Bad Guy

The air in the convenience store is thick with the smell of stale coffee and hot dog water, buzzing under the flat, hum of fluorescent lights. You're just trying to grab a pack of smokes, but then you see her. Leaning against the magazine rack, she's all sharp angles and ripped fishnets, a scuffed-up leather jacket worn over a thin white t-shirt. She looks up, catches your eye, and a slow, lazy grin spreads across her face.

She pushes off the rack, moves toward the cooler, and you watch. She grabs a soda, cracks it open, and takes a long swallow right there. The sound of her swallowing is loud in the quiet store. She puts the cap back on, tucks the bottle into her jacket pocket, and starts walking toward the door, right past you.

As she brushes by, her shoulder bumps yours. It's not an accident. She smells like cheap perfume, something floral and chemical mixed with the faint, metallic tang of fresh blood.

"See somethin' you like?" she says, her voice a low murmur. She glances down at the front of your jeans, then back up to your eyes. The drone of the open refrigerator case behind you is the only other sound. "Or are you just gonna stand there and watch me walk out with this?" She pats the pocket of her jacket, the glass clinking softly. The bell over the door jingles as she pushes it open, but she doesn't leave yet. She waits, holding it just for you.

The sun is a bastard, slicing through the factory windows and straight into your eyes. Dust motes dance in the beam, a tiny, glittering audience for the disaster zone of your bedroom. The air is thick, tasting of last night's whiskey and something metallic. That's when you feel it: the slow, deliberate grind of Taylor's weight on your hips that sends a jolt through the mattress. The cheap sheets are a lost cause, a tangled knot of cotton bunched around your legs. Last night's clothes are archaeological artifacts on the concrete floor: her ripped t-shirt, your jeans, a bra you don't recognize.

Her own top—a white tank top now a Rorschach test of sweat and blood—sticks to her ribs. A dark bruise is blooming on her shoulder, a mirror image of the one your knuckles are probably sporting. She doesn't seem to notice. She never does.

Taylor leans forward, her hair falling to curtain your face. The smell of her shampoo is almost gone, replaced by the musk of sex and stale cigarette smoke.

"Hey, babe," she says, her voice a low rasp. "We still on to meet your folks later?"

She doesn't wait for an answer. Her arm stretches out, fingers brushing past an empty whiskey glass on the nightstand. They close around the worn leather of your wallet.

"I was thinking of hitting the corner store before we head out."

The beat hits the car before you even see the building, a deep, sick thud you feel in your teeth. A line of black-clad shapes snakes away from a corrugated metal door, under a flickering sign that just says VORTEX. Taylor squeezes your hand. She's drowning in your old army surplus jacket, the one you told her not to wear. She looks small, harmless. Her head is down, a curtain of dark hair with light ends hiding her face.

The bouncer is a mountain of a man in a t-shirt that strains at the seams. He doesn't even look at you. He looks at your hand on the small of Taylor's back. Taylor just presses closer to you, a perfect picture of a girl who needs her big, strong man to get her into the party. He nods and unclips the velvet rope.

The second you're past the door, she's gone. The heavy jacket is shrugged off and dumped on the nearest chair. Underneath, she's wearing a shredded black t-shirt, cut so high it's barely a shirt at all, held together by a few safety pins over a black bra top. Her miniskirt is frayed denim, her combat boots scuffed to hell.

She doesn't wait. She just melts into the moving, sweating bodies on the dance floor.

A strobe light flashes, and for a second she's a frozen image of a girl who owns the room. Then the lights spin and she's just another part of the chaos, her hips moving to a beat that's all her own.

You lose her for a second in the sea of people, then you see her again, near the edge of the floor. She's got a bottle of water in her hand, tipping it back, her throat working. She catches your eye. A slow, sharp smile cuts across her face. She crooks a finger at you, a come-hither gesture that feels more like a challenge. Then she turns her back on you, dancing with a tall girl in a mesh shirt who laughs and puts a hand on her waist.