The club erupted in cheers as the first bars of the song began to play. Synth-heavy and with a penetrating beat, Tiffany felt her body pulsate with the rhythm, the English Rose in her martini glass rippling with the vibrations.

She made her way through the crowds, using her elbows to split the mob before her, eyes scanning the neon-light and mirror decoration, looking for the white leather couches that indicated the VIP area. She finally spotted the burly bouncer checking wrist bands and walked, as fast as her black stilettos would allow her, to the table where her friends were sitting.

She placed her glass on the silver cube that doubled as a table before letting her body fall rather unceremoniously, eliciting a slap from her best friend.

“Watch it, Tiffany, you nearly flattened my purse!”

Tiffany laughed, alcohol seeping through her breath. She leaned closer to her friend.

“Where’s that boytoy you had a few minutes ago, Jessi?”

Jessica smirked.

“How much did you have to drink while I was gone?”

Tiffany shrugged her shoulders and pretended to count drunkenly as she lolled her head, trying to remember. She immediately felt Jessica´s hand squeezing her arm in concern and smiled inwardly at the gesture. Even now, four years later, it was still sisters before misters.

She looked back at Jessica’s worried expression and flashed her a wide smile.

“Three shots, two long drinks and I kept trying to drink champagne from our bottles on the table- but I could never find my champagne flute again after one sip” She glared accusingly at a sleeping man who was completely passed out on the sofas “I think he kept taking them all”

Jessica barely spared a glance at the unconscious boy.

“He’s always been an idiot. It´s about time he grew up”

Tiffany nodded and took a sip from her thick sweet cocktail.

“Hmm, anyways, my drunk-high was like an hour ago-“

“When you decided to try the pole over there before falling flat on your ?”

“You saw?”

“Yeah, from a distance”

She stifled a laugh.

“Yeah, so now I’m just classily coming down- last one for the night. Probably” She added as an afterthought. “How come you saw? Was that guy just not engaging enough?” She swirled the yellow liquid in the glass “Making out with your eyes opened, I see.”

Jessica frowned slightly.

“He came on too fast. Hands everywhere and when I refused the first kiss, his answer was, 'maybe you haven’t drunk enough yet`”

“Ouch. Very tactful”

“Too weird”

“But, you know” Tiffany looked around her, at the bustling bar, the strobe lights and all the people rubbing together “that’s kind of what clubs are for, most of the time. Maybe for the amount you pay at the entrance and that, you might expect a more suave approach but at the end of the day, all of these guys just want to get into your ”

“Yeah”

“Dark lights, alcohol, sweat, and songs about . If he was so fast…what took you so long? You were gone for like an hour”

“I went outside to the smokers’ area.”

“To smoke?”

“No, just outside, reply to some texts and just think”

“Want to head out to the chill-out terrace and talk about it?”

Jessica shook her head and grabbed Tiffany’s drink. Their eyes locked. Then Jessica drank.

“Okay” whispered Tiffany before yelling to the other people around her table “To the dance floor!”

She kicked the unconscious guy in the shin, who groaned in response.

“That’s for drinking my champagne, ” she muttered angrily before following the rest out of the enclosed area.

The female voice wailed through the speakers and Tiffany popped her body to the beat, occasionally pressing her back against Jessica as they both danced clumsily and serenaded each other with cheesy gestures. The dance floor began to get more crowded as people came up from the RnB bottom floor to dance to the famous Techo DJ that took over the previous set. Despite being elbowed and elbowing others, Tiffany banged her head to the music, her once straightened hair falling messily on her face and curling slightly in the places where it came in contact with her sweat. She ran her fingers through her hair, pushing the wet locks out of her face.

Every song was a surge of adrenaline and every drop of the bass had Tiffany yelling more. She had to admit, that all in all, the night had picked up with the new DJ and this was probably one of the best nights she ever had since her sophomore year.  She let herself get carried away, dancing with one of her male friends who coincidentally was part of a dance crew, but who would for the most part, carry out complicated moves while allowing Tiffany to twirl and swirl and still look good.

“Hey Tiffany, aren’t those people in our year?”

Tiffany turned to look at where her friend was pointing.

“Where? I can’t see them”

“There, next to the column”

Tiffany stopped dancing and immediately felt her heart pounding inside her body, ready to break her rib-cage. She saw a group of four girls, all vaguely familiar, dressed up and talking, leaning in due to the volume of the music.

“Yeah, I think so”

“Anybody worth calling over?” he asked, trying to get a better view.

“There’s Yoona, she’s nice but if she’s there it means that the other three must be them”

“Them- oh, them”

“Yeah, they’re not really worth it.” She saw the group disperse and quickly turned back to her friend.

“Ready for another one?” he grinned as the introductory melody began to play for ‘Alphabeat´

She shook her head.

“I think I´m going to die from exhaustion and my feet are killing me.” She made the time-out sign and high-fived her friend before making her way back to the sofas. It was at this point in the night when she was usually glad of having forked over the extra money for the VIP seating.

She leane back on the sofas, watching bemused the unconscious guy slowly slip off the drink-stained seating, to land in the sticky floor with a thump. A classy end to his evening, as usual. She grabbed a bottle of water and let it swirl in , feeling her tongue numb from the last kick of alcohol and gulped it down in one go. She began to calculate how many glasses of water she would need- gone were the nights were she scoffed at Jessica for asking for water towards the end of the night at the clubs. Thinking of Jessica, where was she now?

She let her arm hang loosely from the top of the sofa in what she half -jokingly hoped would be a seductive pose and began to look for girls wearing white mini-dresses that could potentially be Jessica. From the corner of her eyes, she saw the group of classmates she spotted ten minutes ago and sighed.

Seating in the VIP area, how typical. Every day, every night, acting like some hot , straight out of a high school teen flick. Her stomach lurched with the thought. One of them specially, made her particularly sick.

Miss Hot-Stuff-Look-at-Me-Always at every single party. Miss I-made-out-with-the-whole-first-football-team in one night. Miss, at the back of the carpark…ugh. Miss Everything Tiffany hated. From the arrogant smirk, to her stupid laugh, to the way she would always nonchalantly walk late into class. She gripped her water bottle in frustration.

“You make me so ing sick” she muttered.

“I wish you’d realize how much and maybe then you’d stop your stupid ing act”

She got up, determined to leave them out of her sight when, her eyes caught the flash of something white. She snapped her head around and her jaw nearly unhinged on the spot.

Jessica was there. With her. In one of those stupid white sofas. The others had suddenly disappeared and Tiffany had therefore being gifted stall seats to the little show unravelling at the back.

The girl had her hand placed on Jessica’s thigh and even from a distance, Tiffany could tell that she was rubbing small circles. She was beginning to slowly creep up on Jessica, whispering to her ear while holding her shoulder with the other hand. Jessica sat rigid, eyes averting the gaze of the other girl, and fiddling with her hands.

Tiffany’s blood boiled and she found herself, seconds later in front of the two.

Jessica looked up, before quickly looking away again.

“Hey Tiffany” her voice wavered.

“What are you doing?”

The other girl ignored the yelling woman in front of her and inched even closer to Jessica’s ear. Tiffany saw Jessica’s eyes momentarily widen before looking down again, her face now flushing.

“Stop it”

The girl looked up, with that arrogant smirk permanently etched on her face.

“She doesn’t want me to. Jessica, do you want me to?”

Jessica’s face got even redder and her hands were now tightly clutching each other.

“Besides, we´re just talking. In case, you hadn´t noticed, we share some classes together, Miss… I’m sorry, what was your name? I’m just really bad with plain faces you see-“

Tiffany grabbed her hand and pulled roughly, bringing the girl to her feet,

“Leave her alone” she growled angrily.

“She can choose for herself”

“She’s had a bad night, and you’re just taking advantage” she tugged harder on her arm, bringing her now completely to her feet, their faces inches away from each other.

“We all have bad nights, and sometimes there’s just someone out there who can ease the pain…”

“I’m warning you, go and play your stupid games somewhere else”

“And sometimes, there’s just someone out there who can send everything crashing again”

Tiffany dug her nails into the girl’s arm.

“Leave her alone, you ing moron. Go and play with some other girl, go and flirt with her and then think smugly about how hot you are and how everybody must ing love you since they even change sides of the streets for you”

She pushed back into the sofa and the girl landed roughly, hitting her head with the backrest of the sofa. She rubbed her head as her hair cascaded on her face, covering her eyes.

“Imbecile” she muttered.

“I don’t give a damn what you of all people have to say.” She tapped Jessica on the shoulder and lowered her voice to a gentle tone. “Let’s go Jessica, there’s nothing left for us in this club”

She pulled Jessica away, who still managed to steal one last glance at the girl rubbing her head. She stopped abruptly to stare.

“Jessica, let’s go”

“Sorry, I just thought I saw something.”

“What?” asked Tiffany, now slightly breathless from the effort of fighting through the crowds in high-heels.

“Money”

Tiffany laughed.

“Oh, we’re so taking a cab”

They stood outside the club, rubbing their hands for warmth or some sort of protection from the chilly winter night. Tiffany exhaled large breaths and watched amused as the white-ish mist faded from her face.

“Tiffany?”

“Hmm?”

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking. It was like one minute I was alone, just thinking about stuff and the next…she was there, I don´t know how, like whispering in my ear and stuff”

“Hmm, yeah, I’ve seen her do that a couple of times. It just feeds her ego.”

“I just froze, I don´t know why- I mean, I-I’m not even into girls right and-“

“She does that. That´s what she does, she just goes up to people who nobody, not even themselves would-erm that…That´s it.”

“It wasn’t going to go any further-“

“Even if it did, why are you making excuses? You´re 22, Jessica, you can do what you want. I’m not your mother. Just not in that state, or that way. She was taking advantage. It`s what she does”

“Yeah” nodded Jessica thoughtfully. “Today was a bit of a weird night. But I guess a retreat at the right time is still a victory, right?”

“Are you still counting the number of club nights you considered to be ‘good’?” Tiffany recalled her friend’s freshman obsession of keeping some sort of tally of good club nights and trying to outdo the number every two months.

“Maybe. With exams coming up it may take my mind off things for a while”

“Are you for real?”

“Nah.” Jessica giggled “I was pretty stupid in freshman year”

Tiffany sighed and looked at the starry sky.

“I think everybody is. I know I was”

They stood in silence for what seemed an eternity.

“Tiff?”

“Hm?”

“Cab”

“Oh, cool. Finally”

And with those last words, they climbed into the cab, as elegantly as their shoes would allow them and drove away from the club and away from the intoxicating beats.