It felt like the elevator up to my apartment was intentionally taking much longer than usual, my arms were cramping from carrying the large bottle of gin and equally proportioned bottle of pineapple juice along with various snacks I thought I had earned after such a shit day. I had been too lazy to stop by the apartment to get my backpack before going out shopping and had opted to carry everything home a couple blocks even though I knew the paper bags the corner shop carried were useless and likely to break the moment I left the store. It was a habitual and maddening problem for me, to know ahead of time that being lazy initially would only make life harder for me later and still choosing the same option each time, but fuck future me, what had she ever done to help present me? She was almost as bad as past me.

Finally making it to my door, I turned my right hip towards the card scanner and shimmied my thigh around until the sensor picked up the card in my side pocket. The lock clicked in the door and the panel slid open just in time for my arms to start to give up, causing me to half run into my apartment and throw the glass bottle of alcohol onto my futon and hope that it didn’t shatter. My heart stopped as it pinged loudly against the cheap metal frame beneath the old, thin bottom cushion, but it somehow survived and rolled safely up against the backrest. I let out a groan as I dropped the rest of my shopping also onto the couch and then collapsed next to it, immediately kicking my work boots off. I had been exactly right in my assumption that wearing them without socks was a terrible idea, even though I had a lot more rest time than usual that day, I still had a couple nasty looking blisters forming on the back of my heels where the seam of the boots had rubbed all day. I hated to think what would have happened if I had worked on my feet the entire shift. After giving my feet a long moment to air out and almost falling asleep sitting up, I shook myself awake with the idea that it would be a waste of time off if I spent it sleeping the whole time. I unzipped the front of my outfit and wriggled my arms out of the sleeves and pulled the top of the jumpsuit to my waist so that I could claw at my bra and get it off as quickly as possible. I let out an audible sigh of happiness as the cool air touched the skin beneath my bra and I spent what would probably be considered an embarrassing amount of time intensely scratching every little bit of my skin that had been stuck in the infernal undergarment all day.

I was three quarters of a way through a family sized bag of cheese puffs when my phone started to violently vibrate with text messages. I considered just ignoring the messages, generally I kind of just tossed my phone somewhere and ignored it when I got home, everyone I generally cared to talk to knew that if they really wanted to talk to me they could always find me online after work, but I did specifically say that Joannie should text me if she wanted.

Patsy is going mental! Apparently they called in the big lawyers that usually sit around on retainer and do absolutely nothing.

At least I made for good entertainment, I replied.

I can’t wait for us to go out tonight so that I can drill you for more information.

Oh shit, right, I had stupidly agreed to that. Surely she couldn’t fault me for not feeling up to it now.

About that, I typed, don’t know if I still feel much up to it. It was a long day, kinda just want to veg out.

She started typing and the icon hung, like she was typing, deleting, and thinking of a different way to word it, and typing something else again. I hoped that she was just being distracted and needed to pause and not instead trying to find the right way to chew me out about not wanting to go out anymore.

Oh no you don’t, you’re not using this as an excuse to stay in again. Christa, that’s all you do! You gotta break this cycle sometime and you promised! I promise it’ll be fun and at least you can say you’ve been to a kinky club, I still owe you drinks anyway.

I stared at my phone with a grumpy expression on my face, she didn’t understand how I worked because she didn’t handle stress in the same way. She was inclined to go out and party her cares away while I much preferred to be a hermit in a the sanctity of my own home where it didn’t matter if my personal hygiene was less than perfect sometimes. If I went out that meant a shower, makeup, finding a clean outfit, and worst of all, putting a bra back on.

Look, Joannie, I’m going to level with you. I just took my bra off for the day and I really don’t think I can bring myself to putting one back on again tonight.

Haha! You know, I can respect that, but just don’t wear one? Who says you have to?

She made a fair point, there was no law saying I had to wear a bra in public, it just seemed like it was some unwritten, but sacred rule that I did. Now that I thought about it though, it was a stupid rule and I wanted to break it.

You don’t even have to work tomorrow, she continued when I didn’t respond right away. I’m not going to leave you alone about this, I’ll come over and get you myself if I have to.

Fiiiiiine, but if I end up hating it I’m coming back early.

Meet me at 7 outside the square downtown?

I agreed and stood up with a huff, I couldn’t believe I had given in, now I had to go through a whole beauty ritual that I didn’t particularly enjoy. Some girls love getting all smoothly shaven and painted, but I was generally not one of them. I valued comfort and ease over being perfectly groomed all the time. It was hard to see the point in it when I had a physical job anyway, if I took the time to get my nails nicely done and put on makeup in the morning, everything would be destroyed by the end of shift anyway.

After a long, hot shower, I spent extra time sitting around in my towel being lazy about finding an outfit to wear. I couldn’t remember the last time I wore anything that wasn’t lounge clothing or a work uniform. I was sure there was probably something sitting at the bottom of the laundry pile that would do, though it was probably pretty wrinkled and disheveled. I made the mistake of thinking that instead of tackling the problem and figuring something out that I would pop into the game I was playing for just a moment to check on things and next time I looked at the clock I only had a half hour until I was to meet up with Joannie. Cursing my ability to screw myself over every single time, I dug through the laundry pile for the second time that day and finally came up with a simple black spaghetti strap dress that looked like it might have actually meant to be worn as a slip under something else, but it smelled surprisingly clean and was some sort of slippery material that didn’t really hold wrinkles. Slipping it over my head, it fell down to my mid thigh with a cheeky slit on the left that threatened to expose the skin all the way to the top of that hip. The bust of the dress was even more daring, stretching to fit my generous chest in a way that made it seem like the material was straining to keep everything in like overeager dough billowing up over the top of the bowl. Shoes were an entirely different problem, especially since I flatly refused to buy anything with a heel that wasn’t a boot. High heels were only for the benefit of men and no one could convince me otherwise and I was not about to entertain the idea of my feet pinching and my arches burning all night so that guys could see my ass sway when I walked. The best I could come up with was a pair of black, combat style boots that I hadn’t worn for work yet so they were still reasonably clean and new looking. It was an interesting combination for an outfit, but it actually kind of worked from a slightly edge-y, but still wanting to look sexy and feminine angle.

No time for real makeup, I fumbled through my piss poor excuse of a cosmetics drawer and found a tube of mascara that wasn’t totally dried up and a stick of black eyeliner that I was reasonably certain would not give me pink eye. I carefully lined my waterline and then tight lined my upper lashes repeating over and over in my mind my mother’s wisdom of not to sneeze and stab myself in the eye, then put a thick layer of mascara on the top and bottom lashes and stared in the mirror with my eyes wide open as long as I could to try to let the formula dry and not immediately transfer all around my eyes when I blinked. What I had managed to slap together as a look was not bad so far, the super dark mascara and eyeliner were a stark and attractive contrast to the deep, forest green of my eyes, though it did draw attention to the fact that my eyebrows were ginger and therefore trying to be non-existent. I vaguely remembered having a brown eyebrow pencil somewhere, back when I was still in college and caring about what I looked like when I went to class, and after some digging in the drawer I realized that I had probably thrown it out between moving appartments and would have to hope that using black eyeliner instead wouldn't look too ridiculous. Brows filled in, they looked better to me, but it felt like I couldn’t win because I didn’t love that they now looked a bit out of place with my hair still being very ginger otherwise. Glancing at the time, I realized that I had forfeited my right to be fussy about my appearance when I sat down to the game earlier and that it would just have to do. Black was the only lipstick color that didn’t smell funny, so I went with it and turned my attention to the halo of fuzzy hair that had developed because I had neglected to brush out my hair while it was still very wet. I forced a brush through my hair and wondered how I had managed to put up with the unruly, half-curly mess long enough to let it grow past my shoulders. I was sure my neighbors were rolling their eyes at the strings of expletives flying from my mouth as I tried not to break all the tines from the brush. I was able to wrangle it smooth enough to get it into a loose ponytail presentable enough for the evening, not like I was intending to attract anyone anyway, I fully expected to be home in time to finish a bag of chips and get a couple hours of game time in before I passed out for the night.

“You actually made it!” Joannie called excitedly to me as soon as I stepped off the bus. “And look at you!” She gasped and twirled her finger around in front of her to indicate she wanted me to spin around so she could see all sides. “I can’t believe I’m seeing the infamous Christa in a dress with makeup on!”

“I can do this sort of thing if I wanted to, I just never really want to.”

“Well you look hot,” she gushed, “I’m going to play your wing woman tonight I think.”

I made a snuffling sound through my nose and rolled my eyes. She had obviously spent the past couple hours painstakingly choosing an outfit and getting ready, I couldn’t hold a candle to how good she looked. Her dress was a beautiful silver sequin tube dress with matching heels, her makeup was smoky and sexy with a brilliant ruby lipstick that made her lips look pouty and kissable. I couldn’t deny that I had thought a few times about trying to shoot my shot with her, we both were open to dating women, though I was hung up on the idea of what might happen if she rejected me or if the relationship went south. She was my only real friend and I didn’t want to throw that away because I wanted to fuck her kinda badly at some points.

“Oh shut up,” I said with a wink, “you look good enough to make me consider trying to go home with you tonight.”

“Christa,” she chastised, though her face blushed slightly, “you’re just saying that. You have this whole rebel, gothy chick vibe going on where it looks like you’re so hot and don’t care, I’m jealous.”

“Don’t be, I’m going to be the one holding your purse while you get whisked away to the back of the club over and over tonight.”

Her face went a deep red and she let out an awkward giggle. “Doubt it. Anyway, I have a mask for you since I’m sure you forgot that part.”

She opened her handbag and rummaged through until she pulled out a black fabric version of a masquerade mask that tied around the back of the head. It would leave most of the bottom of my face uncovered and let only my eyes peak through on the top half. After handing me mine, she pulled out an identical mask and stretched it over her eyes and tied it into place.

“Figured we could match tonight so that if we both get drunk off our asses someone might be able to put two and two together and make sure we end up finding each other,” she explained.