The One who got Away

I stopped on the sidewalk and looked around, not ready to go home yet. I was too wired to go back and sit in my apartment, and I didn’t want to go to any of the gatherings the people I knew were throwing. I needed a drink and some time to myself. I looked across the street and recognized the name, it was that club, Exposé, that Lisa wanted to go to. I was fairly positive they had a bar on the lower level. I walked over and showed my ID, smiling at the doorman as he let me through. Straight ahead was a dark room with lights moving all around and a deep drum of music. To the left was a quieter bar with red carpeted floors and marble counters. There were small candles lit on all the surfaces and a few other people sitting around lost in conversation. It was still early which was probably why the place wasn’t packed yet.

I walked over and sat down on a bar stool, smiling up at the bartender behind the bar polishing glasses. I ordered a whiskey and diet and sighed, glancing up at the muted televisions playing the latest news channels. I looked to the side and there was one couple, pressed tightly together, and two guys, talking to each other about the local sports games and what chicks they were going to score with. I looked down at my drink as I swirled the straw around in the glass. I was thinking I needed to let the idea of a relationship go. I didn’t have time for it anyway.

Saddened by this revelation, I downed my drink and ordered another. If my date was over already, I might as well get wasted and drown my sorrows.

Chapter Five

Nathan

I had agreed to meet Chris at Exposé that evening, but when I got there, he was already upstairs on the 3rd floor. For once, I felt like socializing, though I knew that probably wouldn’t last long since most of the people that came there were so wrapped up in themselves a conversation was almost impossible. Still, I wandered down through the clubs, scoping out the place. The girls were all dressed in their sluttiest attire, some staring over at me flirtatiously, and others already having picked their victim for the night. When I got to the first floor, I stared down the hall at the dark club that most of the non-VIP’s ended up partying in. It seemed like an interesting idea, talking to some normal everyday women, but it also seemed like a huge headache. I went to take a step forward toward the room and glanced over, realizing they had a bar at the front. I had been going to Exposé for years and never realized they had a nice quiet bar there.

I shrugged my shoulders figuring it was worth a try and walked into the room. It had low lighting like the rest of the place but looked much more upscale than any of the pubs I usually frequented. I walked up to the end of the bar and nodded at the bartender. They had just about any liquor you could think of plus some that I had never heard of before. I was going to stick to what I knew, though.

“What can I get you?”

“I’ll have a Blanton’s on the rocks, please,” I said.

I reached to my back pocket to retrieve my wallet and looked up at the person sitting a few stools down. I paused staring at this woman, who was sipping her drink and looking slightly miserable. She had a couple of empty shot glasses in front of her, too. Her hair was long and deep chestnut brown, and as she glanced up at the television, I could see her striking hazel eyes. She had fair skin with rosy cheeks, and she seemed so perfect that it was hard to believe she was real.

“Sir?”

“Oh,” I said looking back at the bartender and taking my drink.

I wandered over to the closest place I could sit without being a creeper and pulled out the stool. She glanced over at me, and I smiled, watching her cheeks grow a bit redder. She smiled sweetly back and then looked up at the television. On the screen, they were playing some sort of local news channel, their rhetoric streaming across the bottom of the screen in captions.

“Every time the news comes on I feel like they want you to think the world is ending,” I said glancing up at the screen. “I don’t know how someone does that job without losing it and telling everyone the truth in a glorious on-screen meltdown.”

She looked at me for a moment with a shocked look on her face and immediately I remembered why I didn’t have regular conversations with people. I said the wrong thing, as usual, forgetting that most people were sheep just like the mainstream media. Hell, for all I knew she was a reporter for one of the stations.

“I’ve been saying that since I was a little kid,” she said with a smile on her face. “The truth is everywhere except up there on that screen. It’s all money, power, and politics.”

“I’m Nathan,” I said, immediately impressed.

“Ruby,” she replied.

“I wasn’t even watching it, it was just somewhere to focus my face, so I wasn’t staring blankly at other people,” she said, slightly tipsy.

“Ha,” I said throwing my head back. “That’s totally my move. I’ve been in a bar and watched an entire basketball game before and had no idea who played.”

“Bars can be awkward,” she laughed.

I scooted over and sat in the seat next to her, continuing the conversation. We talked about the politics on the screen, the truth of money and power in society, and many other deep conversational topics. I liked her. She was not only gorgeous, but she seemed to be relatively intelligent as well. She was extremely passionate but not in a way that she let her emotions take over too much, which was a good thing since too many people made huge decisions based off their emotional responses to things. It wasn’t that I didn’t have emotions, I just was able to separate them from the reality of a situation.

We sat there for several hours, conversing, drinking and just generally having a good time. She was slightly hard to read since her first reaction wasn’t to flirt with me, but at the same time, so was I. I was the guy that flirting never came naturally too, and after a while, and several embarrassing one-liners, I decided that being myself was the best option.

“Wow,” I said glancing down at my watch. “It’s already midnight.”

“Really?”

“Time fly’s when you’re having fun,” I said with a smile.

“That it does,” she said, looking kind of flirtatious for the first time that evening.

“Long shot here but would you like to come back to my place and have a drink? I just live down a few blocks across from Central Park,” I asked, feeling self-conscious about the question.

“Sure,” she said after a few moments of contemplation. “Let me just pay my tab.”

“Please,” I said. “Allow me.”