and the closest i've been to a bar was at ballet class

[forthsofar]

“Stop worrying about it,” Jodie said, looking over at Rosie in the passenger seat while they wait for the light to change. “You look great. I knew that dress was going to be perfect.”

“Thank you for letting me borrow it,” she says. It had been a lovely offer, and she really was grateful. It was important to be gracious, especially in uncertain situations. And she was very uncertain indeed about this one. “It’s nice, but. It’s just so…”

“Fashionable?”

“Short.”

“I told--what?” Jodie shouts as the car behind them lays on its horn. “God, I was going to start moving. Anyway, your whole retro thing is cute for school and stuff, but not to go out, you know? Even if it worked last time and you wound up all alone in the theatre with him.”

Rosie sighed. She’d kept certain details of that afternoon private out of respect for what Neil had told her before they’d gone to the movies--and, admittedly, played up others because of how fun it had been to make her friends at school think she’d done something unexpected and a little scandalous. Had she known Jodie and the rest of them would keep bringing it up, she’d have been much more straightforward. “We’re going out as friends. We’re very happy just to be friends with one another, I keep telling you that.”

“Yeah, for now.”

As they turn the corner, Rosie takes her phone out of the little purse Jodie had given her and texts Neil: Almost there. Promise you won’t think I look ridiculous? She knows he’d be too nice to say anything, but asks just to make herself feel a bit less uncomfortable about everything.

They pull up to the curb outside Neil’s building, and Jodie puts the car in park. Rosie opens the door and steps out with as little awkwardness as she can manage, even as she wobbles a bit in her borrowed heels. She shivers, the chill night air seeming to go straight through her dress before she gets her coat from the backseat and puts it on. “Thanks for the ride over,” Rosie says--while biting back everything else she wanted to say--before shutting the door and walking up to the front entrance of Candlewood.

Just as she presses the button marked PERRY 9D, Jodie honks her horn and rolls down the window. “Once I get home I’ll call that place you’re living at and tell them you’re staying the night at my house,” she shouts, before pulling away from the curb.

“Oh goodness,” Rosie says, already feeling herself start to blush.

Comments

[shadows_have_offended]

"I think you definitely could," Neil says. He's not even suggesting she get up to anything as a means to get it. She's smart and charming and Mark is pretty obviously already interested, so there's no reason to not cash in--even if it's just to have the number and say that she could do that.

The boys come back, carrying their respective drinks deftly. Neil steers them all a little off the dance floor, so there's no risk of spilling anything.

He gives Rosie and Mark a little space, which has the added benefit of letting him have a moment of almost-privacy with Benji, flirtatious and smiling and enjoying the moment.

[forthsofar]

She doesn't know why she's so nervous--or rather, she knows, but thinks it a bit silly. This is what the evening had essentially been driving at, what she herself had been steering it towards ever since she and Mark caught one another's eyes on the dance floor. It's just another step forward, a move past the edges; something daring that would surprise the boring old Rosie she'd been at home.

They settle somewhere off to the side, between the bar and the dance floor where it's a bit quieter and easier to talk without shouting. Before she can say anything, Mark kisses her again, slow and lingering in a way that makes her feel a different sort of nervous entirely. "I've had a wonderful time," she says, once--all too soon--it's over, though they're still left standing rather close. "Not that I want it to end, necessarily, I was just wondering if...if you'd want to exchange numbers, in case you wanted to do this again sometime?"

It's a terrible babble of words, and in the brief moment of silence that follows, Rosie wonders if she hadn't made a mistake somewhere in the rush of them. But then he says "Yeah," smiling pleased and confident at her as he takes out his phone. "I was going to go out and have a smoke," Mark says, once they've traded numbers. "You wanna come with?"

It feels like a pretense. After all their flirting and everything else, Rosie's almost nearly certain it is. She casts a look back at Neil, distracted and talking with Benji. She's not sure if he notices it at all. She almost wishes he won't notice. They'd left each other's orbits already tonight, with delightful consequences for them both; it's that recollection that helps make her decision for her, even as it also puts a knot of uncertainty in her stomach.

"Oh, alright then," she says. He nods, and turns, and Rosie starts to follow him through the crowd.

[shadows_have_offended]

He's lost track of them, distracted by Benji and chatting with him, talking about school and whatever it is Benji is studying and what Neil's going in for. They're laughing and flirting, and it's easier now, though Benji is still reserved enough that Neil falls back into ways he's been in past months--not nervous, but reserved as well, worrying about coming across too daring.

Which is silly, since he and Benji already snuck off to the bathroom together.

But he's lost sight and track of Rosie and Mark, and for all that Benji's assured that Mark's a nice guy, and all that he's been very tasteful while they've all been talking, Neil jolts a little bit. Rosie's younger than he is, and that puts her even moreso than Benji and Mark, and she's such a nice girl. Neil doesn't want anything to happen to her.

Hopefully, he thinks, she's just gone to get a drink of water or something. But he can't see her or Mark at the bar.

"What is it?" Benji asks.

"I just want to keep an eye on them, I'm sorry," he admits a bit sheepishly. Benji doesn't roll his eyes or anything, though he reiterates that Mark's a good guy and won't do anything. "I'm sure he's swell, but I'd really rather make sure nothing happens."

Benji agrees, reluctantly, to go looking for them with Neil. Neil knows that Benji's probably trying to give them space and privacy, but Neil'd rather break something up before Rosie does something she might regret.

He heads toward the back alley, his first guess where they might have gone, because plenty of people step out back there.

[forthsofar]

With how warm the club has been all night, Rosie forgot about the winter chill outside, right up until Mark pushes the alleyway door open the rest of the way. "We should've stopped at the coat check," she laughs, shivering a little--with nerves, or chill, or both together--even as she steps outside anyway.

"We'll just have to stay close, I guess," he says, moving not to take out a pack of cigarettes or a lighter or anything, just putting his arm around her, pulling her into the sort of kiss that makes her head spin. Even if it's a bit of a surprise to have her suspicions confirmed so quickly, it's nicer this way, maybe; better than if they'd kissed after he'd had his cigarette. If indeed he smoked at all.

Eventually, she ends up pushed against the wall, the sudden cold of the brick through her dress making her gasp and arch forward. From the outside, maybe it looks like a request for more, or an invitation; Mark certainly takes it as such, his hands roaming down her back, his tongue darting into her mouth. Rosie knows, in a distant kind of way, that she should be sensible, should listen to the bit of her that overthinks things and reminds her how awful it is to want this so badly, before this goes much further. It's just so much, dizzying and overwhelming and wonderful all at once.

"I've got an apartment near campus," Mark says after a while, kissing his way down her neck. "We could get out of here."

"Um," Rosie says, but it's a stall, an attempt to gather her thoughts from wherever they'd fled. She wants to say yes, so much so that it shocks her. She just doesn't think she can. "Mark...stop, just a moment?" To his credit, he listens, pulling back to hold her hands as he senses the hesitancy in her words and the sudden tension in the way she's standing. "I'm sorry, I just don't know that I want to go beyond kissing tonight," she continues. To say tonight might be a tease--maybe all of it is anyway, everything they've done already--but it feels more like a way to apologize, or soften any disappointment in the way their evening has shifted once again.

He looks at her; and yes, there's disappointment there, even an edge of frustration, but both are momentary only. "You're not old enough to be here, are you?" he asks, quietly, reaching over to adjust the strap of her dress from where it had slipped off her shoulder.

"No," she says, because there's no reason to lie any more, not when he's guessed it already. She might have elaborated, said I'm sixteen or I'm still in high school, if the alley door hadn't then flown open, if a familiar figure hadn't stepped through it looking more than slightly fretful. All at once, Rosie realizes the sort of picture she and Mark must make, their hair mussed and clothes disheveled; her lipstick smudged and a pale echo of such on Mark's face as well.

She doesn't say anything at first, just blushes, sudden and hot.

[shadows_have_offended]

Neil steps out into the alley and spots them. The space between them is oddly reassuring, and Neil realizes that he was really, painfully worried there for a moment. He hesitates, standing just outside the door to the alley, and watches them. He's too far away to hear them talking, but Mark is as calm and confident as he'd been back in the bar, and Rosie doesn't look in distress.

He takes a step toward them. Behind him, he hears Benji step out as well, and say his name in a little hiss, like he'd really prefer that not be some sort of confrontation. But there's nothing confrontational about it.

Neil just wants to make sure his friend is okay. Rosie means a lot to him, and he'd hate to sour such an otherwise good experience.

He's a little surprised when Mark looks away from Rosie, still holding her hands, and smiles at him. "You're alright," he said, acknowledging the tension set across Neil's shoulders. Mark leans and kisses Rosie's cheek sweetly, and Neil can hear him say in a sotto whisper, "That's a good friend you've got there, dropping everything just in case."

"Should we go back in?" Neil asks. He looks at Rosie as he asks it. Does she want to go back in? Is she really okay? He needs the confirmation from her, he finds, before he can actually relax.

[forthsofar]

Seeing Neil, hearing what Mark says to him and then to her, all of it makes Rosie feel both better and worse. She hadn't meant to go so far, or cause so much concern, not when they had all been having such a good time. At the same time, she can't find it in her to regret any of the evening, including--no, especially--the last several minutes.

They're all looking at her now, waiting for her answer: Neil hesitantly, still poised between advance and retreat; Mark with a kind of quiet sweetness, his thumb rubbing a gentle, reassuring circle against the pulse point on her wrist; even Benji, cringing a bit in secondhand embarrassment just outside the doorway. More than any of the flirting she's done this evening, more than the daring kisses and touches, this feels powerful in a way she hadn't expected.

"I told you he was a wonderful friend," she says, looking at Neil with a reassuring smile, though her words were meant for Mark. "Let's go back inside."