by Lola Gabriel
“Wasn’t this supposed to happen last week?” Sadie asked, trying not to sound as desperate as she felt all of a sudden.
“Yeah, it was, but I’d just had that argument with my parents, so I knew that asking them a favor, even in the name of schoolwork, would not go well for me.” Ellie went to the shared closet at the back of their room and pulled the sliding door of her side open. “I had to go last weekend and be all ‘yes, Mother, yes, Father, I should truly study more and work harder and become the exact kind of immortal you want me to be!’ Ugh.”
A full-body shiver went through her, like she was recoiling in disgust. Sadie didn’t blame her.
“Does it have to be tonight?” She had convinced herself that they had left this whole thing behind them, so she had thrown out her mental list of reasons why she couldn’t possibly go out for a night of fun with her roommate and was now wishing she had kept it in the back of her mind.
“It’s the last Friday before the winter break!” Ellie said, her back to Sadie as she stared at her clothes and looked through them for something to, Sadie assumed, change into. “If it’s not tonight, when will it be?”
Hopefully never? Sadie thought, wisely holding her tongue.
Ellie pulled two hangers, each carrying a different dress, from the closet.
“What do you think?” she asked. She held each one in front of her, shifting between them at a slow enough speed to let Sadie formulate an opinion on how they both looked.
“I think,” she answered, “that I don’t have anything that looks even remotely like that.”
That wasn’t entirely accurate. Sadie had brought with her a wardrobe of jeans, V-necked shirts, comfy, loose blouses, two long skirts, a few jackets, sweatshirts, and sweaters, two pairs of tennis shoes, three pairs of flats, one single pair of high heels, and only one dress that could be considered appropriate to go out to a club or bar or wherever it was that Ellie intended for them to go.
“Oh, that’s no problem at all!” Ellie said, lowering the hangers. “I can lend you something of mine!”
Sadie shuffled nervously on the bed. “I don’t know if your clothes will fit me,” she muttered.
She and Ellie were around the same height, yes, but Ellie had a more athletic build to her body, the muscles in her arms much more defined than the ones in Sadie’s noodle-like arms. Sadie had never felt self-conscious about herself, but the last time she had worn someone else’s clothes, she had been a seven-year-old girl trying on her mother’s dresses and shoes and pretending to be a grown-up.
“Nonsense, of course they will!” Ellie threw the dresses she had pulled out onto her bed and began to rummage through her closet again. “What would you prefer? With straps, strapless, a longer skirt, loose, more fitted—”
“I would prefer to stay in and finish my Spells and Witchcraft homework, to be honest,” Sadie confessed, immediately regretting her inability to keep it to herself. Then again, in her defense, Ellie had asked her.
Actually, in her defense, Ellie had said she wanted them to do this last week, and she hadn’t mentioned anything else about it, so was it really Sadie’s fault that she didn’t want to change her plans of finishing her last essay of the semester and then watching the mid-season finale of The Fast and the Immortal?
Ellie turned to her, and Sadie couldn’t decipher the look in her eyes. It was almost neutral, like not even Ellie knew how to feel or react.
“Sadie,” she began, calmly. “Why don’t you want to go on a girls’ night out with me?”
Sadie sighed quietly and slumped her shoulders. “I’m not really a ‘going out’ person. There weren’t that many places back home where I could go with my friends, so I just… didn’t. I feel like I would be more of a nuisance than a fun companion.”
“Well,” said Ellie, “isn’t this a fun opportunity, then? If you’ve never done something like this, shouldn’t you, like, want to now?”
“Maybe?” Sadie groaned to herself and ran her hands through her hair in frustration. “Isn’t there someone else you could go with?”
“There are lots of people I could go with,” Ellie answered. “But I don’t want to go with any of them. I want to go with you.”
“But why?” Sadie questioned. “I’m the least fun person to have a girls’ night out with! I assure you I would absolutely ruin your night, and you deserve more than that!”
Ellie had gone to such lengths to have one night of freedom, one night of not having to worry about her parents’ expectations, one night of just being herself, and she deserved to have that night with someone who wasn’t a socially awkward potato when it came to events that were not school-related.
Her roommate went to sit on her bed so she could face Sadie directly. There was a determination in her eyes that would’ve burned Sadie to ashes if she had been a vampire.
“First and foremost,” she started, lifting a finger, “I don’t believe, for a second, that you would ruin my night in any way, shape, or form. Secondly, I want to go with you because you’re my best friend in this entire goddamn city, and there’s no one I would rather spend my one girls’ night out with.”
Sadie blinked and straightened. She didn’t know that Ellie considered her to be her best friend. She had always seemed so social and outgoing, like she had gone through her adolescence and early adulthood without the fears and anxieties that came with growing older, when you started caring about what other people might say about you. Sadie had always assumed Ellie could be friends with anyone she wanted to just by having a conversation with them.
Ellie exhaled deeply. “Listen. Just give me three hours of your time. If you really feel uncomfortable or just plain hate it, we’ll come straight back to the dorm, and I’ll never ask you to go out for a girls’ night with me again, okay? Does that sound good to you?”
Sadie felt suddenly embarrassed to be making such a big deal out of this. Her closest friend since she had moved to New York was asking her to step out of her comfort zone for one night. Ellie always agreed to what Sadie wanted to do, never pulling a face or complaining about it. Didn’t Sadie owe her the same? If Ellie wanted them to hang out together in another location, wasn’t it the least Sadie could do for her?
“One hour,” she said, smiling to show that she was only half-serious.
“Two and a half hours,” said Ellie, smiling back.
“One hour and a half, final offer.”
“Two hours,” Ellie said, lifting two fingers as if to show that it wasn’t all that much time.
“You strike a tough deal, Ellie Hanson.” Sadie held out her hand, and Ellie immediately shook it. “Two hours it is.”
“Hallelujah!” Ellie screamed, jumping up from her bed and pumping her fists into the air once more. “Sadie, I swear you’re going to have the flipping night of your life! Not your college life, no, no, no, the best night of your entire goddamn immortal life! Oh! I’m going to make you look amazing! You’re already super beautiful, but I’m going to make you irresistible!”
She went back to the closet and began to furiously look through her clothes, pulling dress after dress after dress out and throwing them onto her bed with such ferocity that Sadie didn’t have the heart to tell her that she did have one dress of her own that she could wear. Besides, she trusted Ellie—who always looked like she was about to step onto a runway—to choose something for her.
They made a sort of odd match, now that Sadie thought about it. Ellie had long, curly black hair with striking blue eyes and beautiful brown skin, while Sadie had blonde hair only long enough to tie into a half-ponytail, brown eyes, and a slightly rosy complexion. But Sadie didn’t care that they were so different from each other; that was, after all, what she loved the most about being at EMU.
“Okay, okay.” Ellie had pulled out nearly half of her closet, and she pressed her hands together in front of her face as if in deep thought. She held two dresses up for Sadie to look at. “These two are the ones that I feel are the best for you, but it’s up to you to choose wh
ich one you like the most. So, do you want to wear the purple one or the red one?”
“The purple one,” Sadie replied instantly. It was simple yet beautiful, with thin straps that crossed at the back, a round collar, and a flowing, knee-length skirt that ended with a strip of lace with a gorgeous flower pattern.
Ellie grinned at her. “Excellent choice.”
She chose a long-sleeved, V-necked emerald dress for herself, with a skirt only an inch shorter than Sadie’s and star-patterned lace covering all of the fabric, as well as a pair of dark green heels to go along with it. Sadie decided to go with her own pair of heels rather than borrow one of Ellie’s, since she knew hers would be comfortable enough to move in them for two hours.
Once they were done with their outfits, Ellie pulled out the chair from her desk and signaled for Sadie to sit on it.
“C’mon,” she said. “Let me do your hair.”
Sadie didn’t know if there was much that could be done with her hair, but she supposed that she had nothing to lose. She sat down and let Ellie comb her hair and tie it into a half-bun on the back of her head, allowing the rest of her hair to fall easily against her nape. She remained there so Ellie could help her with her makeup, and when she was done, Sadie turned to the small round mirror hanging on the wall of Ellie’s side and stared at her reflection.
She looked like herself, except that she also looked the tiniest bit different, leaving her with a strange combination of knowing it was her in the mirror while also thinking it must be someone else, it couldn’t possibly be her.
“Oh, honey.” The grin on Ellie’s face was full of smugness. “If everyone we encounter doesn’t want to eat you up as soon as they see you, then they’re all beneath you and you deserve better than them anyway.”
Sadie couldn’t help the disbelieving laugh that came out of her.
“Yeah, right,” she said in an effort to divert the attention from herself. Even though Ellie had done a fantastic job with her, Sadie doubted it would be enough to make anyone swoon. Still, she wasn’t entirely opposed to the idea of having a little fun with someone she liked, though that would probably go against the entire plan of having a ‘girls’ night out’.
Well. Whatever happened tonight, Sadie would roll with it. With her best friend by her side, what could possibly go wrong?
“So, where are we going, exactly?” she asked, walking out of their room with Ellie behind her.
Ellie locked the door on their way out and turned to her with a mischievous smile on her face.
“Wherever the wind takes us,” she answered and crossed one of her arms through Sadie’s, locking them together. “Now let us go in the search of adventure, my friend! The night is young, and so will we be for eternity!”
Laughing at her friend’s antics, Sadie let Ellie pull her into the hallway and out of the dorm building. She didn’t know what the night had in store for them, but she was ready to face anything.
3
Sadie was starting to think that she should’ve brought up the idea of having their girls’ night out sooner, instead of always suggesting they stay inside the campus and do things they could do pretty much any other day. She shouldn’t have waited until Ellie mentioned it. On the contrary, she should’ve been the one pushing them to do these things and helping her come up with lies she could tell her parents so they would let her go home on Saturday morning instead of Friday afternoon.
She sees me as her best friend, Sadie thought to herself, watching Ellie order them a pair of fruity drinks at the bar. I need to step up and begin acting like one.
They had ended up in a dance club that was exclusively for immortals, with a spell cast upon it to keep the place hidden from humans. The music was loud, but not enough to be unbearable or to stop its patrons from talking to each other, the bar was clean and had very comfortable seats, and there were a few tables with barstools scattered throughout the building, separated by a railing from the middle of the room, where the dance floor was.
“We’re going to dance our asses off!” Ellie had declared when they had first walked in and she had seen how big said dance floor was. “But first, we need some sustenance!”
As it turned out, the dance club served not only drinks but also appetizers, which was more than Sadie had expected it to have. Nibbling on a plate of nachos while they talked was the perfect way to keep them energized without causing them severe stomachaches.
Ellie sipped on the straw of her drink. “That guy’s been looking at you since we walked in.”
“What?” Sadie swirled her head around her, but she didn’t find anyone who seemed to be interested in her among the dancing partygoers. “Who? Where?”
“That guy at seven o’clock,” Ellie said, gesturing behind Sadie with her eyes.
Sadie glanced over her shoulder and noticed the guy Ellie had spotted. He was clearly older than them, though not by that many years, even if it was hard to tell if he was closer to his thirties or if he was hundreds of years old, considering immortals stopped aging when they turned twenty-eight. That didn’t mean he wasn’t handsome, with his short brown hair, his well-kept beard, and his bodybuilder physique. Just like Ellie had said, he was staring directly at Sadie, not paying attention to the men sitting with him at his table.
Ellie leaned conspiratorially over their own table toward Sadie. “He’s kind of cute, isn’t he?”
“Yeah, I guess,” Sadie replied, shrugging. “Not really my type, though.”
“No? What’s your type, then?”
Sadie avoided the straw of her drink and sipped from the glass itself. “Not him.”
The laughter that followed her answer was almost louder than the music, and Sadie had to shush her cackling friend until she had stopped holding her own stomach.
“You’re going to get us kicked out,” she murmured, and Ellie lowered her voice and took a deep breath to calm herself.
“Sorry, sorry,” Ellie said, still chuckling. “You know, I thought I had you all figured out, Sadie, but you’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?”
Sadie sat back on her barstool and crossed her arms over her chest, an eyebrow raised in curiosity. “Why did you think you had me all figured out?”
“Well, I mean—” Ellie shook her head to herself. “I thought you were just a small-town girl who would go ballistic when she had her first taste of the big city. And then I got to know you a little bit and thought, okay, so she’s very responsible with her schoolwork and puts it above everything else, but she must be desperate for a change of scenery, right? And then we became friends, and you listened to me rant about my stupid parents, and I thought I’d never met someone as genuine as you. Hell, when I asked you what you preferred, you told me you wanted to stay in instead of making up some BS to avoid answering the question!”
Sadie felt herself flush at the praise, which meant even more coming from someone like Ellie. She almost had, in fact, somehow found a way to avoid answering Ellie’s question, but she had never lied to her, and she hadn’t been about to start then. Sadie had tried to always be thankful for what she had, and she had never taken anything for granted. The reason she was even able to attend EMU was because she had worked hard and earned her place there, despite most older members of her pack telling her that she should stay home and go to a local college, like everyone else in their town did.
Ellie had been wrong on one account, though: Sadie was desperate for some change of scenery, but that change had been moving to New York, where her thirst for something else had been quenched for the time being.
She took her drink in her hand and raised her glass.
“Cheers to that,” she said. Ellie laughed out loud, throwing her head back, before she grabbed her own glass and clinked it with Sadie’s.
“Hell yeah, cheers to that,” she echoed. “Now, come on, let’s go dance!”
“You go on ahead,” said Sadie. “I’m still not tired of these nachos.” As if to prove her point, she grabbed a nacho from the pla
te in the middle of their table and ate it whole.
Ellie shrugged. “Suit yourself.” She hadn’t even finished her sentence when she climbed down from her stool and made her way to the dance floor, moving her arms and bobbing her head the entire time.
Sadie smiled to herself. She was going to hurry up with these nachos so that she could go dance with her best friend and enjoy their first girls’ night out of, surely, many more to come.
She caught sight of Ellie dancing among the crowd, and then she felt a prickling sensation on the back of her neck, running all the way down her spine, making her shiver. It was as though someone were watching her, and Sadie turned around, wondering if it was the same guy as before, despite the fact that she hadn’t shown any interest in him whatsoever. No, her admirer had turned away and was now talking to his companions, having completely forgotten about her.
A sort of pressure in Sadie’s gut told her to stay alert. Pay attention, it seemed to say. The night is young. Anything can happen. You won’t want to miss it.
In the next second, something touched her elbow leaning on the table, and she shuddered as electricity coursed through her entire body.
“Excuse me.”
Sadie looked to her right, where the something that had touched her elbow was actually a someone: a young man with short hair as black as night, brown eyes that appeared to shift between their natural color and a lighter, warmer hazel, and the most outstanding, captivating mouth she had ever seen on anybody, one corner twisted slightly up in the beginnings of a smile or a smirk.
Sadie felt that same kind of pressure in her gut at the sight of him, telling her that this was going to be quite the interesting conversation.
“Is this seat taken?” he asked, and his voice was sultry, deep but not too much, with a maturity that was still kind of boyish and cocky. If Sadie had to guess, he was most likely a few years older than her, not even midway through his first century.
“Yes,” she replied, a little smile toying at her lips. “By my friend.”