You can’t predict anything. Well, maybe there are some things you can predict, but that’s just more like inevitabilities, certain events or actions of others that are obvious. Plain to see.

​

Again, and again, I fight with these nuanced notions. Here I am again, cracking the knuckles in my thumbs, waiting for the frustrating sickness in my stomach to pass. The most unpredictable thing I can count on is myself. Irony? Nonsense.

One minute….

…two minutes…

…three minutes…

…four then five…

​

The sickness doesn’t go away. Let’s resume.

​

I wish I had a lipstick that didn’t smudge. Surely there is a certain type that, with one application, it would smooth bright silk onto my lips. But when I use my cheap, plastic-like brand, I spend extra time blending and wiping away the smudges.

​

Please. Don’t judge me. Am I superficial?

​

If I’d realised that it would take this much care and preparation, I would have gone for a simpler look before I slid the knife into the strap around my ankle, ready to head out.

​

I hate this place. Public toilets are always a shamble anyway, but to be honest, I much prefer shabby, filthy toilets over the sparkling white, (for some reason) honey scented ones. With the former, and its dingy, cracked toilet-seats and bits of loo roll strewn over the floor – what else do we have to expect? All the gross features are predictable. Ha.

​

However, the cleaner toilets? I do expect pristine cisterns and dry floors. So, whenever I spot or smell anything that doesn’t fit, then I’m horrified.

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Although, this dripping restroom is gross beyond being gross.

​

But, I’ve been told a few times that the best way to be inconspicuous is to be conspicuous. Which brings me here: a shabby toilet in a sticky bar, surprised that I can’t hear someone snorting drugs in any of the stalls. Maybe coke’s just done off the actual bar these days. I should have thought ahead and carried a quick…

​

Never mind.

​

My phone reads 12:59am. Alex should be here by now. I check my messy lipstick in the mirror once more, and lick a smear of deep blue off my teeth.

​

I push open the creaky, graffitied door, feeling the dubstep base from the speakers pound itself into my chest and feet.

​

The bar isn’t too busy, but because of the wasted disregard for personal space, everyone is packed tightly together, so it looks a lot busier than it is.

​

Alex is the only one waiting at the bar, back mostly turned to everyone riding their highs to the music. I can see his profile from here; his brow, nose and lips washed in tacky blue light.

​

Hide by not hiding. I move into the crowd, grinding to the music, and bending over when the beat dips. I feel a smack on my bum but it’s not the worst thing. I slide the flat of the blade up my leg, hiding it against my hip. I’m at the edge of the dancefloor now, then I’m at the bar, with my mouth pressed to Alex’s ear and the knife pressed into his back.

​

He goes rigid in my grasp, his muscles tensed so that I can feel it through the knife.

​

‘You’re late,’ I wanted to whisper, like a badass woman in a movie. But that would have been predictable, wouldn’t it? / ‘You’re late!’ I shout over the dubstep music, digging the knife a millimetre further into his shirt.

​

‘You’re too early.’ Just like that, he presses the handle of his switchblade into my vag, the blade laying diagonally across my thigh. He pushes the hilt further onto my clit, through the fabric of my skirt but it still makes me loosen my grip a little. I’m thinking things I shouldn’t be thinking or can’t write here. ‘You owe me, by the way.’

​

I’m a bit confused as to what happens now; my knife pressed against Alex, his knife pressed against me in a simultaneous threat and tease. But I’m more confused about what I owe him and why.

‘What’s that?’ I nip his ear.

​

‘A shot, because I’ve won.’

‘How?’

‘If I slice you now, you’d drop to the floor. If you stab me first, mine would cut you anyway.’

‘That sounds like bullshit to me.’ A cluster of people leaves the bar, the DJ stifles a yawn.

‘Well, I’d be pissed off if you did.’

‘Why don’t we buy each other a shot, then we can go?’

‘Ha. I don’t have any money.’ He looks around the bar, and pushes the handle of the knife into me once more before snapping it back. I pull mine back too.

‘Neither do I. Eviction next month?’

‘There’s only so many times we can go penny hunting in the flat.’

He looks around again, surveying. ‘Shall we go? There won’t be much here.’

The bartender is making a cocktail or mixer of some sort, and while he heads through a swinging door, Alex reaches for the bottle of whatever spirit is inside, takes a swig and grimaces. He clenches my jaw open and pours a shot into my mouth before replacing it behind the bar. It tastes like whiskey or rum, I’ve never known the difference between them except that they both burn.

Alex presses his lips to mine – cold and hard, a tight-lipped kiss that sparks the nerve endings over my body.

‘Let’s go,’ I say when he stops.

‘Pascha is down the road, that’s not a cheap place.’ He hands me a hoodie he’d draped over the seat beside him.

I tell him how cliché this makes everything. He tells me I’m so predictable, and he tells me what I already know.

Dayvii Walker