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“Excuse me! Miss?”
She’d been spending her week off from school on a solo road-trip. Nobody around who knew who she was. Get a break from all the expectations people always seemed to have.
“Please, can you help me?” Another college student, by the looks of her, having trouble keeping it together. Probably pretty drunk to boot.
Back home, she was always getting pulled into everybody else’s problems. Okay, maybe she did her fair share of sticking her nose into them herself. But she wasn’t doing that anymore, and especially not on what was supposed to be her vacation. She kept walking towards her car. There were plenty of other people around here. She could bother one of them.
“Please wait! Listen, I’m serious!” She just wouldn’t let up.
At school it was more of the same, just from a different direction. She was so smart, so good. Yeah, that’s right, she could walk into a room and make more than just enemies now. But it meant people still came to her with their problems, even if they weren’t the same kind of problems now. She’d reached her car by now, vigorously ignoring whatever was happening behind her.
“Is that your car? You can drive? Thank goodness!” Sure, she could drive. Drive away from everything she knew, if only for a week. Out of trouble. Nowhere near home. Nowhere near school.
“I think my date’s been drugged!”
Veronica’s keys fell to the ground, just as she’d been about to get into the vehicle. Something inside her broke. She quickly put it back together as she bent down to pick up the keys, and then, finally, turned to look at the girl who’d been stubbornly calling out to her, closing the car door as she did so.
“Tell me what happened,” she said to the stranger, closing the distance between them. “What do you need me to do?”
“He just started feeling really sick,” she started, all her words coming out too fast. “He just told me to get help!”
“Don’t you think he probably meant the bartender or something? Security?” Her words came out harsh, but she was following the girl back inside all the same.
“Oh.” She did stop talking at this, albeit barely longer than a second or two. “You just- I’m sor- you looked like somebody who would help. You will, right?” And then the words kept coming. “We were sitting in a booth seat, just the two of us, kinda out of the way, right? And we were, well, making out. I dunno, our drinks were on the table. Anyway he finished his beer, and then he chugged back my drink too, as a joke, right, he was going to get me a new one, so I dunno if somebody was trying to drug me or something, but when he got back with the new drinks he was already a little weird? He didn’t even touch his new drink but I was drinking mine because I hadn’t even finished the first on-” This girl really knew how to talk, didn’t she?
“So what you’re saying is, you just left him there alone?”
“He said to go get help! I ju- over here, our table’s just around the corner, and there he is!” Yeah, there he was, head face-down on the table, looking like he was barely holding together. “Logan!” the girl beside Veronica called out, “I’m back!”
He moaned, lifting his head off the table and looking at the two girls. His eyes widened. “Veronica?”
‘Of all the gin joints,’ she thought to herself. She mentally gave herself a shake before closing the rest of the distance between her and the table. “Yeah, I’m here. How else would I be getting your ass out of trouble?” Putting her hand lightly on his shoulder and leaning in closer, she asked, “How are you feeling?”
“Fucked up, V, I’m fucked up,” he slurred, managing what might have been a laugh. Even with the room spinning and blurring, he could still see the absurdity of the situation.
“Can you still stand? Walk?” He pushed himself up from the table and promptly fell right back into the bench, lacking the coordination to stand up in the booth. Veronica helped him out onto the floor and steadied him. “Looks like a no on the walking then.” She shifted herself into a position where she’d be able to support him better while walking. She was just glad he could at least still hold his own weight up. “Let’s get out of here then, come on.” She spoke softly as she started to make her way back to the entrance. She paused, turning her head back towards the woman she’d practically forgotten about, who seemed to be gathering up the couple’s varied odds and ends from the booth. “I’m guessing he drove?” She nodded, finally stunned into silence by the entirety of the circumstances she’d found herself in. Veronica started walking again, calling back, “We’ll take my car then.”
Veronica pulled out of the parking lot, destination fixed in her mind, eyes fixed on the road, and awkwardness fixed in ever corner of her car. She’d gotten Logan in her back seat and then given the bar’s security a heads up on what had happened while his partner settled herself. The girl, now in her passenger seat, asked the question she of course had known was coming, right on schedule.
“So, you two know each other?”
“Yeah,” Veronica answered, “we, uh-” She stuttered and paused as she thought about everything that had happened between Logan and her, and with no way to explain any of that to the stranger she settled for, “we went to school together.” The car was quiet for another minute or two before Veronica decided it was her turn to try and make conversation with the poor girl. “I know this has to be a pretty scary situation for you. I’ll drop you off at the hospital to be safe but he should be fine in a day or so, maybe less. Probably won’t remember much of your date though. I don’t know what kind of person goes around putting things in people’s drinks when they’re obviously with somebody but for what it’s worth? If you had taken that drink, he would have taken care of you. You would have been safe.”
The rest of the trip was silent, the other woman full of questions she knew she had no business asking and wasn’t sure she wanted answers to. There was history here, she knew, but what kind? She couldn’t read Veronica’s emotions at all, no further clues to be found there. As promised, Veronica pulled into the hospital parking lot. She’d rejected her offer to help bring Logan inside, but had taken down Veronica’s number, “in case anything happens, or you need another ride to pick up his car, or... anything”. She wasn’t expecting she’d be calling it though. Frankly, she was already wishing she could just forget the whole night.
Veronica kept her phone close at hand for the rest of the night, and most of the next day, waiting for a call that never came. She wasn't exactly expecting to be asked for another ride or anything, taxis being a pretty universal thing and all. But it would have been nice, she thought, to get an update that Logan was doing okay. She'd given up on it before nightfall though, rationalizing. She probably wouldn't have made that phone call either, would she? Better for everyone to just forget the whole thing ever happened.