Cab Ride Down Memory Lane Ch. 01

**Hello Everyone! This is my first story on this site <3 I've been reading stories for about 10 years and I've never written anything before but I figured I'd finally try my hand at writing something for the site that has a different type of female lead : ) It might seem odd that it's not-erotic but it takes a while to build up. I loved the trip down memory lane and recorded every detail I could remember about that night. I enjoy reading stories that let me enter other peoples' worlds. Enjoy and feel free to leave feedback!** ~SmittenKitten5

Chapter 1. PREGAME

The weekend is fast approaching, and by weekend, I mean we are finishing up our last class on Thursday freeing up students for a three-day weekend. Our year-long study abroad program in Shanghai means that we only have classes from Monday to Thursday, and that most students spend Thursday night to Sunday morning getting wasted on watered down Chinese beer, clubs, or getting lost in Shanghai's underground scene.

The drugs are all weaker in China than in the US, since here they are very illegal, allowing us to party all night without real consequences. I hadn't really dabbled much with drugs before studying abroad; I just didn't know the right people back in New York. I was also always a good student and friend, trying to take care of my girls when we go out and making sure people get home safely. I defend my friends from gross catcalls, and push away boys trying to take advantage of them. I also try my best to balance being social and being studious in the middle of a major city as a 20-year-old.

I always play the role of a responsible goody-two-shoes, but when I finally have time to myself, or when I'm too tired to care, I can be arguably selfish. Fine I'll just admit it, I'm a bit of a princess. I not a princess around friends in Shanghai though, I liked being cool and aloof instead, holding horny boys at a distance.

I shout over my shoulder, climbing into the back of my closet.

"God dammit Sam, I literally have nothing to wearrr!"

Since study abroad students have been going out clubbing Thursday, Friday, and Saturday every week since we arrived, I have now literally run out of outfits, especially ones that people haven't already seen me in.

Samantha, or Sam as I call her, is my roommate and a full head shorter than me, but I often borrow her clothes because my clothes are either too nice or too casual and meant for school. I mean, it's hard to find clubbing clothes that accentuate my figure without making me look a little slutty.

Since Sam is small and pretty, she doesn't really look slutty she just looks cute. Even though she's smaller than me, I like borrowing her skirts and crop tops since her clothes are figure-hugging and on trend - perfect for a night out.

I grab a few dresses and a few of her skirts and head for the bathroom.

I don't bother shutting the door since my other roommates in the suite really don't care, I mean we have already seen each other naked throughout the year anyway.

I flick on the hot water and look into the mirror.

I love my body, especially since I slowly lost weight over the last few years while my boobs and butt got bigger. I am 20-years-old and a Junior in college. When I was a Freshman, I was still bulky from my high school varsity pole vaulting days and didn't really know how to dress myself.

I still don't, but as the years went by, my metabolism and work ethic stayed strong while my busy college schedule and nights working at a coffee shop had helped to slim my figure.

I lift my shirt off and feel my boobs bounce out with relief. I don't really like wearing bras. They're constricting, and since I'm a C-cup, I can pretty much get away with making them smaller or larger depending on the situation.

I slip on the crop top and short skirt, my toned abs look great and so does the fox tattoo winding up my hip, but my long torso makes the get-up just too revealing. I'm always jealous of people who can pull off crop tops because I certainly cannot. I mean I can, but the attention just makes me embarrassed and I end up putting on something more decent anyway.

I push the skirt down and try on skinny jeans with the crop top. My ass looks amazing but after some thought, I remember that sometimes clubs don't let in women wearing pants.

I roll my eyes at thinking about the societal double standard and how much more comfortable I am in pants.

I look at the heap of clothes pull on a slinky clubbing dress. It's black with gold accents that shine in the dark in nightclubs. The thick elastic straps criss-cross across my boobs and strap them in.

Nice, you can't even see my nipples through the thick fabric. I didn't need to wear a bra, hallelujah!

Every time I try to go braless, you can see my nipples, a perpetual problem for some women.

I turn around to check my ass. The dress is, as usual, a bit tight. I sashay my hips to check if I can dance in this dress, awesome the material doesn't ride up! I'm good to go.

I tone down the dress with some ripped thigh-high stockings and made a note to grab my grungy boots before heading out. I strap on my lucky gold and black leather watch and survey the counter top, littered with shared accessories. I spot some thin black lace probably cut from someone's shirt and tie it around my neck for a makeshift choker.

I hadn't been aiming for grunge when I first stepped into the bathroom but that's the fun part of living with other girls and sharing clothes and accessories!

The water's finally hot and I gladly scrub my face clean with an olive oil cleanser, drying it with my favorite fluffy pink towel. I never put on much makeup, I don't need it, in fact most women don't really need make up they just think they do.

I love a good pre-clubbing facial - toning my face with rose water, adding serums so it has a natural glow, thickening my brows with an Anastasia pen for a pouty youthful look, and adding water-proof mascara to the ends of my eyelashes to make my eyes a sultry, edgy vibe. It's hard to look sultry when your Asian genes make you look "Forever 15".

I shake my hair out from a bun and it falls in natural curls down my back. I love my hair, it's just thin enough to hold volume but still thick and shiny. I scrunch some lavender oil and Oribe hair serum, and wiped on a few dabs of perfume on my pressure points.

I'm so ready! I turned to the mirror and slap my ass watching it jiggle, which I do before nights out.

I open the door and waltz over to the kitchen, sinking down in a padded chair next to Sam.

"Ooooh you look so cute! Love the choker!" she purrs.

"Haha yah I love subtlety hinting to guys I could use a good choke. They never do it hard enough though. Disappointing" I sigh.

Sam wouldn't get it. She and her boyfriend Alex have been dating for about a year and they are the perfect vanilla couple - perfect mix of cute and loving, and they look great together as well. I can talk to Sam about anything and she will tell me everything, plus everything going on with Alex. Even though she's not into rough stuff, it's still fun to talk to her about it.

"Do you ever choke Alex when you're on top?" I ask playfully.

"No but he's fun to spank!" We break down in giggles.

She is right, Alex does have a nice butt. I had the privilege of slapping it once when he tried on Sam's booty shorts and paraded it around the apartment.

"Please, if there's any spanking tonight, keep it to his room", I add.

Sometimes Alex sleeps in our room but I "prefer" if Sam sleeps in Alex's room with the boys downstairs - especially when they do...stuff. Our dorm rooms are assigned to be same-sex but people will sleep wherever they want.

"Hey so what are we drinking tonight?" I ask, surveying my options.

There's Tsing Tao beers, as always, but I don't like beer. A few bottles of Family-Mart vodka and spirits, but spirits in China are largely not made of real substances, not like in the US, and you get horrible hangovers drinking them. I drink for free at clubs through promoters anyway so I just try to save my alcohol drinking to club time.

I walk over to the fridge, mix some orange juice with water, and chug it so I can stay hydrated over the course of the night, plus get that Vitamin C. Sometimes when I forget I'm dehydrated, I can black out and faint and it's totally embarrassing.

We gossip and giggle as the night goes on, watching Buzzfeed Youtube videos and practicing how to twerk in the mirror. Eventually we get bored and start throwing bottle caps down each other's shirts.

Finally, we get a text from Alex to come downstairs. We run gleefully to grab our purses, decide to "fuck it" and that we should each take a shot of "vodka", and make our way downstairs.

Outside in the hallway, Sam's 5-inch pumps click-click on the marble floors, contrasting to my rompy combat boots. It's always hilarious to me that try as she might to look taller, she never will be. I am however, somewhat jealous that she can pull off heels that I would probably fall and twist my ankle in.

We reach the elevator door and hear a *ding*. Inside, we check ourselves out in the mirrored elevator, readjusting boobage and fixing our hair.

I look cool and sultry with flowing hair and show-stopping cleavage, but most importantly, I'm comfy and cool as a cucumber. Sam is a bombshell in a tight red strapless dress, with long straight hair that I envy with beautiful pouty lips that she always paints with red lipstick she really doesn't need. Eyes always follow her where-ever we go when Alex's not around. I feel like her protector to ward off drunken creeps.

I turn and bend down to eye level to inspect her.I reached into my purse to fish out a napkin and tell her to blot her lips, it's getting on her teeth.

I rewarded her with, "Great now your lips look a little less blow-jobby!"

In turn she pulled my dress down and squashed my boobs together, about to pop out of the dress.

"You need to look more blow-jobby if you're gonna find a guy and forget about James" she chided me.

"Psh, I could get any guy I wanted but they're all so creepy and boring".

I had learned the hard way dating my way through men in New York City that men were just manipulative horn-dogs until they hit 30, and even after 30 it's a hit or miss.

The elevator comes to a halt and dings open. I brush past her and flounce down the hallway, drawn to the sound of booming music and loud chatter at the far end of the hallway.

If this was a college party in the US, we would be shut down repeatedly for party music and weed smoke. Since we were study abroad students in China bringing tons of revenue for the hotel that served as our dorm, hotel staff tended to look the other way.

I also knew the boys in this dorm could be very charming to the Chinese cleaning aunties who were staffed to clean their gross rooms *eye roll*.

I push open the door and a step in, my foot immediately crunches on a beer can amidst a sea of cans that cover the floor. We don't bother taking off our shoes, the party suite is filthy as is. Boys are always playing drinking games here that they "invented", spilling beer all over the floor.

On the couch down the hall, Rick, Mitchell, Kevin, and a few other boys in our grade were furiously pounding controllers playing Super Smash.

"Hey guys what's up!"

Mitchell, the teddy bear of the group, glanced over and smiled. "Hey guys! Come on in, want a beer?"

"Sure thanks!" I smile and strut down the hallway.

I like being around these guys, they never make a pass at me or make me feel uncomfortable, especially since I made sure to establish that we were friends long before I ever put on showy clubbing clothes and make up.

"You guys aren't drinking Tsing Tao today?"

I curiously picked up a Sapporo Black beer from the table.

"No we upgraded for tonight, that Chinese test was a beast and I'm exhausted. Try it, it tastes like coffee."

I sip the Sapporo Black.

Oooh he was right! It does taste like coffee!

I love coffee, having worked for a year as a barista in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. To be honest, foaming lattes to perfection and meeting occasional celebrities was one of my favorite parts of Freshman year.

I wait until their round is over before hopping onto the couch next to Mitchell and settling down to watch, sipping my coffee-beer.

I was a very competitive Super Smash player up until high school. I love picking up tips watching boys hammer out strategic kills. I learn a lot by watching and then crush the competition when it's my turn.

I also really like making boys help me pop beer lids off between games, since like, my nails are too nice to risk damage.

We chat about an upcoming final project assigned today in class and start to make plans for the night. We decided to target M1NT, the trendy club on the Shanghai Bund that was popular for expats. This club uses promoters to bring in foreigners, especially foreign women, into the club to attract local men. This means that girls at the promoter tables drink for free. It's our usual go-to and is at one end of the Bund so that if you want to leave for another club, you can easily leave and walk down the waterway to several other locations nearby.

As the night goes on, the room starts to fill up. Some guys who wanted to associate with the party crew saunter in, and ditzy girls from all over the study abroad program come with them, usually to drool over the guys in the dorm.

James, Nate, and Evan live here, they are Alex's roommates. Tall, charming, clever, and brunette/blonde/black-haired in that order, they reminded me of the Three Musketeers. It was always easy for them to duck out of trouble which was super annoying. Because of them, different girls would be here every week, rotating on schedule through elevator doors to woo them and charm them at nightclubs. The girls didn't last long and there were always new girls coming in the mix. Except for one girl, Talia, who I notice stumbling in right on queue. I roll my eyes.

Talia has a large figure like likes to put her assets on display. Multiply that with a loud obnoxious laugh and personality, and you get a headache of a female. You could always hear her shrieking down the hallway, her drunken giggles almost forcing ginormous boobs out of her too small tops. The worst part about her was she always goes for the same guys I go for.

I had gone on a few dates with James during Freshman and Sophomore year but it was never anything serious. Mostly because I realized very soon that boys in New York sucked and were too young and hormonal to be taken seriously. We were always still flirting nonstop as close friends though, it was good practice. Amidst our flirtation Talia always charges in like a bull in a China shop and finds every opportunity to throw her bosom in his face and win him over. Him being the dumb jerk that he is, goes with it.

As Talia's laughs approach down the hallway, I stand up and ask Mitchell,

"Where's James? In the bathroom?"

"Yeah the group's all in there" he responds, eyes glued to the screen.

"Thanks! I'll see you in there later, ya?"

I stood up and grab Sam's hand, she seemed a little tipsy and i wanted to keep an eye on her.

We head to the bathroom and kick aside towels on the ground. Ugh, gross, was there a single clean towel in this place?

Like a stealthy cat, I push Sam in and whip around to close the door quickly and place a towel between the door crack.

I hear a gleeful "JESSIE!!" behind me and spin around to see James hopping off of a closed bidet toilet and bouncing over to collide his body with mine as he hugs me and stuffs his face in my shoulder.

He was always cute with piercing blue eyes and the enthusiasm of a 6-year-old. He had lots of southern charm and he is not ashamed to break dance when-ever, where-ever, but he would also fuck anything with a vagina and it grossed me out.

"Wow your ass looks good today!" he whispered in my ear, still clutching me to his chest.

"Haha thanks, I like your um, new shirt where did you get it?", I muttered.

James has a habit of finding weird trippy shirts in the oddest of places. Some he finds in donation bins, others he gets through friends at parties, some he borrows from female friends and never gives them back. Today he's sporting a new rainbow tie-dye shirt with a Ganesh god dancing against on a backdrop of glowing colors. It even has shiny gold accents and rhinestones where Ganesh had jewelry and piercings.

"Thanks, I got it from the street market in Pudong, it's sick right? Where is that joint let's get Jessie a hit."

He looks over his shoulder and called, "Hey Hunter, you got the joint right?"

I peek over his shoulder from the doorway to survey the room for the first time.

James usually sits on bidet in the corner to flush used joints and weed stems. Next is Lauren and Nate giggling over something on Nate's phone. I slept with Nate when I first got here and totally regretted it. He is a literal psychopath.

To their right, Sam hops onto the windowsill above the tub looking out over the Shanghai city view and starts chatting with a girl from our class.

On the far edge of the tub, I am startled to see someone new. My heart rate hitches.

Ooh, tonight was finally going to be interesting.

There's a tall figure sitting on the windowsill, leaning back against the bathroom wall. He might be scrawny, I can't really tell.

He wears a baggy hoodie with dirty blond hair sticking out covering blue-grey eyes, silently watching me. He has a black travel bag at his feet in the tub and baggy jeans.

His eyes stay on mine as he gets up and holds out his hand to pass.

"Here you go, take a hit".

I step forward and grab it.

"Thanks", I smile nervously.

It's already lit and still burning so I hurriedly bring it to my lips to take a puff.

I pretend to be enjoying the joint while in my head I'm secretly already forming a plan around this new intrigue.

I lean back on the bathroom counter and I take another quick silent inhale, keeping the smoke in my lungs, smiling, and stare into Hunter's eyes. I wait a few moments then tilt my head silently to blow white smoke towards the open window.

If you don't inhale correctly at the correct speed, you will burn your throat and lungs. And if you don't inhale at all, there won't be any smoke. Many, many ditzy girls come through this bathroom, take one quick puff, cough loudly, and complain about how high they get.

I look away from Hunter and smile, passing the joint to James.

James sticks the joint in his mouth and happily flings an arm around my shoulders, I smell his Old Spice deodorant, ugh.

He chirps, "Hunter have you met Jessie? She's awesome! We go way back to Freshman year. Jessie meet Hunter, this is my boy from Texas".

I assumed he meant from Plano, Texas where James had first fallen in love with an Asian girl who looked a lot like me, but then she turned out to be lesbian and broke his heart and turned him into the monster he is today.

"Hunter you're from Texas? Welcome to Shanghai! Did you just get off the plane?" I ask, gesturing towards his bag.

"Yeah, I just got here this afternoon, it's crazy to be here. I've been around Asia but I've never been in Shanghai" he smiles.

The second joint in the circle reaches him and he takes a hit. I move over from the counter to sit near him on the windowsill above the tub.

"You have to be careful here in Shanghai, we're going to a club tonight and Asian girls will be all over you, white boy", I smirk at him.

From the corner I feel, rather than see, Nate roll his eyes and think up a snarky remark as he watches us with narrowed eyes. He doesn't like newcomers in the group, especially pretty boys. He grabs Lauren, yes also Asian, out with him to the main room.