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Alannah reads my smile, gives me one back, and tugs on my hand, shaking her ass all the way to the dance floor. Our three friends are already there, dancing together.
Alannah, though perpetually single, is the default person I would talk to about this. She adores Adam. She’s proven again tonight that she’s a great sounding board. Though I’ve been clammed up about all of it until now, she’s been here for me throughout this ordeal. Making me go to mani-pedi appointments so that I have some self-care time, too. Calling me or showing up when she hasn’t heard from me. Bringing me a fancy coffee. Dropping a care package on the doorstep when she knows I’m overwhelmed.
And another good thing about Alannah – she tells it like it is.
She won’t hold back the truth if you get a bad haircut. She’ll commiserate with you, fake-plotting the demise of the bitch that cut your hair. She’ll then buy you hair clips and headbands or help you find a style for it so you can live with it while it grows out.
If you ask her if your jeans make your ass look big, she won’t lie about that either. Be ready for the truth when you ask Alannah Fisher for an opinion.
But her friendship is loving and supportive, too. If she can’t stand the guy you’re dating, she’ll tell you the truth in a gentle way you can stomach.
If you’re being a whiny bitch for too long, you’ll know it. Everyone needs a friend like Alannah. She’s ambitious, caring, motivating, and honest. She’s excelling in her field as a professional arbitrator as well as a social media influencer on the side with her “single, successful, and sultry” makeup tutorials channel. She’s great at motivating people to go after what they want in life.
I’m stoked that her career is accelerating. She’s worked her butt off for it and I’m glad I came out with her to celebrate her achievements tonight. To reciprocate friendship and be here for her.
Also, to let my hair down a little. Move my body a lot. Let myself feel a little sexy with my extra effort on my makeup, taking down my dark, shoulder-length hair that’s been in a ponytail or messy bun pretty much every day since Adam’s accident. Dusting off my curling iron and using it. Wearing a cute little black dress that I bought just before the accident and hadn’t had a chance to wear.
Of course Alannah thinks I should take Adam up on his offer. He had to know she would when he suggested I talk to her about it. She’s not the type to turn down a license for some fun.
I don’t know if I will do it. I don’t know if I can. If it’d be fun for me or if I’d feel like a cheating whore. If I did use it, how could I stand at an altar making promises to Adam in front of everyone we love knowing I’m lying my face off about promising fidelity?
I am the monogamous type. I don’t know if I can have sex with someone without feelings involved; I’ve never tried. I’m thirty years old and I’ve had sex with a grand total of six men in my life, including Adam. Feelings were involved each time.
All I know tonight is that the cocktails are tasting good, I don’t have to drive home, and I don’t have to even go home. I don’t have to let Adam see me get sloshed. I don’t have to hold back so that he doesn’t see me get what he calls “sloppy drunk”.
Tonight is a night with no decorum required.
I learned the hard way in our early days of dating that instead of thinking it’s adorable, looking after me, taking the opportunity for extra-dirty sex like his predecessor did, he gets disappointed in me. Embarrassed. I get lectures about it. My own dad never lectured me about booze the way Adam does. My parents don’t really lecture me period. They’ve always let me go my own way. That’s a nice way of saying I was always pretty invisible to them.
But Adam is Mister Responsible. Mister Decorum. He messaged me after I left to suggest I stay at Alannah’s all weekend. And I suspect it’s because he hopes she’ll talk me into things tonight and then I’ll do something about it tomorrow night. Since he won’t even see me until Sunday, I can get as loopy as I want tonight.
And I’ve decided I will.
No, it’s definitely not in me to just have sex with a stranger tonight, to switch gears from being in a committed relationship, spending eighteen months with one man, almost a year engaged to him, and seven months caring for him after his whole life got swept up into a tornado to simply falling onto a stranger’s dick my first time on a girls’ night out. Not who I am.
But having a bit of freedom, having no responsibility for the next forty-eight hours? Having the option to just be me? It sounds pretty damn good.
Although my eyes are on the security feed, my veins are being flooded by an adrenalin surge.
I track the movement of her hips, then watch the hypnotic sway of the curtain of thick, shiny dark hair that frames her face in fat curls and dances across her shoulders with every movement. My finger flexes, causing the screen to zoom in on her face. Her thick-lashed eyes are closed and it’s as if she’s part of the music as her friends surround her while she moves to the beat.
Everything falls away but her. Sounds. Images. She’s all I see right now.
I want to reach through the monitor and touch her. I want to know the sound of those silver rings looped through the series of straps above her sweet tits on her black dress, as they clang on my bedroom floor.
Something has woken up in me. Something I didn’t know had been there – dormant, perhaps.
I don’t get fixated on females; I get focused on goals. But something about her has me intrigued enough to want to know more. To want to be the one she chooses to use that hall pass on.
I’ve learned quite a few things about her in short order. That conversation I overheard paints a vivid bird’s eye view of who she is. I know why this is the first time in half a year she’s dancing. How this is the first time she’s let her hair down, using her words. And the way she said it, she loves to dance and let loose and has denied herself the pleasure. She announced she’ll dance like nobody’s watching tonight. But I’m watching. And the only reason I’m about to tear my eyes away is because I’ll be going out there and starting something. Starting something I suspect won’t move at the pace I want.
But I’ll do the calculations and decide the best way to get to my end goal. As soon as I know what that goal is. All I know right now is that I’m interested. Very.
Her eyes open. They’re light blue. So light they’re like ice on the monitor. I’m looking forward to gazing directly into them with my dark brown ones. Seeing how she responds to me. My vibe. My voice. My touch. No eye contact from her fiancé? Tired of feeling invisible? Well, I see you, Chloe. And I like what I’m seeing.
I don’t generally fuck around with club patrons. In fact, I haven’t felt the need to fuck around with anyone in a while. I wouldn’t likely linger on her this long and from multiple camera angles if not for the conversation I overheard between her and the blonde who works upstairs.
I’ve long believed things don’t happen by accident. When an opportunity presents itself, I assess moving pieces around me and determine whether they’re true opportunities or warnings. And then I’ll act, depending on the situation.
