🏆ONC 2023 || Ambassador's Pick
🏆ONC 2023 || Round Two Qualifier
One night is all it takes to change a life.
There's something wrong with Felicity Farr. It's how she can't seem to do her job right no matter how hard she tries, and how she's still...
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The girl at the bar is not beautiful.
She perches on her stool like an albatross ready to disappear into the sky, as if there's so much life in her that her body can't stay still. Felicity wonders if the girl would explode if she touched her, a livewire spraying gasoline into the air, or if she would wrap her soft hand around Felicity's wrist and pull her close---a hand that currently balances a glass stem between chubby fingers, the bottom of her drink clinking against the countertop ever so often.
In the faded yellow light melting through the ceiling, the girl at the bar is unbearably ethereal, a violet-haired goddess crafted from broken hearts and sandcastle dreams. Her stomach peeks out from a baby blue crop top that Felicity would never even dare to own as she twirls the stem of her glass between bluntly-shaved nails, something green and deadly spilling over its crystal lip. She ignores the emerald drops now staining the counter in favour of staring at the whisky bottles lining the back of the bar, scarlet mouth pursed as if appraising their brands.
The girl at the bar is not beautiful. She's something much more.
Felicity yearns. She yearns to slip up to the girl and take her home, to see if she loves as sweetly as she laughs. She yearns to press kisses to her golden neck and run her hands over her thighs. She yearns to learn her name until it's the only word she knows.
But she can't. Because she longs, yearns, wants---but she can't have.
"Fels?"
She hates that nickname.
Doug snaps his knobbly fingers in front of her face.
She hates it when people do that.
"Fels, you're not listening. You're very distracted tonight. This lack of focus is why you keep missing out on that promotion, you know."
She hates it when Doug tells her that the promotion could have been hers if she just changed this, or that, or everything, actually, as if he hadn't been the one to pass up on her for said promotion. It makes her regret signing up for that stupid matchmaking site, especially since she hadn't expected her first blind date to be with her boss.
"Fels, I'm trying to talk here. Could you please show me a little respect and talk to me? I'm your boss, you know."
She hates her job, actually. But it's the only one she has, so Felicity forces her lips into a grin so wide that it hurts her cheeks. "Sorry. I've been a bit tired recently."
Doug frowns sympathetically, patting her hand. Felicity instantly regrets leaving her palm in the center of the table and wonders if it's too late to pull her arm away. "You've been overworking yourself lately, Fels. Pretty girls like you shouldn't work so hard." Pretty girls like you shouldn't work at all. The words go unsaid, but Felicity hears it in the slant of his voice, the curl of his fat upper lip.
