Anastasia

48

"Maybe that's all we'll ever be - an incomplete sentence, a half-written story. Finished, without an ending."

"A Martini, please." Ana settled at her favourite spot at the bar, swinging one leg over the other. The bartender glanced up, masking his expression. She assumed he must have looked surprised, because she saw his eyebrow twitch slightly into two small arches. However, he didn't question.

"With gin or vodka?"

"Vodka, please."

Again with the owlish blinking at her.

"I'm legal." she stated, clearing his doubts. There was something about that look that she couldn't put her finger on, somehow. It seemed like she had seen him before, but she couldn't retrieve that memory in her mind. He mumbled something which she couldn't quite hear due to the loud, slow and horrible singing at the front. She leaned against the wall, tilting her head up to give a sidelong glance at the bartender making her drink with grace and skill, silently impressed.

The pub was located at the basement of the University, and everyone, including the bartender, is a student studying in the campus itself. Some of them work in the service line as part of their internship in the course. Luckily for her, she doesn't have any internship that needs to deal with that much people. More specifically, her internship would be working with professors, watching and observing how they work with patients and the kind of behaviours they should put on in their jobs. Minor things like that are already taxing for Ana, but if she is going to get that scholarship, she would do whatever it takes to get there. Even if it includes working with people.

Ana let the horrific and out-of-tune melody fill her ears, occupying the space in her head and chasing away all the thoughts she had been building up on for the past three days. Matthew is now a completely changed person, that she knew. The Matthew she once knew wouldn't do something like that - sneaking into somebody's phone just to get her contact number and fill her in with a bunch of hurtful words.

Like people say, when they've been through a heartbreak, they change into a whole other person.

So did Anastasia.

She had never been to a pub in her life, so this was her first time, and it would be her last. The music is just too much for her ears to take in, although the drinks are amazing. When she was in high school, she had snuck several bottles of hard liquor from the shelves that stores the prized possessions into her room (most of the time in the middle of the night so she wouldn't get caught), mixing a couple of liquids here and there, sometimes almost getting herself drunk and high, but she would drown herself with loads of water afterwards, careful not to over drink because she knew she could vomit them all out, and that would be a huge mess.

"Here you go." he placed the drink in front of her, his fingers holding the spine of the drink gingerly. She gave him a brief nod, stirring her drink with a small straw placed in the Martini glass. She picked up the lime, squeezing out the juice from the half cut fruit, stirring the drink as it dripped from the green semicircle. She sucked the remaining juice from of the lime, then took a long sip of her Martini, smiling at the familiarity of the alcohol on her taste buds.

"Where did you learn how to do all these?" she quipped, looking at the bartender with curiosity. He peered up at her through his long eyelashes. He looks so familiar. She thought, jogging her memory of faces she had seen and interacted with in the campus. Then it hit her. The same almond shaped, onyx eyes. They never quite looked the same as other people she came across having black-coloured eyes. His was...unexplainbly adventurous and playful.