Ruin the Friendship

1. All roads lead to Rome

"Mum he's on his way, hurry up!" Darcie screamed from the hallway, and a whole house was upside down, trying to find a specific hair tie that could make her ponytail look effortlessly perfect. "I told you to start getting dressed sooner" her mother replied digging in her jewelry box, hoping it was somewhere there. "There are four women in this house, there must be another tie you can use" someone shouted from one of the bedrooms, sending Darcie to a fit of rage that broke her posture enough to sent all the work she had put on her hair, to hell. The moment she started the process all over again, someone's klaxon slit the silence of the night, and woke the neighborhood up. "Fuck! He's here!" Darcie shouted again, but her words were barely heard behind her mother's screams of the appropriate language that must be used at all times in the house. "I'll let him know you're running late" Claire, Darcie's younger sister said, and run towards the balcony waving at the polished, black Mercedes-Benz parked below the house.

The driver rolled down the window, allowing a cloud of strawberry-kiwi flavored smoke come out in an instant. He waved back before asking; "Is our sister running late again?" Claire nodded, but offered him to come upstairs to wait for her instead of being down in his car, an offer that was declined because they would run late for their reservation if they wouldn't hurry. "Tell him I'm on my way downstairs" Darcie told Claire, and the latter passed the message to the driver, who within a few seconds switched the music on the radio to Chase Atlantic's discography, and turned the volume up enough for a whole army to wake up. Darcie wore his favorite satin emerald dress, which was backless and with a high slit on her right thigh, matched perfectly with her silver jewelry, her emerald shoes filled with tiny crystals, and a small silver clutch. When the driver saw her stepping out of the front door, he got out of his car, hugged her tightly and opened the passenger's door for her, smiling with the vision before his eyes. When he got in the car, Darcie smiled, "You like what you see?" He looked at her with starry eyes, "Are you fishing for my complements little Smurfette?" Darcie smiled, "From you? You wish." Nick laughed and handed her a small bouquet of peonies that he got her as a gift. She thanked him, before burying her nose in the petals, and commenting on how gorgeously they smell. After a few moments of silence, and while the car was on its way, she pulled down the mirror above her seat to reapply her lipstick with surgical perfectionism. "Seriously?" the driver joked, after inhaling and exhaling that sweet smoke, "Yes, seriously. I need to look good" Darcie replied firmly, but a soft smile appeared on her lips. "You look good either way" he commented in an almost whispering voice, and Darcie decided to not let these words get in her head, as she has fallen for his tricks before many times. "What's the plan for tonight?" she asked after her lipstick looked exactly how she envisioned it, and turned to look at the man driving next to her. "The usual. I heard she'll be there with her boyfriend which, I swear, I didn't know she had" he started explaining, "so I made us a reservation at the place I know she'll be at tonight." Darcie looked at him with a puzzled expression on her face, and he didn't need much time to understand why she had that confused look. "She posted it on her 'Close Friends' story on Instagram. Thankfully she still has me in there" he said and drowned some of his thoughts with his vape. 

When they arrived at the bar, Darcie's eyes widened, since this was the most luxurious place she had ever seen in her life. "I bet no boyfriend of yours ever brought you here" her friend smiled as he took her hand, masking himself as the ideal gentleman. "Nick, you know that this is sick, right?" she asked him and he couldn't understand if she was joking or not. "I'm not here to make a move on her, I simply want to make her a tiny bit jealous" he said with a soft smile, hoping to hold up the act of the perfectly in love couple. The place was more gorgeous than its online pictures, and Nick insisted that drinks were on him, so he ordered a bottle of champagne, claiming that it was to celebrate the single life he's doomed to live. Their glasses would be filled before emptying, but the girl Nick was looking for was nowhere to be found, and he started feeling restless, knowing that he'll have to accept his rejection if she wouldn't be there today. He wanted to be the one to break her heart, not the other way around, and he was with the company of a gorgeous girl that everyone around them was looking at. "What's going on between you and Mark?" Nick asked her, expecting a juicy reply to keep his mind from thinking of Annie and how she stood him up. "We're good" Darcie replied, "much better than before but there are still things that need to be discussed", words that did not fit Nick's standards of what he needed to hear from her to make himself feel better. He drank one more sip of champagne and after filling her glass again, he asked; "Like what?" Darcie took a deep breath, "The thing with cheating." Nick almost choked with his drink, "The what?" he shouted loud enough for the tables around them to notice their existence. "He may have cheated on me twice" Darcie said while swallowing another gulp of wine, and soon Annie and her boyfriend were not that important in Nick's mind. "He 'may'? What does 'may' means?" he asked leaning closer so that he could hear her clearly without screaming, "He was talking to other girls behind my back, but not all the texts were flirty or suggestive, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt" she replied confidently, a feeling that got erased the moment she saw Nick's face laughing hysterically. "Look baby, if he was some kind of prince Charming, I'd see your point, but he's average to say the least, and you look like a mythical creature next to him. You have been together for five years and not only he hasn't proposed to you, but he also proudly cheated on you. Dumbing him is the right choice" he said, taking a cigarette out of her bag and lightning it up. "I thought you weren't smoking" Darcie teased him, as she was lightning up her own, "I do when I hear gorgeous girls like you sleeping with any loser but me" he said and Darcie failed to see if he was joking or not. "You'll say anything to get a girl in your bed" she joked trying to ease the tension she suddenly felt, "Not any girl though" Nick replied and looked at her from her head to her toes, as if he was seeing her beauty for the first time tonight.