in quiet restaurants with piano players underscoring our mundane conversation. Maybe a library.”
“I plan to visit so many more libraries after tonight,” her friend inside the stall said back. “What were we thinking?”
“Can you take me with you?” Jamie said with a laugh.
“You’re in,” the woman next to her said. “Do you like conversation and libraries?”
“I love both. It’s a match!”
The woman handed Jamie a paper towel from the dispenser next to her. “I can’t believe I used to have the energy for these places.”
