3. Brown-Pink
Brown-Pink
Dylan
They made their way past the bouncer at the glitzy fairy-light-lit entrance to the club, taking shelter from the wind.
Inside, Dylan tried to blend in with the other people dancing, drinking, and posting on StreetSocial in the crowded venue, but struggled to get their earlier conversation out of her mind.
Eventually, tired of being stuck inside her head, Dylan signalled to Talia to ask if she wanted a drink – to which Talia gestured something like, No, still nursing this Blackberry Sidecar, thank you very much, and you didn’t even want to come today!
Dylan was annoyed at how much disdain Talia could pack into a single scowly head shake.
Luckily, she didn’t catch the attention of anyone when making her way to the bar. She spotted a few cute boys here and there, but no one she imagined spending any sort of time with.
Endless taps of ale, lager, and the occasional soft drink were lined up in a row.
She eyed the bartender behind them. A woman – no, a girl younger than Dylan – was tending the bar on her own, looking very experienced at drink mixing and juggling orders from multiple patrons, wing-tipped eyeliner on point.
Did bartenders get make-up touch-up breaks?
“Another G&T, please,” Dylan shouted over the music.
Paying contactless – the antiquated name that had stuck around for what was now pretty much the only form of payment – Dylan swiped her hand over the tender’s terminal.
Her implanted microchip was hardly cutting edge.
Most people swiped with their hands, but some made a joke of the whole thing, having their implant placed in their ear or in less salubrious places.
Spotlights kept the dance floor from absolute darkness, tinting everyone’s skin the same shade of blue.
Talia, a few metres away, looked happy enough, dancing with her eyes half shut, a city boy trying his luck with her – his hair was shaved ridiculously up the sides, but long enough up top to force him to push it out of his eyes after every other head bob.
Bless. Talia was tolerating him well enough.
She always was the more… flirty of the two of them.
It stung, a little bit, seeing them having fun like that.
As Dylan watched, they posed for a VR snap, courtesy of Aftershock’s paparazzi micro-drones.
It looked like the city boy was about to try for a kiss.
Then the drone’s flash went off, making Dylan blink.
“Hi.” A man’s voice came from beside her.
Blood rushed to her chest and her stomach clenched. After taking a second to compose herself, she turned towards him.
Beard, medium-length black hair, brown eyes, a smile. Muscular, though he hadn’t been working out, she could tell. Dylan speedily invented his life story in her head. His expression was that generic streamer friendliness, potentially interesting, potentially… not.
“Hi, yourself,” Dylan replied, giving him a mischievous smile. She liked what she saw, but had been so far into herself these last few weeks, she didn’t know what she really wanted out of tonight – and that jumble of feelings was coming out as mischief. Fine.
“I’m Isaak.” He stretched his hand towards her.
“Dylan.” She took his hand as she said it, the societal norm paralysing her after the fact. Or was it the warm touch of a guy she might actually like that made her freeze?
He smiled, and they both turned to look at the twin DJs at the corner of the nightclub – dressed in royal attire as an homage, or perhaps mockery, of the ruling Twin Queens – who deftly re-energised the club by blending a new beat into the mix.
Everyone began sing-shouting the song’s lyrics.
The scent of sweat and heavily applied perfumes filled the room, the aroma lifted into the air by the dancers’ reverie, catapulted through space and back again.
The walls were painted in flashes of colour by lights timed to the music, while the deep bass throbbed.
An idiot in the crowd rushed by and pushed Dylan towards Isaak.
Her feet staggered in a clumsy movement, and she flung out her arms.
Onto his arms.
She felt the fake leather of his matte-black jacket appreciatively, a tick box filed away in her brain. She fixed her gaze on his dark-brown eyes as she moved away, letting go of him.
“Thanks,” she said, words half tumbling out of her mouth. “I’m sorry, some creep pushed me.”
“I’m glad I caught you,” he said with a smile, then he looked around curiously and stopped.
On the floor were the shattered remains of the glass she had held a few seconds before, the one part gin to three parts tonic now mingled with other liquids accreted on the floor, a perfectly cut segment of lime barely visible near the bar’s trim.
He pointed at it. “G&T?” His dark eyes waited for an answer, his body already turned back toward the bar.
“Oh, you don’t have to—” she said, but he was already gesturing to the eyelinered bartender. Despite his looks, he had a bit of trouble catching her attention. Dylan sensed frustration as she overheard him ordering the replacement drink.
Isaak – cute name – seemed to be flying solo tonight.
But he didn’t come across as someone with a plan.
This wasn’t something he did regularly, chat up girls in Aftershock.
She believed in that. It was something in the way he spoke, and the way he held himself.
There was confidence, but it felt frayed. Wary of being hurt.
“Here.” He handed her the crisp new G&T, her third tonight, though the second had barely passed between her lips.
She looked up. His lips were brown-pink.
Catching herself staring, Dylan took a sip of the drink, the dripping wet of the globed glass not unwelcome in the warm club.
“Thanks. Again!” she said.
Then he spoke, but she couldn’t make it out.
The music had gotten loud again, everyone dancing and moshing and making a mess of the place.
Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a couple kissing amid the chaos.
The guy looked way too old for the girl, and Dylan gripped the slippery G&T harder.
Isaak huddled towards her, brown-pink lips to her ear.
“How about we go somewhere we can talk?” he shouted, still barely audible.
She nodded a yes, and noticed he kept his arms and hands to himself, despite leaning very close to her. Another tick box filled.
Isaak led the way. He walked with a slight limp that only endeared him to her as they made their way to a corner to sit down on plush sofas, away from the madness of the dance floor.
He wore all black apart from his t-shirt, which was white with a ReSports team logo on it, the London Lazarus. Wait. The Lazarus? She used to be a fan of theirs, watched every game.
Fuck. That was it. She hadn’t recognised him because of the beard he had now, but he was Isaak Powers, team captain of the Lazarus!
Well, ex-captain. He’d disappeared a couple of years ago. The team had never been the same.
She tried to keep it together as best she could.
The G&T lingered in her glass untouched as she inadvertently stared at him.
At his eyes as he spoke. Not that she wasn’t listening.
She was. And not that there was anything wrong with looking someone in the eye – it was encouraged even.
But it did feel kinda creepy, after she’d watched who knew how many hours of him running, diving, and shooting his way through ReSports matches.
Catching herself before she stared at his face for too long again, Dylan purposefully looked down at her drink. She finally took a sip and, noticing the conversation quieting down, decided to risk it.
“So you were telling me about your illustrious ReSports career?”
“Never said I had one…” His voice was coy, cheeks reddening.
“Well, it’s either that or you’re a big fan of the Lazarus,” she said, nodding at the logo on his chest, hoping her bluff would work and he’d own up without her having to admit that she’d had a crush on him in the past.
He looked down. “Oh, this? I didn’t even realise I had it on.” He looked embarrassed. Dylan couldn’t believe that he hadn’t realised what he was wearing, convinced he was just playing the fool. But it was cute.
He let out a heartfelt chuckle as he thumbed the logo. His eyes met hers. “Do you follow ReSports?”
Like most people her age, she’d grown up in the glow of the team battle royale played in virtual reality. “I guess. It’s kinda hard for people our age to not have followed it.”
He sat back and nodded. “The Dark Year.”
She shivered. The Dark Year – when the Apocalypse Revolt took over the world, and changed the course of history. “For a while televised ReSports was the most exciting thing we had, what with the enforced curfews and bans on online interaction.”
Isaak turned away from her and faced the dance floor, his eyes lost in the menagerie of dancing bodies. His smile dropped. She got the sense the conversation was upsetting him.
“Was it something I said?”
“It’s nothing.” He glanced at her, but soon enough his eyes shot back to the distance again.
Was this because he wasn’t playing anymore?
Or was it something else? There was speculation at the time that Isaak had left because of what happened to Ghostwalker, one of the biggest ReSports streamers.
The fandom had become pretty toxic, and Ghostwalker – the target of a lot of that toxicity – had ended up taking his own life under the pressure of it.
The sport had waned in popularity over the past few years, especially after that…
“I’m sorry, you probably don’t want to talk about ReSports,” she said, only realising afterwards how it sounded – as though he would be ashamed of his career. She thought of taking it back, but it was done. She looked down at the sticky floor.
“It’s a shite game, anyway,” Isaak said. Peeking back up at him, she saw his face actually showed relief, his posture eased up from earlier.
Should she tell him that she knew all about his time as captain of the London Lazarus? And how much she’d fancied him then? No. She shouldn’t. Not right now, anyway. The flutter in her stomach took a turn.
“What is it that you do for a living,” she asked, “if not playing the sport?”
“I’m a strider—” he said. He looked around and his face reddened slightly, like he’d said something he wasn’t supposed to.
“Strider? Is that your job… title? What is that, like a courier, food delivery driver?” She ransacked her brain for what a strider could be, running through all of the new jobs that rose to prominence after the abandonment of meat-eating, but she couldn’t picture it.
He didn’t answer either. His eyes were focused on her left ear. He’d noticed it, she realised. Her earring.
“I see you’re a rebel.”
“Apocalypse Rebel, please,” she said, in a mock haughty tone, touching the earring – the letters A and R in black, draped in green vines. One of the old logos. “I’m the proud daughter of two First Rebels actually.”
Isaak raised his eyebrows. “Wow. Hard to top that. I think my dad still eats meat. Sorry.”
She made a face. “Gross.” Dylan enjoyed making a show of it, using the disgust to hide how hurt she felt for the animals. Anger and sadness weren’t the way to impress a boy.
He looked away, and she wondered if she’d managed to upset him again. Ah, fuck. There you go, Dylan. It’s not enough that almost everyone is already eating plant-based, you gotta keep pestering people about meat…
The twin DJs shifted the music to something more intense, the voices of dancers and revellers growing louder in excitement for a moment. She took the opportunity the music gave her and got up.
Words were about to leave her lips when Talia waved at her across the dance floor. Dylan waved back.
“Dee!” Talia walked past the wild gyrations of the dancers around her, narrowly avoiding getting hit. Her eyes lit up when she saw Isaak sat in the corner.
Dylan mumbled, “I’ll be right back,” to Isaak, with a smile on her lips and half a stupid curtsy. She met with Talia nearer the dance floor, feeling embarrassment for the awkwardness. The convo had gone from cute to awkward and back again.
“So?” Talia motioned with her head. “Who’s he?”
Dylan’s insides turned. “He’s… cool, right?
” She moved further away with Talia so Isaak wouldn’t hear them.
“What are you up to?” In the crowd, the same city boy she’d seen dancing with Talia waved to the two of them, his back against the wall, knee bent like a model shoot.
“I see you got lucky.” Knowing Talia, this would be a one-night stand, or even less.
Talia would say she knew what she wanted and move on when she realised she hadn’t found it yet.
“And I’m not the only one!” Talia raised her eyebrows at Isaak, who was looking at his phone now.
Probably bored out of his mind from talking to me…
“Yeah, I— He’s alright, but—”
“Girl, please. Enjoy yourself. It’s been a year. You need to be with a man! To sort out the cobwebs, if nothing else.”
Goddess, Talia.
A year ago already? Dylan’s ex, the longest relationship she’d ever been in, had broken up with her by text one night. She remembered ugly crying. Mascara down her face. She told herself she’d gotten over him, told Talia too, and almost convinced her.
Talia shook her head, hands raised. “Well, I’ll leave you two be. I thought maybe you needed to be saved.”
Dylan’s face dropped. “Oh, no, I’m okay…” Goddess, Talia really did think she couldn’t handle a bloke. “I mean, of course I appreciate it. But he isn’t a sex pest… so far.”
“You’ll let me know if he is, right? Either wave me over or ring me if I’m already gone.” Talia’s face showed genuine concern, no smile anymore.
“If it comes to that, I can always fall back on my time in the Apocalypse Revolt camp.” Dylan gave her a sly grin, rubbing her knuckles.
Previous creeps had always backed off pretty fast when she’d punched them across the jaw if they tried something she didn’t consent to.
She hoped she wouldn’t need those skills tonight.
“Hi.” It was Isaak again. Her insides froze. If he’d been any closer she might have thrown a swing at him out of pure instinct!
She turned to face him. “Hi, again! This is my best friend, Talia.” She gestured to her side but suddenly there was no one there anymore. Dylan could only faintly make out Talia’s curls disappearing in the crowd, the city boy dancing further ahead. “Er… that one.”
Isaak nodded. “Well, since you’re here…” He gulped and tried to disguise it, badly. Very charming. His nerves were transparent, but he really was trying to impress. “Wanna dance?”
Usually she felt like the third wheel, so it was nice to have someone’s attention tonight. Might as well enjoy it. She smiled at the invite, grabbing his outstretched hand and bumping into him as she came closer.
Maybe tonight wouldn’t be so bad after all.