“Ah, so you used to be a wild child, huh?” she said, straightening back up and opening a small closet by the door to rummage for something. “Me, too. That phase just never ended for me. Why should it? I’m having too much fun to stop.”
“Are you from LA?” I asked, walking toward her.
“Hell no. I’m from a small town in northern California. Moved here for school two years ago.”
“You go to UCLA?”
“Did. Dropped out a month in,” she said with a shrug and pulled out a tiny black latex purse. Sliding past me, she pulled open a kitchen drawer and grabbed something small I couldn’t make out before putting it into her purse.
“Okay, ready! Let’s move!”
We made our way to the stairs. “If you’re not in school, what are you doing now?”
She paused to pop a piece of gum in her mouth and offered me a piece. I refused.
“I freelance,” she said ambiguously and didn’t elaborate. “I love LA, though. There’s so many opportunities here, you know? I meet so many people, and all of them are doing something interesting. It’s exciting, don’t you think?”
I worried my lip as we continued our path downstairs, considering how much I should share with her. If I wanted her help, wouldn’t it make sense to tell her what I was hoping to accomplish today?
“I don’t meet a ton of folks,” I admitted. “Zoey and I are childhood friends, and I have a handful of other folks I know from my classes, but I’m not very outgoing.”
She looked at me over her shoulder. “For real? You made friends easily enough with me.”
I rubbed my arm. “I was a bit…agitated. I wasn’t acting like myself, to be honest.”
“Oh, right,” she exclaimed, slapping her palm on her forehead. “You said someone broke up with you, right? God, I’m such an idiot. I completely forgot.”
“No, don’t worry about it. And, yeah. We were more friends with benefits, but…”
“Been there,” she said, drawing out the Es in been. “It’s okay, I got you, babe. Tonight, we’re going to make you forget all about him.”
I didn’t need much help forgetting about Jack, but Oliver was a whole other story. “That’s what I’m hoping for, but I don’t know how good I’m going to be at meeting people.”
We stepped out onto the street, and she opened up the Uber app on her phone. “If you’re really worried, I have something that will take care of that in a pinch.”
She lifted her gaze to mine. I noticed that one of her eyes was a darker blue than the other.
“What is it?”
“You ever taken Molly?”
“No.”
“You know what it is?”
My pulse sped up. I knew Molly was a party drug, but that was the extent of my knowledge. I’d never taken drugs, have never even smoked weed, which was considered to be less of a substance than alcohol in my home. Still, I nodded.
“Yeah.”
“I have some if you want it.”
“You think it will help?”
She laughed and glanced back down at her app. “Three minutes away. Yeah, babe. You’ll be a chatterbox as soon as it hits. Whatever is normally holding you back from going up and meeting people will be gone like that.” She snapped her fingers. “So what do you think? If you take it now, it will start to hit just as we get inside the club.”
If Zoey ever found out, she would murder me. A drop of sweat rolled down my back as I contemplated what I should do. I took my phone out and opened the chat with Oliver. My message from earlier today sat unanswered.
If I wanted to change my life, I had to be willing to do drastic things, right? I couldn’t keep living the way I had been living all these years and expect a different result.
