This was ridiculous. And yet…
She couldn’t sit there another second, letting her thoughts gnaw at her like rats. What she needed was distraction. Strobe lights. Music so loud it rattled her teeth. A cocktail that tasted like fruit but punched rum straight to the brain.
Allegra hauled open her suitcase and dug out the black Dior slip, the one from her engagement interview in Paris. She held it up, the fabric shimmering under the dim hotel lights.
“Yeah,” she declared to the empty room. “You’ll do.”
***
Lights sliced through the darkness in jagged bursts of violet and white, carving out fragments of bodies—an arched back here, a smirk there—before swallowing them whole again.
Whumm. Whumm. Whumm.
Allegra leaned against the bar, eyes half-lidded, nodding in time with the bassline. She was already four drinks deep, her memory of ordering them as hazy as the edges of her vision. Every time she shifted, her heels peeled off the floor with aschlick, like the club itself was clinging to her, unwilling to let go.
A man materialized at her side. Dark hair tied back, a hint of stubble, his face the kind that would be handsome in a lineup but forgettable in a crowd—until it turned fully on her. Then it was suddenly very hard to look away.
“Bonsoir!” he shouted over the music. “Française?English?”
“Either,” she replied, nudging up her reading glasses.
He nodded. “You look—how you say?—lonely.”
Allegra barked a laugh. “That’s a wild opener.”
He grinned, unrepentant. “Michel,” he said, tapping his chest. “And you?”
“Ella.”
He squinted at her. “We’ve met, uh?”
She shook her head. “Nope. I’d remember.”
Michel shrugged. “Well,enchanté, Ella.” His gaze dropped to her glass, his fingers tapping the polished wood of the bar. “What’s this?”
She swirled the liquid. “No idea. Something with rum.”
“Ah.” His eyes lit up. “A strong woman.”
She snorted, lifting her drink for another sip. Michel shifted closer, bracing his hand on the bar behind her. Close enough that his warmth seeped through the thin silk of her dress.
“So, you never answered,” he said, his voice pitched just for her. “You came here to be by yourself?”
Ella traced the rim of her glass, watching the liquid tremble with the bass. She could say yes. Even sound convincing. But what was the point? “I came here to forget some shit.”
Michel’s smile turned dangerous, like a man who’d just been handed a challenge he was absolutely equipped to meet. His fingers lifted, flagging down the bartender. Two shots appeared moments later.
“À l’oubli,” he said, sliding the glass toward her. “To forgetting.”
Allegra didn’t hesitate. She threw the shot back, the liquor searing a path down her throat, her eyes watering as she gasped. Then she snatched the second glass from Michel’s fingers and downed it too.
***
Allegra’s keycard missed the lock. Then it missed again.
Michel’s chest rumbled with laughter against her back as he reached around her. “Here. Let me—”
“Nope, I’ve got this,” she slurred, jabbing it against the box under the handle with exaggerated precision.
