Chapter 4
ANNIE
The booth at Lucky’s is a vinyl-clad life raft in a sea of bodies, and we are clinging to it.
My knees are wedged against Brett’s, my shoulder pressed into Cori’s.
The air is a solid, palpable thing—thick with cigarette smoke, the yeasty smell of spilled beer, and the collective heat of a hundred bodies in a space meant for fifty.
My second vodka cranberry is mostly vodka, a fact my bloodstream is starting to register with alarming clarity.
I haven’t been properly drunk since a Stanford party junior year, an experience that ended with me falling asleep in a dorm bathtub while I was fully clothed and a next-day headache that felt like divine punishment.
Lucky’s is a beautiful disaster. The floors have a permanent, tacky patina.
The walls are a chaotic collage of band stickers, phone numbers scrawled in pen and Sharpie, and flyers for gigs long forgotten.
A flickering Budweiser sign casts a sickly neon glow over everything, turning faces into blue-and-red masks.
The jukebox is pumping out Pearl Jam’s “Alive,” the bass line a physical presence in my sternum.
Every few minutes, a cheer goes up from the back as someone navigates the precarious staircase to the legendary, illegal rooftop.
Cori extracts a cigarette from Marcus’s pack and lights it with a Bic produced from the mysterious depths of her bra, exhaling a plume of smoke that joins the haze hanging beneath the low ceiling.
She smokes with a dancer’s grace, her fingers elegant around the filter.
Smoking is a vice she wears lightly, a secret rebellion against the monastic discipline of her day job.
Ballerinas and their tricks, she’d once said with a laugh that didn’t quite reach her eyes.
She is incandescent tonight, a flame in the murk.
Her red hair is a cascade of pre-Raphaelite curls, a stark contrast to the severe black of her dress and her black combat boots.
She’s already danced with three different guys tonight—one of them for maybe two songs before she disappeared with him toward the bathrooms. She was gone for twenty minutes.
When she came back, her hair was messed up, her lipstick was smudged, and when I asked her why she just had sex with someone she didn’t even know in a bar bathroom, she just shrugged and said, “Because I wanted to, Anniecakes.” Her freedom is a tangible force, both intimidating and magnetic.
I envy that about her.
Brett passes the cigarette back to Marcus. He’s exactly as Marcus advertised: golden-boy handsome with a razor-sharp wit. His eyes are the shade of blue you see in travel brochures for tropical waters. He’s studying me now with open, friendly curiosity.
“So Annie,” Brett says, turning his attention to me. “Marcus tells me you’re new to the city.”
“Correct. I’ve been here for two weeks.”
“And? Verdict?”
“It’s hot. Loud. It smells weird. But there’s good food, so there’s that.”
“Accurate.” He grins. “So you like it?”
“I think so. Ask me again when I’m not unemployed.”
“Well, what are you looking for?”
“Anything that pays money and doesn’t require skills I don’t have.”
“So, bartending.”
“I don’t know how to bartend.”
“Neither did I when I started. You learn.” He leans forward, an elbow perched on the table. “You should apply at The Pyramid. We’re always hiring and the money’s decent.”
I shrug. “I don’t think I’d be any good at it.”
“You don’t have to be good at it. You just have to show up and not actively poison anyone.” He winks. “Low bar. Literally.”
Marcus laughs and nudges Brett with his shoulder. “Stop trying to recruit her. She doesn’t want to work at The Pyramid.”
“How do you know? Maybe she does.”
“Do you?” Marcus asks me.
I take a sip of my drink and consider it. “Maybe?”
“See?” Brett says triumphantly.
“You’re a terrible influence,” Marcus tells him.
“You love it.”
“Unfortunately.”
They’re smiling at each other in that way couples do when they’re having a private conversation in public, and I look away, giving them space. Cori catches my eye and rolls hers, grinning.
The music shifts—something with a faster beat, maybe Smashing Pumpkins—and Cori stubs out her cigarette in the ashtray on the table. “I’m going to dance. Anyone coming?”
“I’m good,” Marcus says.
“I’ll come,” Brett says, sliding out of the booth. “Annie?”
I look at my drink, then at the dance floor, which is really just a small cleared space near the jukebox where people are moving in ways that suggest they’re also several drinks deep.
“Sure,” I say, because why the hell not?
The dance floor is packed. Bodies press together, moving in a way drunk people move—loose and uncoordinated but committed. Cori pulls me into the middle of it and immediately starts dancing, hips swaying, arms above her head, and I try to follow her lead.
“I have no idea what I’m doing!” I shout over the music.
“That’s the whole point!” Cori shouts back, laughing.
So I just move. I don’t think about it, don’t try to look good or graceful or anything other than a person who’s had a few drinks and is dancing in a dive bar on a Friday night.
I throw my head back and laugh because it’s ridiculous and wonderful and I can’t remember the last time I did something just because it felt good.
Cori spins in a circle, her hair flying out around her, and Brett is doing some dance move that I can’t even begin to describe, and I love all of it.
We dance through three songs. Maybe four. I lose track. Marcus eventually joins us, sliding up next to Brett and moving with him in an easy way they seem to have mastered, like they’re always in sync. The music is loud enough that I can feel it vibrating through the soles of my Docs.
And then I notice the looks.
There’s a group of guys nearby—four of them, maybe in their thirties, standing in a cluster near the edge of the dance floor.
They’re staring at Marcus and Brett with expressions that make my stomach churn.
Not just looking. Staring. One of them says something and the others laugh, and I see Marcus notice. His whole body tenses.
Cori sees it a millisecond after I do. Her dance stops dead. The warmth in her eyes ices over. Before I can process it, she’s shouldering through the crowd, a five-foot-five avalanche of righteous fury.
“You got a fucking problem?” Her voice cuts through the music. She’s toe-to-toe with the largest of them. “Or are you just jealous they’re better looking than you’ll ever be, prick?”
The man blinks, startled by the ferocity emanating from this tiny, furious woman. His friends start to scurry, the pack mentality faltering under a direct challenge. Marcus is there in an instant, his hand on Cori’s arm.
“Cor, it’s cool. Let it go.”
“It’s not cool!” Her glare could strip paint.
The men mutter and melt back into the crowd, their bravado deflated.
Cori watches them go, her chest heaving.
The anger dissipates, leaving behind a protective hurt.
“Assholes,” she spits, then turns toward the bar.
“It’s fucking 1994, not 1950. I’m getting a shot. I’ll be back.”
As she stalks off, Marcus turns to me. The easy smile is back, but it’s tighter at the corners. “Welcome to the wider world, Annie. Sometimes it’s less welcoming than our little living room.”
“Does that…happen often?”
“Often enough.” He shrugs, a gesture meant to dismiss what can’t be dismissed.
“You learn to pick your battles. Cori hasn’t mastered that yet.
” He says it with profound fondness. Then he nods past my shoulder, his expression shifting to something lighter, teasing.
“Speaking of attention…you’ve got an admirer. Two, actually.”
I follow his subtle glance. Leaning against the wall by the restroom hall is a guy with messy brown hair and a worn-in flannel shirt. He’s watching me, but when our eyes meet, he looks down at his boots, a faint blush visible even in the gloom. It’s shy, almost sweet.
Marcus’s chin points in the other direction.
Near the bar, a different archetype: older, maybe late twenties, in a scuffed leather jacket.
His gaze is not shy at all. It’s a slow appraisal, a visual possession that travels from my face down the length of my body and back up.
Heat floods my cheeks, a confusing mix of violation and a strange, unfamiliar power.
“Why are they looking at me like that?” The question comes out more plaintive than I intend.
Marcus stares at me, then lets out a genuine laugh of disbelief. “Are you for real? Annie. Look at you!”
I glance down at myself—the simple black dress, the boots, the skin slick with sweat, the hair escaping Cori’s carefully placed butterfly clips. I see dishevelment. I see a girl playing dress-up.
“You’re hot, babe,” Marcus says, his voice dropping into a register of absolute sincerity. He nods toward Leather Jacket, “own it.”
“I’m hot?”
“Wait, are you being serious or are you fucking with me right now?”
“I don’t know, Marcus! I’ve never—people don’t usually—”
“Annie.” He looks at me like I’m insane. “You’re gorgeous. You have to know that.”
“I really don’t.”
“Well, now you do. Welcome to having a body in public. Men are going to stare. It’s annoying but also occasionally useful.”
I’m flattered, I think. But also confused because I’ve never thought of myself as hot.
In my old life, my appearance was a curated asset, a part of the uniform.
It was praised as “lovely” or “appropriate.” It was never mine to keep.
It was a tool for blending in, for meeting a standard.
Hot is a verdict on my own desirability, separate from my name or my family. It’s terrifying. It’s exhilarating.
Cori returns, slamming four shot glasses of amber liquid on the table. “Tequila. For courage. Or forgetfulness. Whichever you need.”