As Lucas settles into the usual seat off in the back corner of the bar with his friends sitting in their usual orientation at the table, he prepares himself for what he calls 'therapy', but which some people might call 'bad habits'.
Lucas's weekly Tuesday night trips to the bar with his friends have become something of a ritual for the bunch of him, including all the pitchers and the shots and the proclivity toward having a bit of a headache Wednesday morning at work, but he's usually smart enough not to get too excessive, and to chug some water before he goes to bed and keeps it from being a problem.
It's all cool; he has gone through college, he get how this works and how to avoid the kinds of fuck-ups that have him shambling around groaning the next day and hoping people really believe his sunglasses are a cool new fashion thing he's trying rather than how he's staving off having to expose himself too much to light.
"I need this," Lucas says, and he really does, groaning as he leans back in his seat and rests his head against the wall behind him. "Today was hell. I've got a new boss at work, and she's going hard on the idea that she has to ride everyone's ass to make sure she looks good for getting productivity up, so everyone in my department feels like we're being watched like hawks."
Lucas's friend Timmy comes by with a pitcher he went straight to the bar to order, and takes his seat last.
"I think some ancient mystic said that the solution to bad bosses is usually found at the bottom of pitchers," he jokes, and starts pouring everything into the plastic cups that came with it.
"So start drinking and let's make some magic." Jimmy's the rock of the group, the guy who acts very responsible for someone who's pushing thirty and has been in college for ten whole years without any actual progress.
But as Lucas takes the beer, he can't help but shrug.
"Fuck, it's worth a try," he groans, and starts chugging down the cheap beer that he brought a pitcher of.
Jimmy's taste in beer is shit, but he overlooks it for the sake of dealing with his frustrations 'constructively'.
He has been dealing long enough now at his desk job that these bar visits have become vital to his sanity.
He has lived through new bosses before, and he knows how it goes; she'll lose interest in a week, but for now, he chugs and refill and chug again.
The least he can do is deal with his frustrations by drinking them away.
Not that couple doesn't help, of course, and hanging out with his friends is a good way to cheer up, but as the pitcher dwindles down, they start to spread out.
It's only normal for them to rotate in and out as the night goes on, as one of them spies a girl they want to sleep with or something, but this time they all vanish within twenty minutes, and they don't seem to be coming back, which leaves him sitting awkwardly at the table, looking around and not sure where everyone went, but also not wanting to get up and leave his pitcher unguarded.
"Did your friends go missing?" asks a voice behind Lucas, and it throws him for a loop, making him gasp and shift his head quickly over, not having expected anyone to be talking to him.
And as he catches the sight of the woman asking him, he suddenly wonders if she's not talking to someone else after all, because before he is a drop-dead gorgeous woman with a bright smile and everything where it should be.
Tall, leggy, with a thin waist and a plump pair of tits that she's flaunting in a top that exposes plenty of cleavages while also being so short that she's half an inch away from flaunting under boob A leather jacket goes with it, one that only goes halfway up, and she's in a pair of jeans that cling to her well enough to flaunt everything about her figure.
Long blonde hair has been pulled up into a ponytail, and something is striking about her eyes, one of them blue and the other green. And she's looking right at him with a smile.
"Uh," Lucas says, a bit surprised and not sure what to make of it at all, but he quickly spits out, "Yeah, I think so." The last thing he wants is to be tongue-tied around this girl, whoever she is.
At a bar like this, girls as hot as her don't usually walk up to guys, especially guys who are him, and initiate conversation. "Not sure where they went."
"Hm, that's weird," she says, furrowing her brow but smirking like she knows something he doesn't.
"Well, mind some company?" she pulls up the seat across from him before he even answers, smiling wider as she takes her seat and looks right at him.
"I'm Christine, by the way." She puts a hand out toward him and quickly cuts off any attempt for him to give his own name by saying, "I'm new in town. Just moved here from Los Angeles today, and I figured this would be a good place to meet people. And so far it's been..." She looks over her shoulder, as if eyeing someone in particular, before brushing it off and saying, "But you seem fine. So where do you think your friends went?"
It's a bit dizzying to keep up with her pace as she moves from one topic to another so quickly, something not at all helped by the beer he has been drinking, but instead of worrying too much about it he just sticks with the simple points and goes with the last thing she said.
"I don't know. Maybe off to the bathroom. Maybe to hit on a girl they saw. It's weird, they don't usually all leave so quickly." He looks around once more, and his friends don't seem to be anywhere. "But hi, Christine. I hope you like it here."
"Psh, don't worry about them," she says, flagging down a waitress.
"Could we get some leg spreaders?" she asks, before turning to him and smiling, "Drinks will be on me, I promise. Do you like leg spreaders?" Leaning in closer, she added, "The drink, or the kind of girl."
****
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