Angel Of The Morning

Chapter 1 - The night

Leeds

It had been late, an hour she'd long lost track of. The calm sky was littered with stars, the chaotic streets littered with flashing cars, traffic lights and venue signs. This town was too small, the people too in each others business. Ava Cartel could hear a thousand blurred whispers among the steady endless hum of traffic, voices and fast, distant music.
She would drink regardless, and devour the streets with her friends until every bar had been drank in, and they would wind up in the Tankard, down in that pit if sweat, noise and flashing disco lights, until her friends died off into the crowd and she would eventually walk home alone, sometime between 3am - 4am, possibly ending up at some stranger or distant associates house.

She looked at herself in the mirror at the Tankard bar bathroom downstairs in the Cellar. The bamboo plants on the floor brushed against the hem of her tiny white diamonte studded dress. Her long sleeves flared past her wrists, and her dark chestnut hair flowed in curls around and past her cleavage, which was covered by her silver cross necklace. Fathers gift. It was wreckless, self damaging to drink and pulsare through town, time again after the let down he knew deep down, but amidst fury and devastation, she permitted herself the freedom of this one night. Her fathers cruel words echoed in her memory, as fresh and clear as the moment they were spoken, the same words he had uttered to her when he'd first caught her kissing a boy, the time she'd scratched the car as a new driver, the time she'd faught with his stepdaughter and given her a bruised face.
''I should have abandoned you years ago alongside your cheating, waste of a mother. You are just like her."

As she lifted her arm to show the bar tender which drink she wanted from the top shelf, she knew any man achieved tonight would be no more than her healing product, disposed of at her discretion. They were here to use and abuse, she reminded herself, but she no longer discarded pleasured men asthough they were a first draft in the waste paper bin. She had learned and expressed empathy towards others instead of instant passive contempt, but had Adam shown it to her? Only four days ago he had strictly ended their relationship out of the blue, unwavering to persuasion, and to her horror, she had walked down a street and noticed him in the window of a busy restaurant just yesterday, holding hands across the table with another woman as though she had been the one together with him these last eighteen months, not her. She hoped they would be out tonight, to fuel the anger in her heart and flare her passion for wrecklessness, she hoped he would see her in the arms of another man, sometime later in the midst of florescent light, head numbing music and heated, intoxicated bodies on the club floor.

She did not see Adam that night, although many men resembled him in their short cut brown leather jackets, thick black glasses and boot cut navy jeans.

He had got rid if his last option of a girlfriend.

No, she wouldn't allow her fathers words to penetrate her, to dissemble her confidence into hartowing self pity, not now.

Instead, she saw a man at the bar who reminded her a little of her father at first glance. He was leaning with one arm on the counter, one leg bent with his foot resting against the other, and was enjoying a calm talk with the tall grey bartender who had served her her Mojito earlier. She assumed that bartender was the owner, judging by the integrity of their conversation.

Anna, her closest friend, her only friend who could stand to drink with her when she was in this state, was stood with her arm in arm as they waded with their drinks through the crowd. During their breaks between dancing, they sat at one of the bays at a little round glass table, sipping each others cocktails and laughing about all the interesting characters in the bar. Anna was wearing a mat patent dark brown dress, equally low cut to mine, but sleeveless, showing off her beautiful arm tattoos. Her dark blonde layered hair fell wildly about her shoulders as she smiled and laughed across the glossy black marble table. We turned away the company of at least two men in the first twenty minutes, but accepted a round of drinks from a stranger, delivered to us by the grey haired bartender.
'Just try it.' He suggested, laughing cluelessly. 'The gentleman explained that he enjoys buying the drink that best resembles the drinker.'
Anna's drink was an Expresso Martini, which Ava knew she enjoyed occasionally, but peculiarly, Ava's drink was a Bloody Mary cocktail, which occasionally she would order on her first round on past visits to this venue. The drink tasted sour at first on parr with Mogito palette, but the thick, textured drink began to immerse itself in its rich, citrus flavours.
'I want to figure out who bought these.' Anna explained, picking off the coffee beans that were sat on the foam of her drink.
'I have a strong feeling its the bartender, or the owner, whoever he is.' Ava smiled over at the bar, sipping her drink so often that she had almost emptied her tumbler.
'The owner is a strange man, he doesn't often work the bar here, he's usually parading around in the restaurant upstairs in his suit in the afternoons.' Anna remarked, tidying her hair back over her shoulder with a flick of her hand. 'I can see some of our college friends at the bar now, perhaps we'll meet them on the floor in a while.'