Always, Arlo [Published]

Chapter 19

"Atta-girl. Don't let anything dim your shine tonight babe, okay? Tonight is all about you." Minji reaches her arm over and gives me a small squeeze on my thigh. I gleam at her words, giving her an appreciative gaze. "Soon Valentina Morgans face will be all over SaintWear and magazines, etcetera. How exciting!" Noor squeaks with amusement in her soft brown eyes.

Eventually Minji shifts the car into drive and begins driving off and away from my apartment, she follows the directions to the club from her GPS. Noor blasts music on the aux cord, she's currently playing Call Out My Name by The Weeknd and Noor and I sing the lyrics out like we're doing a karaoke duet. Newfound interest me and Noor share is our love for The Weeknd. We play his whole trilogy album during our car-ride to the club. Minji loves his songs too but she's more focused on the GPS directions because she said she's prone to getting distracted easily. Karaoke would lead her straight into a ditch she said.

Finally we make it to the club. The outside of the club was beautiful, the whole building has different colored lights illuminating the architecture as the sky turns to nightfall. The lights flash and change color all in unison and theres a bunch of people entering the club with their beautiful outfits. Finding a parking spot was quite hard as everyone surprisingly is at this club on a Monday night. It's apparently a hot topic right now among the media, so I get that people don't want to miss out on the fun while its still active and popular. Minji finally finds a parking spot and we all gather our items and adjust our clothing before we exit out the car.

Walking along the sidewalk, we get closer to the building and I see the beautiful fountain in front of the club that captures the eye of everyone. It also has changing color lights on the base of the fountain and the sound of the water running through the structure is soothing and oddly calming to hear as we walk by it.

Noor and Minji walk extra close by me as the cold September air chills us, we obviously were thinking more about our outfits than the weather. Minji has a tight silver dress on that matches her silver eyeshadow on her pretty mono-lids. She has dangling earrings that pairs the outfit together. Noor has on a baby pink mini-skirt on with a white tube top with a bedazzled logo on the center. We all collectively shiver from the chilly weather, hurrying to get inside the club.

The booming music from inside the club rattles through my bones as we enter. The vibration from the loud music rings through my core and throughout my entire body. The music is great and this place is packed. Everyone is either getting drinks at the bar, sitting at a table or booth chatting with others, or on the dance floor. There where people everywhere, So Minji and Noor held onto both of my hands and we all walked together closely as we get deeper into the crowd of people, so not one of us gets lost.

As we head for the bar I glance around, looking for a certain someone in this crowd of hundreds upon hundreds of people. Not one soul in this club catches my attention the way he manages to do, even with the different faces and all the good-looking people. All I was searching for was him. It was about seven PM, and the photos where supposed to drop at eight. A marketing strategy to make everyone wait in suspense for the new photos and then boom they drop at an unexpected time. I kept a lookout for him because I wanted to celebrate this achievement with the one person who believed I could achieve this before anyone else did.

We get to the bar and we conveniently find three available stools. We all take a seat and Minji looks at the menu as she doesn't waste any time trying to get some alcohol in her system. I turn to Noor who is gazing at the flashing lights and the scenery of this beautiful night-club. "Where is everybody?" I ask her and her eyes snap onto me after a minute, realizing she was lost in a little trance. She gazes around curiously before answering, "They're probably all just doing their own thing. Arlo told us all to meet up around seven-fifty at one of those tables though, for your photos." She points in the direction of the tables and booths. I glance over but no one from the company is there yet. I wonder where they are in this sea of people.