Gold Dust Woman

Chapter 8

Camila didn't like to drink – she really didn't. Alcohol made her tongue feel funny and her hands get sweaty and she always wound up walking into a hangover no matter how much water she drank during the night. To put it simply, Camila and alcohol did not mix. The first time she ever felt it burn on the tip of her tongue was her sixteenth birthday and even Ally had downed a shot of vodka like it was water, so Camila figured if Ally could do it, she could too.

Turns out, vodka did not taste like water. Not at all. It tasted the way hospitals smell, and that thought alone turned Camila's stomach. Of course, somewhere around the fifth shot it stopped tasting like anything at all, and when she woke up the next morning tucked into Lauren's bed with a glass of water by the clock, 12:43pm flickering through the condensation, and a headache beating against both sides of her temples, she decided alcohol was not her friend – a fact she was reminded of on several occasions.

But she was twenty now, and that meant she'd grown and matured into someone who was friends with alcohol – at least, that's what she was told when a pair of hands shoved a glass of something fruity under her nose anyway, and really, who was she to argue? Camila didn't exactly have the best track record with the whole 'decision making' thing (read: falling in love with the single most emotionally unavailable human on the face of the Earth), so she figured it couldn't hurt to let someone else take a turn for the night.

And that's how she found herself in the back of a cab giggling over the fact that the little burp she let out still tasted faintly like tequila.

"No wait, turn here," she slurred, grabbing the driver's shoulder. She was too drunk to notice the way he shrugged her off and rolled his eyes. She huffed as he made the right turn at the last second, and erupted into laughter when she slid across the seat.

Seatbelt. Right. Forgot about those.

"Where to now, miss?" The cab driver asked her after a few moments of driving straight down the deserted road. Camila forgot she was supposed to be giving directions; she'd been distracted by her reflection in the window – had her face always looked like that?

"Um, I don't remember," she scratched her head, looking around outside the window – past her reflection. None of it looked familiar.

"Keep going straight," she decided, completely lost, but her drunken logic told her she'd recognize something if they just drove forward long enough.

"Your friends gave me your address, miss. I can just take you home," the driver tried, looking to Camila with pleading eyes. She didn't understand why he didn't want to keep driving her around town. It had only been 20 minutes since she slid into his backseat and she only made him pull over once so she could throw up. Besides, she was hilarious.

She thought she was great company.

"Nope," she stated, popping the p and leaning forward to emphasize her point, "I can't go home yet, Joey."

"It's Jeffrey."

"I have people to be, places to see!" She laughed, falling across the seat, and then reminding herself, seatbelt, Camila. Focus.

"People to be," she repeated, under her breath and breaking into laughter again when she registered her mistake.

"If you could be any person, Johnny, who would you be?"

"I would be Jeffrey," the driver grumbled, shaking his head. Camila tilted her head to the side – who was Jeffrey?

"I would be Lucy," Camila stated, nodding vigorously, "then I'd be good enough."