"Come on Tessa, don't be so slow."

"I am not slow," I replied. "I just don't want to be here."

Honestly, I don't know how I get myself into these situations. Right now, I, Tessa Heart, am in the deadly clutches of my best friend Sandra. You see, today is her birthday and I being the good person that I am, agreed to go anywhere she wanted for her party. I should have known better. She decided to take me and our other friends, Jewel, Marty and Anna to a bar. That's right, a bar. Now you might be saying to yourselves, what's wrong with bars? I'll tell you. They smell, they're full of drunken men and the music is horrible.

So here I am being dragged into a bar named Sheila's by Sandra. After being carded at the front door, hardly necessary since I am, in fact, twenty-five, I stopped to look around the place. Not bad I thought…for a bar. While scanning I saw that the bar itself was located in the top right hand corner of the room so as to give the entire set-up more space. Surrounding the bar was a gathering of tables at which to eat, drink and be merry. A couple of them were occupied. On the other side of the room were a few pool tables, none in use.

"Tessa, you promised," grunted Sandra. She was still trying to pull me into the bar. She is about 5'5 while I am 6'0 so she had little success in that endeavour. Finally I conceded and walked with her to the table the other girls already occupied.

"Oh Tess, lighten up," Jewel said.

"Yeah, it's only for one night and it's not like we're making you dance," chimed Marty.

God I hate to dance. I don't have natural grace like Anna, style like Marty or rhythm like Jewel. I am not even in possession of Sandra's ever popular; dance like nobody's watching philosophy. Nope, I am a big ball of awkward standing out in the crowd.

"Guys I'm doing the best I can, you know how I don't like these places!"

"Its ok Tessa, it means a lot to me that you even set foot in a bar," Sandra said, giving me a tiny smile. Well, hell. Now I really felt bad, it being her birthday and all.

"Well since it's your birthday I might as well buy you a drink, n'est pas?" I offered. She responded with a shriek, which I chose to interpret as her undying love and overwhelming gratitude towards me. Yeah, right.

"I'll be right back then," I said with a smile that might have looked a tad tense. The others acknowledged me with a nod of the head, too busy carrying on with a conversation about the birthday gifts Sandra had received.

I stood up and went over to the bar to order a rye and Pepsi for Sandra and just plain ol'Pepsi for me. Guess who was chosen to be the DD tonight? That's right, you guessed it, me. When the bartender gave me the drinks I picked them up, turned around and BAM.

Today is not a good day, Jack Adams thought to himself. First my truck breaks down when I try to make a delivery. Then my dog runs away and now some dumb brunette spills her drinks all over me. Oh, hell, it's finally happened. My life has become a country song.

"Oh my goodness, I am sooooooooo sorry, I can't believe I just spilt my drinks ALL over you, oh dear, I'm so embarrassed, can you please forgive me, it's just that…" I stopped listening about halfway through her rant. Honestly, where do these girls come from? I mean I didn't actually think this woman was dumb but now that she's opened her mouth I have my doubts.

"Don't worry about it," I said rather curtly and began to walk away.

"Hey, wait a minute!" the brunette said. "You shouldn't walk away from people when they're talking to you, that is just plain rude."

"Look lady," I said turning around, "I don't have time for this…"

WOW she is tall he thought. He hadn't realized it before because she was wiping up her spilt drink, but she must be at least 6'0. It was kind of nice seeing a girl that could almost look him in the eye. Or at least better than most other women he meets. Speaking of eyes, she was giving him the most evil glare he'd seen in ages. What did I do to her?

"Look bub, just because I spilt drinks on you doesn't mean that you're allowed to be rude when I'm trying to apologize. Don't you have any manners?"

"Sure I do, but when it takes someone twenty minutes to get around to said apology, I get tired of waiting."

"Oh," she said, looking a little hurt. Shit, I didn't mean to hurt her feelings. Maybe I should apologize. I can explain that I've been having a bad day. She's seems like a reasonable person, she'd understand.

"Umm…"

"Well then," she said straightening up, "I apologize for wasting your time and inconveniencing you." That was the last thing she said to me before she turned around and walked back to her friends, who had apparently been staring at us this whole time. I turned around to walk back to my friends and realized they too, had been staring. Great, just great.

"Way to screw that up man," my best friend Brock said just as I was getting back to the table. I narrowed my eyes at him.

"Shut up, why do you care anyways?"

"Man, she was hot," Cal said, "and now you sad, sad, excuse for a man, you have no chance. I mean she was grovelling at your feet and you just walked away!"

"She wasn't grovelling you idiot, she was cleaning up the mess. And yeah I walked away. She was a babbling fool." I said, not even trying to hide my now less than pleasant mood.

"That's a perfect combination man, looks and no brain. Easy, peasy, pudding, and pie." Cal joked.

"You're an idiot," Brock said before I could, "Look man, she was probably just in awe of your rakish good looks." That comment was directed to me. Idiots! The pair of'em. I rolled my eyes, some friends I have.

"Would you two stop saying man, its getting on my nerves," I told them. By now they were grinning like fools.

"We know," They said in unison. Some friends indeed.