Gracie Abrams is eking out a solitary existence, fighting day-in, day-out against the drain of working customer service and nursing two newborn kittens in her off time. Out on her own ever since her sister moved in with her boyfriend, the burden of...
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Tilting my head back, I continued on with my act, brushing off the sudden thickness in my tone. "Is it really bad that we're here? I don't want anybody to get in trouble."
The biker folded under the weight of an air-headed blonde chick in her twenties. Really, there was only one response men could give such a creature. He backed off, shuffling away from the door on tilted steps that spoke of a life filled with ankle injuries. Or bad knees.
"Nah, hun, go on in." He waved us off with a degrading laugh.
Kakashi's hand soon disappeared to rest outside of my clothes, hovering at my mid-back as he ushered me into the pulsating mess. I was immediately overcome with the need to get away from all these people gyrating and yelling at TVs. A series of pool tables and card games took up a railed section to the right. The bar, some S-curved thing that took up the left side, dipped far into the back where I saw neon signs for the bathroom. The rest of the first level was a writhing mass of bodies. Giant TVs stuck to every surface, and a somewhat important game had people milling about, throwing their arms around in anger or excitement. The dancing was pretty minimal, actually, considering how loud the music was.
Neon and knick-knacks covered every inch of the space. I mean, every inch not covered by a breathing human was filled with something. A series of mugs, some sport teams and their championship games plastered to the front. Random sailing paraphernalia, each more ancient and craggy than the last. Somewhat of a sailing theme, but with the red lights lingering on the floorboards and the TVs everywhere, I'm not sure they achieved it.
Looking upstairs, I saw strobe lights and gyrating bodies. Ah. There was the dancing.
Kakashi guided me to a more sedate corner of the teeming mass. Affixed in front of a series of three TVs hanging from an off-mint-colored wall, this spot dangled between those watching the games and those playing cards, cigars and cigarettes clogging up all the breathable air. The card tables weren't exactly quiet, but they were still a respite from the more intense drunkards yelling at the TVs.
"Stay here," Kakashi ordered, his lips touching against my ear. Most of my locks cut around my ears, so it really had been his lips on the outer rim. My hand covered the ear and the resulting tingles of his breath as Kakashi disappeared into the crowd. An efficient shinobi knew how to break record timings, because he'd only left me for two minutes before he came back holding two glasses of hard liquor.
"Just hold it," Kakashi said, handing off the golden brown liquid and clinking its three ice cubes at me, before he wrapped himself behind me. His one free arm tucked under my chin, and I grasped it with my one free hand. He pulled me closer to his body, so that we looked like a cozy couple, subdued but willing to party, enjoying the game from a distance so we could be all over each other.
A chin nosed right above my ear. He was too tall to rest his chin on my shoulder, but I figured this was the closest equivalent.
"Just watch the screens," Kakashi murmured, and like my body had been coded to obey his every command, I tilted my gaze up, watching players on a football field run around, looking like overly-stuffed ballerinas. The glass chilled my hand, making my fingers waterlogged and trembly.
