They thought they needed to take care of me.  I knew it!  T’was always so, my dear.  I saw the bottle disappear beneath the bar.  I didn’t mind.  I was wasting it, drinking it down like juice.  I nodded to Liz to let her know I was in on it.  She may or may not have seen me.  That was beyond me.  Darren had started for the door already and I tripped after him.  Like the page in that Christmas song, safe in his footsteps.  I followed him, I had to.*  He was shining a few steps ahead of me, like a beacon.  Hotly in focus, shimmering.  Like water in the desert, a hint of something out of reach.  Maybe there, maybe not.  All else was pale.  Heat and alcohol bleached everything.  Turned it all to white.  My eyes burned, like staring at the sun, at the snow.  Noise faded in and out, voices mingling with clinking glass, loud and soft and I was weaving, lurching towards it, him.  Finally, the brush of a door.  Outside it was quiet, cold, it shook me up and I shivered and he noticed

“…a coat.”

“Wuzzat?”

Gentle smirk.  “I said you don’t have a coat.”

I don’t – Oh.  “Musta forgotten it.  Dressin’ room or somethin’.”

“Take mine.”

and I smiled.  Heavy suede jacket on my shoulders, warm, soft, smelling of… nothing.  It didn’t matter.  Heat mattered.  But I’d stolen his warmth.

“I’ll be fine.  Just have to get to my car fast.”

And I knew I’d be with him.  In the passenger seat, quiet, calm – “Been there, done that.”  Routine but different, each time different, a new trick and maybe this time…  But no, never happened.  Just keep walking.  But he wasn’t, he’d stopped.

“Fuck!”

“S’wrong?”

“My car isn’t here.”

***

I couldn’t believe it.  After all this.  I’d made it this far, only to be, well, thwarted!

“How come?  Where is it?

“I have no-…”  And realization hit.  “Oh, no.  No!  Libby, you bitch!”

I should have known!  I should have clued in when she hugged me.  I can just imagine it, her hand slipping deftly into my pocket…  Of course!  Libby never hugs people, never.  But, she’d always had a knack for taking advantage of momentary weaknesses.  And presently, mine was looking at me like I was insane.

“Look, my so-called friend took my keys and made off with my car.”

“Oh.  That’s… no good.  What’re we gonna do?”

What could we do?  The evening had come to a crashing halt, hadn’t it?  I’d call a cab and go home, he’d walk back to the bar and reunite with his band, and that would be that.  I was crushed!  For all my earlier questioning, I’d started looking forward to… it, the natural conclusion of everything.  But – surprise twist – it wouldn’t happen.  I wanted to shout curses, possibly break something, but I reigned myself in and stared at the empty – empty! – parking spot until my eyes blurred.  I blinked when I felt his hand on my shoulder, and turned to look at him.  His eyes slid shut for a few moments, and when they opened again some of the bleariness was gone.  He spoke.

“List’n, why don’t we jus’ call a cab?  I’ll pay.”

A/N:  I know, I know, my chapters are getting shorter.  Unrelatedly, I’m suffering from quite a case of writer’s block…  LoL.  Bear with me, I’m almost done.  Anyways, I wanted to point out that the sentence with a * is from a work by my favourite French poet, Arthur Rimbaud, called “La vierge folle et l’époux infernal”.  Not sure what it’s called in English.  It’s also a line in the movie about Rimbaud and his affair with another poet, Paul Verlaine, called “Total Eclipse”, starring a young Leo DiCaprio and an astonishingly ugly David Thewlis (who, by the way, will unfortunately be playing Remus Lupin in the third HP movie…  So painfully disappointing…).  Anyways, do check it out if you’re into that sort of thing, it’s quite good.