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The glass slams back down onto the bar, the last dredges slopping around. The taste of beer still lingers in AJ’s mouth, and even more so in her throat, though the burn has dulled. Laughter rings out around the tavern, and nights prior to this, AJ would’ve been at the center of it all. Maybe with a certain girl on her arm, too. Nope. She waves her glass in the air, getting the attention of one of the bartenders.
“Another? Bit more than usual, eh? Maybe time to go home, AJ,” he says warily. The lights are low and AJ’s vision is blurry. Or maybe it’s the alcohol. She squints, to no effect, then slides the glass across the table. He sighs, and the red liquid sloshes into the cup.
“Cheers, pal.” AJ sips slowly this time, hoping to savour it. He might not let her have another. Oh well. She’ll just go to the next bar over. Her head is ringing and the music is pounding. A cheer echoes out behind her, and AJ looks warily over her shoulder. There’s a group of people in the doorway, but only one of them stands out. The girl’s hair curls in ringlets, softened by the purple light, with eyes glinting stars. She’s blurry too. Is that Drift? But the girl goes to laugh, and it’s a slightly different sound. The red liquid in her cup is gone.
AJ blinks. Her cup is filled again, a paler red this time, almost a translucent pink. There’s a girl in the stool next to her, who slouches against the bar. Her hands trace the rim of her own glass, chasing the shine of the moving lights. Those hands are elegant and pale, and AJ lets her eyes glide up to the rest of the girl. Her head sits on one of her palms, her blue eyes downcast. She has long waves of pale, blonde hair, streaked through with faint pinks and greens. She’s beautiful. Light dances along the column of her throat, and slips down the curve of her shoulder. There’s a tattoo there, an inked, pretty pair of fairy wings. The girl’s frame is small, draped in a shiny silk slip.
AJ decides to bite. “Why so sad, Fairy?” The girl looks upwards, and it’s a small, small thrill to have her attention. She takes AJ in for a moment, no doubt looking over the toned curves of her arms.
“Someone,” she says, and those fingers squeeze the glass, smudging the perspiration. She brings it to her lips- glistening, pink lips- which part to swallow, before her throat bobs, Adam's apple cast into half a shadow, mimicking the moon.
“Mhm. Can relate.” Maybe she’ll have a drinking buddy tonight. She can’t help but notice she would’ve usually saved that stool. AJ pushes the glass forward, beckoning with one hand. Hopefully some bartender will notice. There’s a trail of water on the surface from the path her glass has become familiar to.
“This someone a girl, Fairy?” AJ says, as her newly-filled glass is brought up to her lips. The fairy looks at her for a moment, though AJ struggles to read the look on her face. Fairy shakes her drink around. The ice rattles. “Yeah.”
The music changes, this time becoming much faster, the type of music that has people dancing and hollering. It’s louder too now. AJ casts a look to the bar’s middle. There she is again. Brown hair swaying with wide lips grinning, and she’s moving, her hands on someone’s shoulders, and AJ turns away. She must set her glass down really hard this time, because Fairy looks at her. Her eyes are watery and seem liquid, shifting in the dim light. “Your girl here?” AJ just shakes her head, and forces her head straight. That girl isn’t even Drift.
Fairy reaches out, and lays a cold hand on AJ’s. Both their hands are cold from their drinks. AJ’s hands are trembling, and her knuckles are white, clasped around the glass. She blinks several times. Lets out a shaking laugh.
“Do you want to dance?” she murmurs. Fairy nods, just as eager.
So they dance under the bar lights, cast in colours morphing of purple and green and blue, while AJ’s hands linger on Fairy’s waist, and Fairy returns the act. They’re in a sea of people, a crowd of emotions, some as melancholic, others bubbling with joy and laughter. The same laugh rings out, and over Fairy’s shoulder is that girl. Her hair and hips sway, her arms swing and dance through the air. Then she turns. But she’s not Drift, and AJ isn’t sure what hurts worse.
Fairy notices too. She leans in, a question in her pale, blue eyes. And AJ happily meets her lips, brushing hesitantly, before she rushes forward. They spin around in the dance, limbs closely entwined, and sometimes AJ thinks she sees her again, framed by Fairy’s shoulder. Each time, she presses her lips to Fairy’s a little longer, a little harder.
The kissing ends up with them back at the bar, this time a booth. The music is now unbearable, and everything seems to want to smash in AJ’s skull.
So AJ ends up in a car, then staggering through the doors of a building, somehow up stairs. It takes several tries to open the door, with the key kissing each time. She’d already said goodbye to Fairy. The door unlocks.
And standing there is the one girl AJ has wanted and run from.
AJ tilts her neck, head feeling heavy, and lets out a laugh.
“Ohhh, Driiffttt,” her letters are more drawn out than usual. Might be the alcohol. She feels briefly light-headed, and the room keeps flashing in her vision, with increasingly longer moments of darkness. Dang.
Drift turns to look at her. The moon hovers behind her, painting the soft edges of her hair and tears of her eyes that pale yellow she loves. The yellow light dances in her eyes, but only because the seas within them are moving, and glowing drops slide down her cheeks and trail along her neck. She swallows. Then her jaw begins to tighten, and so do her fists, curling and uncurling. She closes her eyes like she can’t stand to look at AJ, and lets out a shuddery breath.
The darkness comes for a little bit longer, now a few, long and deep seconds. Then there’s the feeling of heaviness, and a pull to the ground.
AJ opens her eyes and Drift is there holding her, so much closer, but she’s never felt farther, because the black is flocking her vision, and Drift looks so, so afraid, and then the darkness eats everything up.
When AJ wakes up, she wakes with the worst hangover in her entire life. Luckily, there’s a bottle next to her bedside, and the blinds are drawn tightly, shielding her from the moon. Or sun. There’s a fuzzy, warm blanket wrapped tightly around her too, and her shoes are off, despite having no memory of doing any of this.
She reaches out to the plastic bottle, and greedily swallows a few mouthfuls. AJ then rolls onto her side, back into the messy bed, hoping to sleep until everything goes away. Tucked against her neck, AJ can’t help but notice everything has a small familiarity. The blanket smells of something, a woody, earthy scent, with something sweet. It’s nice, comforting.
It smells like Drift.
That has AJ sitting up, and pulling open the blinds. Light spills over the room. It’s so undeniably Drift.
Plants, green and thriving sit among books on shelves, and growing in pots on the ground. Oxeye daisies and blue cornflowers and other plants AJ can’t name are scattered around the room. She only learnt their names after a bouquet from Drift, once. Drift’s favourite, the orchid, glows proudly in the sunlight, displayed on the windowsill. A book of poems and how to care for flowers sit on the bedside table, while a Midsummer’s Night Dream book is shoved to the corner of the room, book spine chipped and ripped, as if it were tossed to the floor in a hurry. There’s a moss green rug on the floor, the Turkish-style glass lamp on her desk, and posters on the wall. The E.T poster hangs on the door.
After days of not seeing it all, after their visits had stopped, AJ is back, and it feels like ages ago. She runs her hands along the E.T poster, picks up the Midsummer’s Night Dream book. Pages fall out of it, fluttering gently to the ground.
AJ recognises the scrawl as her own. It’s the letters she wrote before she left the first time. Open Book, reads the first line, and it hurts, because Drift hasn’t been around to tease and hold. She opens the book and shoves the letter back in. AJ wonders if Drift has held onto those and read them over and over again.
She wishes she was back here on better terms. Of course they’d be roommates after everything.
Drift returns later that night, when AJ is in the dorm’s main room, looking for something to eat to hopefully cure her hangover. She looks exactly as she does from when they had broken it off. Devastatingly beautiful. They stare at each other, and AJ can’t stand the silence.
“Hey, Open Book.”