I Need Some Air and a Stiff Drink

Pushing through the crowd while they’re pulling me back. It all feels a little like I’m caught in an undertow and desperately trying to break the surface of the water. Arms churning and legs burning until I manage to breach.

I break free at the side of the dance floor but it’s not the same place I entered. This is one of the sides butted up against a building, small stairs leading up to the upper area where the entrance of the building is and I mount them one by one, doing my best to ignore the crowds behind me.

At the top of the stairs there is a little plateau before the entrance of the building. With the benches off to either side and the light little gardens it isn’t difficult to picture this place during a far more ordinary day of the school year. A few students lounging about quietly talking while one sits off to the side desperately checking their notes against the book they’ve got balanced on one knee while they prep for an exam.

That version of a campus was the dream that I held in my head and my heart the whole time I was stuck in my tiny town wishing I was away. This world of camaraderie and companionship and study, I genuinely did look forward to the study at first.

If I think hard I can almost wrap my fingers around the reasons that all changed for me. But it’s hard to put my finger on it, really. The change happened gradually over time and there was no real delineation between the two, no more than there was an inciting incident. I just woke up one day and I’d changed along the way and I never really understood why.

And I don’t know whether it’s really different now or whether I’m just back at the beginning and experiencing the excitement of anticipation all over again. But I do know that when I think of this space as a place of quiet friendship and frantic study, I get that thrill and that yearning all over again. Of course in order to make it to there, I have to make it through tonight.

Tonight this space has been co-opted by the party. They set up a bar up here, not with **** because god forbid they endorse the kind of rampant rule breaking that more than half the people down there were indulging in. No this bar was **** free and ordinarily boring and would have been but for the fact that I’d been dancing my heart out and desperately needed something that would actually quench my thirst and refresh me, even just a little bit.

I didn’t have to push through anyone at least to make my way over to the bucket filled with ice and bottled water. I grasped one and pulled it free, twisting off the top and drinking it greedily and quickly, nearly **** to get it down.

“No matter how fast you drink it,” his voice came as I was finishing up gulping down three-quarters of the bottle at once, “It’s not going to be any more interesting.”

I snapped the bottle away and stared into the distance, looking into the darkened window of the building and just measuring my response. He had spoken from behind me which meant that he was behind me right now and frankly all that made me feel was ****.

Because I could practically feel his eyes on me, running up and down my body. Drinking in every inch of me and taking me in. The long line of my back, bear in the dress I was in. The way it hung off my shoulders and my hips and gave me that feminine silhouette. The way that it would be so easy to rip and tear, and the way that was absolutely his intention for the nights events.

And I hated the fact that I asked myself the question. That of all things I wanted to know what he thought of me in this dress. And I wanted to know, though I didn’t want to want to know, would he have preferred me in the other one instead?

I don’t have time for these idle flights of fancy and I don’t have time to consider my response. Because every flickering moment that I wait to turn around ins another moment where he’s checking out my ass and deciding how to get me right where he wants me.

He has the edge right now, and all that means is that if I want to make it out of this encounter with my dignity intact I have to get that edge for myself. And with little notice and even less planning there is only one way that I know how to do that.

I have to get him off balance. I have to do the last thing in the world he would ever suspect.

I have to shock him.

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