Pt. 01 - Miss-Step

"My New Year's Resolution is that I am giving up on dating this year." Mel's hand was held high holding her third bramble of the night. It was nearly half gone.

It had been a bad year for Mel. She had been cheated on by two different guys. The first one had both a wife and another girlfriend. That was fun to sort out. She had known that the second was bi. Hell, it's one of the reasons she had been attracted to him. She didn't know that the first one was. When she found the two of them in bed together she was shocked she hadn't realized it sooner. Fuckers.

"Ok sure", "uh huh", "yeah right", the chorus rises from the table of Mel's friends. They knew her M. O., knew that she hated being alone and the prevalence of her 'but daddy I love him' energy as well as her weakness for gorgeous men. They had all come to the pub that night in support of Mel, and because this pub had the best New Years party. There was actually space for dancing and live music. It was packed and they'd been lucky to score a table where they'd all been sitting for a while. It was nearly midnight.

"I'm serious! No man or woman," she tips her glass towards the two women snuggled up together at the end of the table, "is gonna pry open this heart or these legs. I'm done with relationships. It's just good friends and cats from now on!"

"And dildos and vibrators!!" one of them called out.

"Yeah!!! WHOOO!!!" They all clink glasses together.

Mel drains her drink, all sweet and fluffy to disguise the alarming amount of alcohol in it.

"WHOO!!!! YEAH!" She hollers, slamming the sturdy lowball down on the table.

There was no response from the table, each and every one of them were frozen, wide eyed and staring past her, even the lesbians.

"What?" she pats her own head, "What's going on? Is my asshole ex behind me or something?"

Her best friend Bess grabs her wrist as though she is desperate for some kind of anchor. Mel turns around a little too quickly. Her eyeballs might as well have spun in her head for the way the room gyrates. It takes a second for her besotted brain to catch up.

He is standing just inside the door of the bar, scanning the crowded room.

"Oh wow," Bess whispers, " Mel, that is the prettiest guy I've ever seen."

She was wrong, he was more than pretty. He was staggering. He was tall, with a lean frame. A scattering of scruff barely darkened his sharp jawline. His dark blonde hair was styled in an unruly fashion that screamed 'I try not to care, but I secretly care.' Adorned with a brown leather bomber jacket, jeans and a vintage tee that could have been on any nondescript guy. But this man was as far from ordinary as possible. Maybe it was his handsome face, maybe it was the way his gaze unknowingly smolders as he scans the crowd. His gaze floats over Mel, then snaps back to her green eyes. He pauses for a second, lifts one gorgeous corner of his gorgeous full lips and nods at her. She nods back without thinking before he continues his search. He was just the kind of handsome twat she would normally make a bee line for. Did she have a blinking neon sign over her head or something?

He spots whomever he was looking for, and his face lights up. His mouth widens into a perfect smile and his cheekbones pop. The entire table, including Mel, gasps collectively. An errant light grazes across his face and his eyes flash like he's some kind of divine messenger. Then he moves, eating up the space in the crowded room with such surety. Every limb on the man knew its job and knew it well.

Mel's mind flashes to a potential near future, one where she goes over to him introducing herself. She asks him coy questions and answers his with a tuck of her long brown hair behind her ear. He turns that wide smile on her and she brushes her hand 'accidentally' against his thigh.

It was probably her addled brain, but it looked like he was moving in slow motion as he threw his arms around a man, hugging him tight and kissing him on the cheek. Her belly goes cold then hot as she remembers what she just declared and why.

Reality rushes back in and jolts her out of her drunken dreamscape. The door to all of the bullshit, humiliation, and gaslighting that she went through in the past few months slams open. Cold hard anger dumps into her stomach. Anger at all the hot damn guys that fucked her life. Yeah this guy wasn't one of them specifically, but at this moment he was their mascot, as far as she was concerned.

"Well fuck all," she whispers under her breath turning back around.

"He looks like that one guy-" she hears to the right of her.

"Yeah in that tv thing a while back," her friend to the left.

"No it was a movie about um....," Bess snaps her fingers trying to remember.

"Well I for one, I don't give a monkey's ass who he is," Mel grabs Bess, "C'mon let's get some shots for everyone."

Weaving in and around tables and people, she steers them across the dance floor. They are nearly at the bar when Mel freezes and turns to Bess.

"TAY TAY!" they both shout. Yeah, there were a bevy of scorned woman songs, but Mel's favorite was Karma. Which is the very song the band is covering right now. Having scored tickets to the Eras Concert together, it was a moral imperative that the two start dancing upon immediate delivery of the tunes to their ear holes. Mel was taller than average, with arms to match. Arms that she was currently gesticulating with in the wide spot just before the bar. Singing along loudly she flings them out to the side and *whack* Sploosh!

She turns her head just in time to see his beautiful face, eyes shut and drenched in whatever had been in his glass. Bess covers her mouth in utter shock. Mel blinks, mouth agape and frozen in place.

He puffs out a seemingly exasperated breath a la the "Bar Towel" scene from The Quiet Man. He shakes his hand, sprinkling both ladies like so much holy water.

"Fuck, sorry," Mel squeaks out.

"S'ok," his voice is smooth, American, and deep with just a little lilt of a laugh, "You're lucky my partner in crime over there was dehydrated. It's only water." He took the proffered towel from the barkeep behind him and wiped his face. Somehow he got more handsome in the weirdly private gesture. "You ladies want to join us?" His smile lit up the space around him. "I'll let you make it up to me."

Something in Mel snapped. Maybe it was the flirtatious invite, maybe it was the embarrassment or the fact that he was taking it all in stride. Ice coursed through her veins followed quickly by untempered white heat.

"Oh well sorry, next time I'll wait until you have an expensive fucking scotch in your hand." Her ex loved drinking scotch. And NO she wasn't projecting. She grabbed Bess and brushed past him to the bar.

"I'm so sorry," Bess said as she was dragged by, "she's hurting."

"Bloody Hell!" Bess admonishes her when they reach the bar, "Have you gone mad? He was being cool about it!"

"He was a bad mascot," Mel declares in a bout of fuzzy logic and bramble.

Mel and Bess bring back a tray of shots to the table. They all toast and toss back the fruity sweet shots. A little while later, a particularly elegant, well groomed hand with a particularly lovely watch passes over her shoulder with a tray of multi-colored jello shots.

"A peace offering for midnight" the beautiful, low voice slides like silk down her neck. "I'd have brought scotch, but figured we'd all stay dryer this way."

She knows it's him before she turns. He's so close to her she can smell his cologne. A citrusy floral with woodsy undertones. Not too strong, not even too over the top, just right. Oh fucking hell, she is such a sucker for a good smelling man.

"Listen, thanks but no thanks. We don't need... " every traitorous face around the table snags a little cup of alcoholic jello just as the countdown begins.

He folds himself into the empty chair next to Mel and offers her a shot from the tray. She snatches it out of his hand. It's cherry, her favorite, with a white puff of cream on top.

"FIVE! FOUR! THREE! TWO!" the bar roars around them. "ONE! HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!"

Mel is just staring at him like he grew horns and a tail. Does he expect her to kiss him at midnight?? He laughs, holding up his own shot glass of cream and jello and yelling like everyone else. Oh lord, he's even more captivating up close. He sucks the shot, tongue sweeping around the inside of the glass.

FUUUUUUUUUCK.

Then he has the audacity to look shy. He turns to her with a winning smile and bright, hopeful blue eyes. It takes a few minutes for the cacophony and kisses of midnight to fall back to the former dull roar.

"Listen, I don't know what I possibly could have done to piss you off," he leans in so she can hear him, "but I feel like we got off on the wrong foot."

"YOU didn' do anythin', it's just your kind," what words she finds to explain come out a little thick. She sticks her finger resentfully in the aerosolized whipped cream.

He knows drunk defensiveness when he sees it. This can't possibly be about him. At any rate he decides he won't be offended. "Well that um... sounds potentially sexist or racist?" his eyebrows raise conversationally.

"No, no, I mean good smellin' blokes that'll just end up fffuckin' ya over, leave ya gutted," her words are definitely slurred. She sucks her finger petulantly.

"Well thanks, I try... " he starts, but her finger in her pouty mouth makes his brain stumble. "I'm... um... not gonna... " he shakes his head in an effort to reorder the devilishly naughty thoughts that course through his mind. Dammit. He decides it might be better to just start all over.

"Hi, I'm Camus. What's your name?" he holds out his hand.

"Sorry, not interested," she grabs his hand anyway and shakes in an exaggerated way.

"In your own name? Wow, that's got to be a tough way to get through life," his hand lingers over hers.

Had she been sober, all of Mel's frozen bitchiness would have most likely melted at the touch of his hand.

"No, pretty boy, B is right you ARE pretty," she suddenly snatches her hand away from his. "No my name's Miss Melissy-ah. And iz very in-interesting. But no you couldn't hear cuz you walked in all frozen and peng with your cheeky face on, distracting. But that was me, y'know, there before saying no dating to my new resolution." She hiccoughs, all the drinking really catching up to her. "So sorry, not interested in your fit ass," Mel pokes a finger into his chest. It lingers there. Damn, he had more muscle than she thought.

His brow furrows as he looks down at her finger. He tries to puzzle out her fuzzy train of thought, "Are you saying that your New Year's resolution is not to date fit people?

"Yes, that is what I said isn't it. So sod off, sir." With that, Mel waves him away.

This was different for him, he wasn't used to being rejected outright. Sure he'd been turned down before. But normally he was nice to people and they were nice back, regardless of if they recognized him or not. She is different all together. The way she says 'sir', zings his insides, makes him remember things he hadn't thought about in a while. He shakes his head, standing and backing away like a man caught red-handed. "Alright, alright, I promise I won't try to date you, ok?"

"Thank you, that's actually very helpful," she suppresses a second hiccough, "pretty body," she turns her back on him.

><><><><><

It is late, like really late. So late that it's actually early.

Mel stumbles out onto the curb in front of the pub, the barest light in the morning sky. She had almost fallen asleep in the bathroom, she was so tired and really quite drunk. In fact, she didn't want to admit just how drunk she was, and therefore denied any help offered to her from her friends. Where were they now? She looks around before remembering that they all left a while ago. She stayed because... because... fuck, she didn't remember. She takes a big breath of the moist pre-dawn air trying to suck down some clarity.

"I love these kinds of liminal times. When it's not really dawn, not really night, but a fresh combination of both," a now familiar voice said to her left, "especially on the cusp of a new year. Wouldn't you agree?" Camus looks at her sideways, popping a small piece of gum into his mouth.

She just nodded, staring at him and his brown-leather-jacket-hot-as-fuck vibe. He lifts his hand, offering her a small wrapped stick. She just rolls her eyes, remembering how much she insisted she didn't like him.

"I'm looking forward to a shower then crawling into bed," he stretches his chest, pulling his elbows back. "You?"

"Yeah, sure'," she puts her hand out in the classic cabbie hailing pose, though there are none on the street.

"Look, I have a ride coming any second. Please just let me get you home safe."

"My home, right, to my home," she pokes her own chest, "I'm not gonna fall for that, not gonna climb your slutty little waist and into your fucking lap cuz I'm not into your knight in old leather, smelling-good games head-assery."

"Yup, I have gathered that, no climbing," he says, wondering if he's making a grave mistake, but also just too good of a guy to leave her here waving at imaginary cabs on the curb.

"Okay fine," and she immediately crumples.

Sure, he's had a few, but he's still fast. He catches her by the arms.

"Fuck, girl, you are lucky it's me and not some fucking creeper," he mumbles trying to hold her upright as his Uber pulls to the curb.