JUST FRIENDS

23

Madison, twenty-five, and bored out of her mind, had plans to ditch her post-graduate work and party hard enough that she'd be too drunk the next day to have a hangover. If that dreadful headache still insisted on making its presence known, her antidote came in tablet form, dark orange, in disguise to look identical to the 800mg ibuprofen she Saran-wrapped and dropped in her purse. Her pick-me-up of sorts.

She was well aware, putting the two pills right next to each other was a rookie mistake, in fact, she thought it to herself the moment the tablet was secure in the makeshift wrapper, but the notion to make them distinct from one another slipped her mind, replaced with the need to optimize space in her bag.

Her bag, if one could call it that, was big enough to fit her keys, wallet, and the small pills but her phone couldn't fit successfully without being a tad too long so she opted on holding it in her hand the whole night after she called an Uber because if the photography majors' soirée was as uninteresting as the coordinators, there would be no need for her to keep it elsewhere.

Contrary to her belief, it was a rager that served expensive champagne instead of tequila and she knew that the gorgeous girl in the shiny dress dancing on top of the bar had the right idea...that was the type of night Madison planned on having too.

Observantly, she scoped the surroundings, from the mill of bodies on the dance floor to the mini crowd that had gathered around to watch miss Coyote Ugly, Madison glanced from the wallflowers, and the lounge-goers and back again before deciding to herself that she wanted to be where the fun was, which was clearly at the bar.

The girl's boyfriend was standing protectively at her feet, as close to the bar top as he could allow, looking like a man Madison would beg for or drool over had he even step foot in the Figure Modeling room, let alone undressed.

Girls were her thing, she liked them the most for sure but he was...wow. Definitely a guy so attractive that it was difficult to make eye contact so she lowered her gaze a bit, a shy tick of hers.

He was so Together, almost stern, she could see how the two worked well as a couple, though she did wonder how a guy could be so confident in a girl that beautiful being the life of the party. Hell, she had the DJ's attention and still her boyfriend didn't seem to mind. From what she could tell, they seemed like opposites, but the complementary kind for sure.

"Is that your girlfriend?"

"Yeah."

"She is so fucking hot."

Once Madison realized he wasn't one for small talk, she danced with the girl, who had pulled her right on up, and the both of them had a time. In a way, it felt she had known this girl, Maze, all of her life with how inviting, carefree and fun she was.

And when they went off to the bathroom, Madison's only intention was to help her headache, be of service to this wonderful woman in some way, so much so that she'd forgotten she had ecstasy in her bag to begin with.

Naturally, once she remembered it was far too late, her eyes grew wide and panic ensued but Maze ensured her that she felt fine, everything was fine and to stop acting insane before the random girlies fixing their makeup thought she was trying to hurt her. She fanned Madison to help her calm back down and stated that if anyone was going to freak out, it'd be her and her alone.

"Fuck it." Maze said, shoulders back. "Maybe it was meant for me to pop a Molly."

She didn't know why that made them laugh hysterically.

Fast forward to now, Blu was narrowing his eyes at this new addition to their twosome, trying to decide whether or not he could take her word as truth.

"You're looking at me like that and I get it, I totally do, but I swear on my life it was an accident."