Max leaned over the railing, casting his eyes on the raging party beneath him. Standing there on the indoor balcony, he felt like a god, overlooking his ocean of bodies which swayed like waves, in time with the electronic beat. For a brief moment the impulse of leaning that little bit further overtook him; he wanted to dive into crowd and allow himself to be blissfully carried away by the current. But it quickly disappeared when he guzzled down some of the whiskey he was holding, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

He washed out the loneliness that consumed him, and replaced it with a dizziness that brought a smile to his face. He wasn't on the job tonight—ever since the 'Butterfly' had been stolen, he hadn't been allowed to distribute what remained, or any other drugs. So at least he had the night off. God knows how much booze he had knocked back— if he didn't want to hurl and pass out, he was going to have to get moving. It was time to get down there, dance, and maybe find a girl hot enough to take home with him.

With that objective in mind, Max closed his eyes and bobbed his head up and down, concentrating on the music, then he turned around and walked towards the others. Although the party wasn't his, Sebastian was friends with the organisers, earning him and the group a place in the VIP section right there, on the second floor. The atmosphere was lighthearted and the alcohol flowed like water—it was almost surreal, like something out of a movie.

Lounging on velvet couches were Sebastian, Jeremy, and Samantha, along with other people Max had gotten introduced to but had forgotten their names. He joined them, slouching beside a good-looking brunette and throwing an arm over the backrest behind her. Jeremy chatted animatedly with a bunch of musicians, passing a blunt between each other and blowing rings of smoke in the air.

They seemed to be talking about their past endeavours and other shenanigans, so with great curiosity, Max tried to join in. But he might as well have been talking to the wall behind him, because he was drowned out by their own voices and the music. Every once in a while, one of them would reply to him, but then break out into a drugged laughter to an inside joke only they could understand.

"Where are you from?" Rather than wasting breath, Max resorted to sparking up a conversation with the girl beside him. She looked at him confusedly, her unnaturally-large lips puckering, so Max repeated his question, enunciating every word. That alone was draining what little energy he had out of him. His eyelids were drooping and his hair had lost its shape from the gel, falling in a wild mess around his face.

"Brazil," She said so with a heavy Portuguese accent, and then turned to the girl beside her, resuming her own conversation. Max could sense an obvious language barrier, as well as a physical barrier now that she was turned away. He leaned back, feeling ignored and powerless.

He hated it when he didn't have people's attention on him—he was the star of the show, he was the main man! What was he doing wrong? He blamed his new inability to pull women on the alcohol pumping through his veins.

I have to get out of here. I need to get off this bullshit VIP shit and get on that dance-floor.

I just need to find someone willing to come with.

He noticed Sebastian sitting around, staring longingly at the party below. He was bouncing his knee and tilting his head from side to side, a beer in his hand.

The perfect candidate.

Max stood up—a little too quickly, which made him light-headed—and went over to Sebastian, keeping his eyes trained on him so he would walk in a straight line. "Let's go hit up some bitches. I came here to party, not sit around like my grandfather."

Sebastian grinned and nodded. He placed his bottle on the cluttered coffee table and stood up. Max slapped his back and the two began to walk towards the staircase, but Jeremy called out to them, "Yo Max! Where you going? Aren't you gonna hang with us?"

"Nah man, I'm going," He then quietly added, "You have fun in your circle-jerk."

"What?"

Max shrugged with one shoulder, a goofy drunken smile on his face.

The two jogged down the stairs and onto the bottom floor, immediately jumping to the music. Max felt strangely revitalised; he had done a lot of talking lately, and frankly, he was sick of it. He needed something that got his heart pounding and his blood flowing. He grabbed a random girl's ass and immediately began to grind against it, biting his lower lip in excitement.

"I've been watching this girl—" Sebastian began to say, but Max was too entranced in what he was doing to hear him. That earned him a tug on his collar, to which Max responded with a snarl.

"What is it? Can't you see what I'm doing?"

"There's this girl I've been watching," Someone bumped into him, to which Sebastian responded with a retaliatory shove. He then inched closer to Max so he could hear him. "She's wearing this green dress—she looks yummy. I'm going to try to get with her."

That peaked Max's interest, so he removed the girl's arms from around him and turned away from her. She slapped his back in frustration, but having barely felt anything, he ignored it. "Who is this girl?" If Sebastian had his eyes on someone, it meant that she really was delectable. He had good taste, unlike Max, who seemed to follow the direction in which his dick pointed half the time.

"She's over there." Max followed Sebastian's outstretched hand with his eyes, and there she was.

The girl in the green dress.

She came in and out of his sight as people danced, but because Max was relatively tall, it wasn't that hard to keep his eyes trained on her, eyes that were slowly starting to fill with lust. From where he was standing, the only features he could make out were her hair and her back, so it was a matter of how her face looked like.

"How's her—" He circled his face with a hand.

Sebastian clicked his tongue and did a thumbs up. "She's real good. But I'm gonna go get her alright? Wish me luck." He was about to push his way towards her, but Max reached out to grab his shoulder.

There was no way he was letting this little bird fly into the wrong nest.

"I just saw her face. She's actually pretty ugly." Max was lying of course, but Sebastian didn't have to know that. He couldn't prove him wrong either, as Max was a head taller than him. Sebastian narrowed his eyes at him and shuffled his feet.

"Yeah right. Nice try." Sebastian said, but Max grabbed his arm as he tried to leave again.

"I'm serious. She's a monster," The firmness in Max's eyes rooted Sebastian in his place. Before things could get awkward he said, "Listen, I think I saw a girl there who would be better for you. She's got blonde hair and massive tits. Perfection," He jerked his head towards a spot that was a long way from the girl he had his eyes on.

Sebastian hesitated, but then nodded. Slowly at first, then faster as he gained confidence in Max's words.

This guy's dumber than usual when he's drunk.

"You should really go for it," Max gave him a little shove, and Sebastian started to make his way towards the imaginary girl. When he was out of sight, Max combed his hair back into his place with his hand and adjusted his shirt. If he was going to get this girl, he couldn't look like a drunken fool, especially since he had already failed to pick up before. If he didn't get this one either, he would resign and then join a monastery back in Spain.

Max snuck up behind his target and wrapped his arms around her small waist. He leaned in and breathed her scent in. She smelled like a tropical fruit punch: mango, papaya, coconut...there were others but he couldn't quite distinguish them. "Hello mamacita," He murmured against her neck. She tensed underneath him and he felt her breath quicken.

It was going all wrong. She should have turned around by now and grabbed his face in her hands, or at least leant back and let him grind against her, or even...

"M-Max?"

What the hell? It could not be her.

There was no way that she could be here.

Then again, was it the right girl? She couldn't be the only girl with a green dress in the entire establishment...or could she?

He immediately let go of her like she was something hot and had scalded him. She spun around on her heels and took a fearful step back from him, a look of absolute horror on her face. In doing so, however, she bumped into someone behind her and almost toppled over, but Max managed to lean in and grab both of her arms, reflexively pulling her against his chest.

When he had realised what he had just done, he pushed her away from him, holding onto her arms. "What are you doing here?" His hands still gripped her biceps, but he couldn't let go of her, because it was the only way he could reassure himself that she was real, and not just an hallucination.

"What—the—Let go of me!" Zara shook his hands off her and rubbed the sore spots they had left behind. "You really thought you could just hit on me? After what you've done to me? You pig!"

She reached up to slap him, but Max caught her wrist in mid-air before it could make contact with his face. "I'm sorry! I didn't know it was you, I swear!" He was so relieved that the place was dark, because he was blushing like a complete fool. There was no way he would make a move on Zara. No freaking way.

"Wow! Of course not!" She turned away from him, unaware that his hand was still gripping her wrist, "Aurora? I'm going! I want to go!" She turned her head left and right, looking for her friend, but there was no response.

"I think she's gone. Probably gone to shag someone," Max said, having sobered up. He wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her towards him again.

"How would you know?" Her body was stiff like a plank, but she hadn't rejected his touch. That was a start. Maybe she was too engrossed in her friend's disappearance to worry about his salaciousness.

"I don't, I was just guessing. Just don't worry about it, she'll be fine—"

"How can you say that! If you don't leave me alone I'll—" She writhed against him, but he held her so tightly that there was no way she could escape.

"Zara, please! Calm down for Christ's sake, woman!" He gritted his teeth, hoping that she wouldn't kick him in the nuts for restraining her like that. He didn't want her to leave him alone, not there, in a sea of people he didn't even know. Plus he was starting to enjoy having her body pressed against his, it was comforting.

"Don't tell me to calm down!" She tried to knee him in the groin, but Max tilted his body away from her. He cupped her chin with one hand to tilt upwards her face so she was looking at him.

"She'll be alright, okay? I know the people who organised this shit. They have security all over the place." That was a lie. The correct thing to say was that he had tried to get to know the people who organised this shit but they were too busy getting high and drunk to even look at him.

Zara stopped squirming.

"It's okay. You're not alone in this dump. I'm here now," He held her head against his chest and stroked her hair with his free hand. "Damn, your hair is so smooth tonight. What happened to your curls?"

Zara snorted at his attempt to flirt, but she couldn't help but smile. "What do you think?"

"It rained?"

She punched his chest.

He cursed loudly. "God, why are you so violent?"

"You bring out the worst in me," She took his hands and placed them on her waist, much to his surprise, and she began to sway her hips. Zara looked up at him with those big blue eyes, and Max felt his heart flutter in his chest and his lips curl into a content smile.

Although their dancing was slower and completely out of time with the quick beats of the electronic music, they were so focused on each other's presence that to them, it didn't matter.

She was here now, and so he was going to enjoy her, at her fullest.

"I know you were the one that kicked Sebastian under the table!" She teased, lifting her arms and resting them on his shoulders. In heels, her head reached the bottom of his nose—she was the perfect height, in his opinion.

"Oh really?" Max grinned, feeling his muscles loosen as he became more comfortable with her.

"Yeah. Who else could it be, Samantha? Speaking of which, where is she?" Zara let go of his shoulders and danced on her own, her eyes never leaving his face.

Max felt an emptiness when Zara released him, but he couldn't force his hand. It was already a miracle that she hadn't tried to fight him yet, and the fact that she had even talked to him after the way he had treated her was unreal. Maybe she was as drunk and horny as he was.

"Up there somewhere, I don't know, and I couldn't care less," He took a deep breath, "I'm here with you now Zara, and that's all I care about right now."

All I care about right now. Did that mean that the moment they parted ways, things would go back to the way they were: awkward and uncomfortable?

Zara didn't reply. Max chewed on his lip and stopped dancing for a moment, her sudden change in mood raising all the red flags in his mind.

I fucked up, He thought angrily. Angry at himself, not at Zara. It was totally understandable that she felt this way. He was just scum, even Roman had said so.

"Zara," He had to fix this before things went downhill again, "Zara I—" He was stuttering again. Zara looked up at him with her brows furrowed, which made Max even more antsy. He struggled to put in words what he felt. It wasn't a strength of his, talking about feelings, and now it was even more difficult because she was watching him, waiting for him to say something, anything. "Zara I think I li—"

Someone shoved him forwards, sending him stumbling into Zara. She didn't even have time to react before his full weight was on top of her, and the two went crashing down in a tangle of limbs. 

-:-