A World Alone - D.R.

six

Dan's hands had hardly left her waist all night, mainly because she kept almost falling off her stool. If it wasn't for Dan, Jade would've been on the floor a long time ago, and probably would've developed about ten different bruises up and down her legs.

She hadn't laughed like that for a long time. She wasn't even annoyed that her friends had left her in the bar with a stranger because she was having such a good time. And anyway, Amy had her on Find My Friends and she knew the bartender as well.

Dan hadn't clicked this well with a girl at a race weekend. Ever. Even though she was drunk and could hardly stand up, she still spoke as though she was sober, albeit very distracted by almost everything.

From the conversation they were having at the bar, he was very impressed by her. She had a biomedicine degree and throughout uni, had worked in a trauma unit at a hospital. All he did was drive a car around in a circle.

"You look really familiar," Jade said, interrupting her own sentence about how her gin cocktail in her pitcher was sparkly and insisting that Dan looked at the sparkles.

Dan looked up at her as she was staring at him, trying to piece together where she had seen him before. "I just have one of those faces," he replied, grinning at her.

"Everyone has a face," she said, and reached out to poke the dimple in his cheek that came out when he smiled, which was very often. "You have a very nice face," she said, and took both of his cheeks in between her palms and squeezed them together towards his lips, giggling at the face she had made him make.

Dan laughed along with her, taking her hands in his. "Your hands are so cold," he said. They were like little ice blocks in between his significantly warmer hands.

"I lack a heart, so I can't pump nice warm blood around my body," she said, still giggling as she spoke.

"I don't believe that," he said, watching her lean towards the straw poking out of her jug of drink and taking a sip.

"You only just met me, darrrrling," she said, dragging it out, and hopped off the barstool. "I'm hungry," she said, freeing one hand from his to grab her bag off the bar top. She pulled him off his stool with the other hand. She stumbled and Dan put his other hand back on her waist, helping to steady the Brit.

Jade flicked her hair over her shoulder, whipping Daniel in the face lightly and she walked carefully out of the bar, leading him towards her favourite corner shop. It was her favourite purely because they were open late and they had a bakery section that was stocked at all times of the day and night.