“Okay, I’ll come,” I say, nudging her hip with mine, “no need to get all religious on me.”
“Oh, babe, that was an upside-down cross,” she says with a sinful wink. “We sinners have our ways too.”
“You’re impossible,” I mutter, shaking my head as I bring the cup to my mouth and let the hot, sugary liquid trail down my throat. A melted marshmallow clings to my lip, syrupy and soft,and I suck it in slowly, wondering—just for a fleeting heartbeat—whether maybe she’s right, whether maybe I need one night that doesn’t feel like survival, one night where I choose something simply because I want it and not because life demands it.
Once my feet hit the wet asphalt, I didn’t regret calling The Starlight Club and telling them I couldn’t make it due to ‘womanly problems’. I know I could have said I had explosive diarrhoea or the common cold, but if you mention ‘woman problems’ to a man, they shut down instantly. It’s like even a conversation about blood seeping out of you makes them malfunction, so not inventive, but a sure winner every damn time.
The street around me glistened beneath the amber glow of street lamps, rainwater gathering in fractured puddles that mirrored the city’s chaotic beauty. Cars hissed past on slick tarmac, their lights stretching into blurred streaks of colour as if the world itself were exhaling in neon. The night had a pulse — a thrumming, electric heartbeat that vibrated up from the pavement and into my bones — reminding me that out here, everything felt a little more alive, a little more dangerous, and a little less forgiving.
The glittering lights of the night swallowed me as I stepped across the road, my eyes locked on the sign above the doors in neon:‘Seventh Sin’. The sign flickered in shades of devilish redand sinful gold, casting the pavement in an otherworldly glow, and I shook my head as I heard Lola’s voice in my mind, “Us sinners have our ways too.”
Sinners, of course. I roll my eyes. That cheeky little minx.
“Well, are you planning on standing on the sidewalk all night?”
I look near the entrance, where Lola stands like she belongs under spotlights, not streetlights — in a glittering pink dress that hugs her body, her auburn hair swaying around her shoulders in soft waves that catch the neon glow as though she’s shimmering from the inside out. A twinkle burns bright in those sky-blue eyes, mischievous and impossible to ignore. “Get your cute butt in here.”
The moment I walk through the doors, the world shifts, tilting into something darker, thicker, richer. She grips my wrist, dragging me through the coat check, and then I’m swallowed whole.
The air hits me like sex and smoke and bass — low, pulsing beats that rattle the floorboards and settle between my ribs like a second heartbeat. The scent is intoxicating: warm bodies, expensive perfume, sweat, ambition, and sin blending into something that feels more like a spell than air.
Everything is dim, golden, red — like the inside of a mouth about to swallow you whole, a decadent cavern of temptation where shadows bend and throb in time with the music.
Bodies writhe under chandeliers shaped like broken halos, glass shards dangling overhead like celestial debris caught in a perpetual fall.
Some are dancing.
Some are grinding.
Some aren’t even pretending to behave.
Velvet drapes cascade down the walls like rivers of midnight, absorbing sound and giving back nothing but secrecy. The flooris a mosaic of spilled drinks, shimmering heels, and footprints printed in light.
Perfume clings to the air — sickly sweet, sinful, thick with things I can’t name but I can feel.
Hands brush past my hip.
Someone whispers something dark near my ear, and I don’t catch it, but I feel it slither down my spine anyway, leaving goosebumps in its wake.
Velvet ropes section off hidden alcoves where shadows kiss and sinners drink from each other’s mouths. Laughter — low, wicked — ripples from behind curtains, the kind that promises someone is about to make a very bad decision and enjoy every second of it.
A woman in stilettos with red-tipped fingers drags a man by his tie through a curtain that closes too quickly, as if the room itself is greedy for secrets.
The bar glows like temptation itself — a long sweep of polished black stone reflecting crystal glasses lined up like a promise. Bartenders with jawlines sharp enough to hurt move with rehearsed precision, dressed in all black, pouring sins into highball glasses like it’s holy water.
Lola turns to grin at me, backlit by firelight and strobes, and all I can think is — I should not be here.
But then — God, I want to be.
“Isn’t it something?” She smiles, her voice half-lost to the bass.
“It definitely is… something, but Lo?”
“Yeah, babe?”
“This doesn’t seem like your usual hangout spot.”
“Oh, it isn’t, but I’m here for the experience and well… something else.”
