If anything, the words are endearing. She’s no doubt he didn’t mean them the way they could be interpreted, especially not the way that has his cheeks turning pink again. If anything, it just has her smiling at him because he’s had too much to drink and she knows what his morning is going to look like. Full of regret, aspirin and a bad taste in his mouth that no amount of gum is going to be able to erase. It wasn’t her responsibility, she could absolutely let him keep drinking his night away.
“Oh, it definitely came out wrong,” she tells him, patting his shoulder again to tell him that it was alright, despite whatever he thought he was implying. “But I’ll forgive you because you’re toasted. Not even slightly toasted, you are nearing black out status quickly, sweetie. You’re not a drinker, are you?” Her tone is light and playful even as she says the words. There’s no judgement there and even if the words get him upset or remind him that this isn’t who he is, she says them anyway. There’s not a worry about offending him because chances are tomorrow he’ll forget he even sat down next to her and had any of these conversations. She’ll just be another face in fuzzy bar memory.
The words are amusing and not offensive at all. She knows what people think of strippers, hold them on a level that’s something less than human. It’s the nature of the profession and while she accepts that some people will just have those thoughts, she finds satisfaction in the thought that when they look at her, they see something less than themselves. But in reality, they’re looking at something far, far greater. Her DNA sets her apart and they don’t know half of the time what they’re dealing with. She doesn’t think he actually looks at her in those terms, because he hadn’t flinched when she’d told him what he did and for that, she appreciates that his cheeks turn pink. “Although if you wanted me to, I could give you a time and place of the show.”
The words have him ducking his head, trying to stifle a laugh he can’t name the source of. It might be solely because she’s being kind, or because she’s right. He is drunk, drunker than he can remember being in years, and he doesn’t know if that’s funny or sad right now. But every second it’s harder to remember how he got here, only that he is. Struggling to stay on his bar stool while he tries not to blush at every word leaving the mouth of the woman next to him. A task he’s currently failing at, and he thinks it would be easier if he had even a slightly better grasp of sobriety.
Somewhere in there is a question, one that has him shaking his head. It’s a mistake when it leaves the world spinning around him, fist struggling to keep his head propped up. That feels like a losing battle too, but at least the world seems softer now. Whatever baggage he dragged in here with him, it feels farther away, and he hates that for a moment he understands why people drink. Tomorrow he’ll remember why it isn’t worth it.
“Not even a little,” he tells her. He hasn’t had this much to drink in years, and if he can remember why, it’s safer not to focus on it. Death and heartache and all those emotions that he’s trying to leave in the bottom of a glass, and they struggle to crawl back up his throat.
If his smile starts to fade at even the thought, she’s a good distraction. One that tosses out an offer in the next moment that swiftly derails the dark path he might be headed down in the next moment. And it’s hard to tell anymore if his skin’s so warm because he thinks she’s hitting on him, or because he’s completely trashed. “That doesn’t sound like me either.”
