Just a Dance

Foreword: This is based loosely on a personal experience that I recalled recently and, in the interest of staying true the encounter, does not contain any explicit sexual content so if that's what you're looking for turn back now.

Some occasions demand to be celebrated. A long day of classes and no real interest in attending a party are irrelevant in the face of Halloween. Everybody is going out tonight - no excuses.

It's not hard to improvise a costume. It's no something that will stand out next to elaborate zombie brides and slutty video game characters but sometimes you have to work with what you have. An old shirt that's just a little too big, a jacket worn through at the elbows paired with a loose knee length skirt, leggings and high-tops. It looks like she could be dressing for any ordinary day. Then the scissors come out. It's easy to tear through the fabric, if she'd had more time she'd have thought of a pattern but instead she just rips. The back of the jacket is slashed to nearly threads; the shirt gains a wide hole in the side, showing off some skin but nothing racy. The leggings go at the knees and down the sides, the skirt and underskirt torn into an uneven tangle at the ends.

It takes a few tries to get the next part right. At first, she tries pouring the food dye into the syrup bottle but it quickly becomes clear that the dye simply settles on top instead of mixing. Instead, she pours it into a bowl, trying not to make a mess of the furnishing, and stirs. The sticky red substance is trickled along the slash marks, and then poured from her right temple down her face. It's sweet were she catches a little on her tongue and she's strikingly glad that she didn't chose vampire, the fake blood would lose effect if she drank it all.

They're going to a house party first, somebody in her roommates classes, and on the walk there she's glad of the modesty of her costume, not for appearances sake, but because of the late October winds.

It's not a bad party she supposes, sipping at a plastic cup of cheap wine and making small talk about summer jobs with a suit-wearing guy from the year above. She'd mock the cop out costume, half of the guys in the room are wearing suits and calling themselves spies or James Bond, if it weren't for the simplicity of her own (she's been called car accident victim more often than anything else tonight, and finds herself wondering amusedly if that's something to do with the high percentage of medicine students, easily identified by their inability to stop talking about their studies). The party winds down after a few hours, as people beginning discussing where they're moving onto, what time is best to avoid queuing for clubs without getting there too early.

She leaves with her roommate, a few friends and a group of guys including the one she was speaking with. Phones come out and then frustrated swearing as it becomes apparent that they'll have to wait an hour or more for a cab, Halloween is a busy night in a university city.

Somehow the group comes to the consensus that they should catch a bus, only to find their number cut down when half of the group make it onto the next bus only for the driver to turn that latter group away on account of the bus being too full.

They make it onto the next bus and suddenly there's a scramble for cash, she only has a twenty and the driver won't take it, says he can't break it. She's stepping back with her roommate, regretful and frustrated, when one of the boys, one she'd seen talking with the same guy that she'd been making small talk with earlier offers up a fistful of change, and she thanks him with a smile, finds herself perched on her roommates lap on the crowded bus, a few rows too far away from him to vocalize her opinion.

They pile off the bus and into a club with relative easy, their timing strategy paying off. One of the girls gets a round of Jägerbombs in ready to kick of the next part of the night and she slams it back and finds herself enjoying cutting loose in the sea of bodies and flashing lights all moving to the same enthralling bass beat.

She hands off her twenty to her roommate, gets shots for the group and hopes the gentleman who'd bought her bus ticket considers that a fair repayment of her debt.

She moves with the crowd, keeping her roommate in sight, the only one of the group she's met before tonight. She feels a hand wrap around hers, friendly and undemanding, and has a moment to glance up at the young man's smiling face before the ebb and flow of the crowd pushes them together. She recognizes him vaguely as one of the guys from the party, she'd noted him on the bus for the fact he was taller than the others, but that difference is far more apparent now. She hates to dance in heels but she can't recall having felt as small as this before, her face level with his chest, unable to look at his face without tilting her head right back. He takes her other hand and moves with her, finding the beat and guiding her along. There's no force in his actions, there doesn't need to be. She isn't drunk, not with classes in the morning, but it's late and the club is packed, turning his warm, solid form an island of tranquility in the madness. He wraps an arm around her waist and she places the hand he has let go of on his chest. He's at least a seven or an eight, she notes idly, a tall, gentle future doctor in a suit – miles out of her league for sure. She's not hideous, just plain, perhaps a five, and she can't help but giggle to herself at the idea that she's more attractive when dressed like an extra from some low budget horror film.

They're close now, it's happened naturally, and she's not sure if what she's feeling brushing up against her as they move is just his phone or wallet in his pocket or... She flushes, breathes deeply, reminds herself that she's a student now not a sheltered little girl, that they're in a busy club and they've been drinking and she probably shouldn't even be jumping to conclusions – she doesn't spend a lot of time thinking of the men she knows sexually, and she's certainly never been this close to one at the time.

It's a thrilling feeling though, that a man like this might be attracted to her. For the first time in a long while, she's feels truly disappointed when the lights to come up, when the surging crowd pulls her away from him and she finds her way back to her roommate, praying that she doesn't look as flustered as she feels.

She'd barely looked at his face, pressed as close to his chest as she had been, and there are a quarter of a million people in the city, just over a tenth of them students. She won't find him again, but she'll remember what his hands felt like.