Maneater ( ✓ )

There was something predatory in the glint of her ice-blue eyes. A vibrant thrum of bass pounded in the nightclub, and fluorescent lights fell upon her like springtime showers as she sat off to the side with her date for the night, a red-haired man named Timothy. A purple light casted itself upon the pair, and her platinum-dyed hair lit up in a lavender coloring as energy coursed through her veins.

She barely looked at him, but Timothy didn't mind. This was a chance to see Susan in a new light — literally, and just why his friends insisted she was not the kind of girl he should be wasting his time on. Countless times John and Craig had claimed 'Tim, that girl's flighty. She'll leave you the second she gets the chance!' but she was still there, seated beside him and watching as bodies gyrated together in one hypnotizing fluid motion. Certainly, Timothy's friends had to be wrong about her.

He watched as she took a sip of her drink, her lipstick-stained lips leaving a mark along the rim of the glass. For a moment, she glanced at him, and he saw the coating of black eyeliner around those icy blue eyes. His mouth went dry immediately.

And then, she was looking away, eyes scanning the dance floor as if debating to join those who danced as though they were made of wind and light as grass. Timothy wasn't a great dancer, and he didn't really know why he'd asked Susan to go to the nightclub with him, but they'd gone and now they were there, and she was still eyeing up everyone who walked passed them; perhaps she was 'weighing her options,' as Craig would put it. He was liking Craig less and less as the night progressed. All of the doubts running through Timothy's head about Susan certainly weren't healthy, and he feared he might just scare her off.

An older song began to play throughout the club, an eighties tune that had him tapping his fingers against their circular wooden table as he downed another sip of his drink. He thought of the song as an irony, as it so clearly portrayed a woman similarly to what John and Craig were insisting Susan to be like.

'The woman is wild, a she-cat tamed by the purr of a Jaguar...' the lyrics of the song spilled, and Timothy found himself subconsciously eyeing Susan even more than he had been already: waiting, eager to see what her next move would be. Where her next move would be.

Across the dance floor, a dark-haired man appeared with hair styled in the typical Greaser fashion: the stereotypical bad boy. He ran a comb through his hair and sauntered towards the bar, catching the attention of multiple women as he passed through. He moved confidently, as if he owned the place, and leaned against the bar effortlessly as he ordered his drink. He said something to make the bartender laugh, and then the man began walking off with his drink, heading to a secluded table meant for two people wishing to have a more private conversation.

It was then Timothy noticed the man wasn't alone, and a platinum head of hair was following the one strewn in a leather jacket. He stared after her in shock. There was no doubt about it; that woman was definitely Susan.

The dark-haired man leaned closer to Susan as she did to him, immersed in some form of conversation that left Timothy with a swarming pit of jealousy in the base of his stomach. Annoyingly, Craig and John had been right.

Coincidentally, the lyrics 'the beauty is there but a beast is in the heart' came from the song, and as Timothy sat dumbfounded by having been ditched by the finest looking woman he had ever seen, he began to see her for what she really was.

The dark-haired man obviously had money. The leather jacket said it all. It was obvious that money was a key factor for a woman such like Susan, as you wouldn't see her going for someone dressed like a bum in a place like this. She wanted someone pretty to have her arm slung around: someone who could take care of her and all her materialistic needs. Her sentiment fell as deep as a kiddie pool, as it became brutally obvious that appearance was all that matters.

Timothy felt embarrassed for a moment, wondering just how he could ever compete with a man like that. Sure, Tim had money too, but he wasn't the epitome of attractiveness. He was the outlier: the stray mark on a sketch that had taken years to perfectly craft. He was nothing compared to the man Susan had gone after, and he took a sip of his drink bitterly at that notion. He then noticed she's abandoned her own drink in favor of allowing the dark-haired man to buy her a new one, and all he could think of was 'bottoms up' before finishing that off before going back to drinking his own. He wasn't going to let a woman like her waste things.

The more he drank, the less ashamed he felt and the more aggravated he became. Susan had come here with him, not that leather wearing, beer slinging scumbag she'd decided to shack up with after eyeing potential candidates for half the night. And damn it all if Timothy was going to just let her go.

With a rush of confidence, he stood up and swayed on his feet for a moment. He'd drunken a lot within the last half hour, all of that time in which he'd been staring bitterly at the pair. Damn her for making him look like a fool. He swaggered his way over to the booth in which her and Leather-Boy had moved to and crossed his arms in the manner a father would when scolding his misbehaving child. Susan returned the look with one of disinterest, and the unspoken words of 'get lost.'

He shook his head, silently declining her message as he eyed down the man in the leather jacket. "So," he spat. "You like stealin' people's women, do ya?"

Leather-Boy eyed him curiously. A hint of an amused smile crossed his lips as he stood up to be on even level with Timothy. "Frankly, it looked like she was bored spending time with you."

"Doesn't give you a right to steal a man's date though, does it?" Timothy hiccuped. Thinking back, he probably shouldn't have consumed the amount of alcohol he had; it had been a long time since he'd last drunk this much.

"Consider it a public service." Leather-Boy replied smoothly and then turned to talk to Susan, "What do you say you and I get outta-"

But she wasn't sitting there anymore. In the short time the men had been arguing, she'd already moved on to someone else, leaving them both in her wake. Leather-Boy's shoulders noticeably slumped in foolishness.

"Well," Timothy drawled, noticing Leather-Boy's crestfallen look. "It would seem you and I have both lost this round."