AS ONE LARGE group, they all decided to go to the Comet Tavern, a bar that was only up the road and snugly located in the Pike/Pine neighborhood of Seattle. While the boys took Nirvana's van to get there, Reagan took her car, cursing herself for the duration of the drive.
She tried to convince herself into feeling the lull of sleepiness, but it never came. The fiery state of excitement that had overcome Reagan while she'd played drums had yet to burn out in her veins, and contrary to how she wanted to feel, she was charged with energy.
She made a deal with herself as she pulled into the parking lot of the Comet. She wouldn't get drunk, though deep down inside, she craved an alcohol-induced haze. She would have to stay sober enough to drive home. Otherwise, she'd end up passed out in her friends's van.
Reagan sat in the seat of her car, listening for the sound of slamming doors and babbling voices. She would be the only girl there, something that did not bother her, but instead amused her. The only thing that could have soiled this side of her mood would have been if Kurt invited Tobi to meet them.
After a short once-over in the mirror of her sun visor, Reagan climbed out of her car and trekked across the gravelly parking lot. When she entered the tavern, she was welcomed cheerfully by Krist, Kurt and the other straggling members of the Melvins and the Dwarves.
Dave, the new drummer, was there too. His eyes flashed to Reagan as she walked through the door.
"I'm buying all your drinks tonight," Krist declared as Reagan sat down at one of the high top tables they surrounded.
"Just one drink," Reagan chided, though she smiled.
"One drink? No way, are you fucking crazy? How about four or five? Maybe six?"
"Krist, are you trying to get me drunk and take me home?"
Krist tugged Reagan into a side hug, grinning ear to ear. "No, I'm trying to thank you for being the best stand-in drummer we could have ever asked for. Right, Kurt?"
Kurt nodded his head, his smile mundane. Unlike the rest of his fellow musicians, he was the only one who looked tired. The rims of purple beneath his eyes appeared even more obvious with him slumped in his seat, his chin in his fingerless-gloved hand.
"What do you want?" Krist pressed.
"A beer, I guess," Reagan requested. "Any kind is fine. Just no IPA's."
"I almost forgot. You're a pale ale kind of girl. Kurt, what do you want?"
"I'll pass," Kurt said, rubbing his eye.
"You sure?"
Kurt nodded his head again, only willing to communicate in head bobs. He averted his eyes down to the table and began picking at the loose paint shavings.
Krist pointed to Dave, who spouted off his order readily. Reagan didn't look at him. She mimicked Kurt and turned her interest to the table, scraping what was left of her chewed fingernail against the polish.
Their silence didn't persist as Dave leaned into Kurt and asked him a question that Reagan did not hear. They started to talk, most likely about Nirvana from what Reagan could tell. She was happier when Krist arrived back to the table balancing three beers in his hands, setting them down gingerly in front of his friends.
It didn't take long for Reagan's steadfast pledge of not getting drunk to be cast aside. After she'd drained her beer, anxiously guzzling it as she thought of work, Krist had been hasty in purchasing her a new one.
She found it funny that although she was so concerned about work, she had the nerve to continue drinking. It was a paradoxical way of thinking, but it was as stupid and reckless as Reagan had yet to be in years. The taste of alcohol tainting her breath felt like a form of sweet revenge against her parents.
Maybe she would get drunk and not show up for work the next day. Maybe that would be the risk she was willing to finally take.
By the time Reagan had downed her third beer, many members of their party had left the tavern for the night. She had earned kudos from everyone who bid her goodbye, all of them commenting on her excellent drum playing. If she hadn't been so buzzed, she would have shown more humbleness.
Soon enough, only two members from the Melvins along with the Nirvana crew were left in the Comet. Kurt had retired to the van, claiming that his stomach hurt and he needed to lay down. Krist was too drunk to drive and Kurt was in too much pain to even operate the vehicle, so a crossroads had been reached. Thankfully, Kurt was agreeable in simply resting in the van until Krist sobered up.
Reagan was alone at the high top table, her fingers wrapped around the cold exterior of her fourth beer. Krist had relocated himself to the bar, where he'd begun talking to the well versed bartender about bass playing. Dave had gotten up to chat with the Melvins, but he was staring at Reagan again.
She ignored him. Even if she had wanted to stare back, it wouldn't have worked. Everything kept sliding in and out of focus.
Stupid lightweight, Reagan thought, wishing she had eaten a real dinner as she gulped back more beer.
It was late and the Comet was going to close soon, yet Reagan knew she couldn't drive in the condition that she was in. She weighed her options, wondering if she would have to be like Kurt and lay in the car. That way, she could sober up enough to go back to Olympia in time to scrape at least a few hours of sleep until work.
"Are you okay?"
Reagan's head snapped up as a voice overhead yanked her out of her drunken thoughts. She blinked a few times, trying to clear her eyesight in order to identify the person standing in front of her. Once her vision had steadied itself straight, she recognized Dave staring at her.
"I'm fine," Reagan said, ensuring that there was no obvious slur in her voice. She may have been drunk, but she refused to be a sloppy drunk. From the time that Reagan had first ever sipped alcohol, she had sworn that she'd never make a wasted fool of herself.
"I was just checking. You looked like you were about to nod off into your beer," Dave reasoned, sounding more friendly than condescending.
"I wasn't. I was thinking," Reagan explained.
Dave pulled out one of the stools beneath the high top, taking a seat next to Reagan. He was drunk too, but had reigned control of himself with a precision learned only from years of teenage drinking.
"What were you thinking about?" he questioned.
Reagan scoffed. "Should you really be asking me that?"
"Okay, forget I asked," Dave laughed, unruffled by Reagan's surliness.
Reagan moved her fingers around the slippery condensation of her glass, debating childishly over whether or not she could divulge herself to Dave. She barely knew him, but she was also drunk, and she felt relief knowing that if she did reveal the worst parts of her existence to him, she would never have to see him again.
"Okay," she began. "I'm mad at myself because I'm drunk and I can't drive home to Olympia when I have to work tomorrow. And if I don't go into work tomorrow, I'll get fired. And I can't get fired because if I lose my job, my family will kill me. But I'm not sure at this point if being dead is comparably better than working."
Dave listened keenly, leaning over his clasped fists on the table. His long tresses of hair leaned forward with him, but Reagan could still look into his purposeful gaze. He seemed to examine Reagan's situation at hand with a real determination to solve it.
"I think I know the answer to your problem," he said.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. How about you get rid of this, and then you can sit with me and Krist outside in the fresh air until you feel good enough to drive?"
With gentle fingers, Dave pried Reagan's hands away from her beer glass and slid it across the table, out of her reach. His touch had been nurturing enough to surprise Reagan, but she shook off this revelation and glared at him.
"Never, ever take a girl's beer away from her," she lectured, snatching the glass back into her grip.
Dave stuttered out a laugh, taken aback by Reagan's sassy disposition as she defied his suggestion. He laughed even more when she took a hearty swig of her drink and plopped it back on the table.
"Well, I've learned one important thing about you," he said. "And that's to never take your beer."
"As if you need to know that," Reagan mumbled.
She couldn't help but to be insolent, especially when she knew she was being hit on. By no means was Reagan the kind of person to play mind games with prospective suitors. It was just that she did not welcome them to begin with.
"So that's why you're not in a band? Because your parents would kill you if you didn't have a job?" Dave asked quietly.
Although she had just taken to being gruff with him, Reagan lowered her guard. She slouched her shoulders and sighed, deciding that one minute of playing the martyr wasn't such a bad thing.
"I guess it's something like that, yeah."
"That's too bad. I was going to tell you that it should be you drumming for Kurt and Krist and not me."
No matter how hard she bit her tongue, Reagan could not resist guffawing under her breath. Even through her tipsiness, Dave's comment was bound to make her giggle.
"What? I mean it. You were so fucking good. I honestly don't think I've ever seen anyone play like that," Dave said defensively upon hearing Reagan's snickering.
"What you mean to say is that you've never heard a girl play like that," Reagan retorted evenly. She raised her drink to her mouth and took a sip.
"Well, that too, but it doesn't really matter. A good fucking drummer is a good fucking drummer."
"Mhm."
"I'm serious. I should really just offer you the job now. I don't think Kurt or Krist would complain."
Reagan bursted into laughter again, this time into her drink as she bent her head forward. He may have thought he was being noble, but Reagan found Dave's intentions hysterically funny.
"I don't get why you're laughing. I'm being serious with you," Dave maintained, trying to glimpse into Reagan's eyes.
"You're saying the wrong thing," Reagan insisted. "You're trying to impress me by saying that, but instead, you've only turned me off. If you really wanted to win me over, you'd see me as actual competition. You'd say that you'll fight me for the job and promise that you'll beat me."
"Win you over?" Dave repeated.
Finally, Reagan met his stare, her sight clearer than before as her mossy green eyes locked with his brown ones.
"Yes. You want to fuck me, so you're saying all this shit about me being a better drummer."
Dave considered Reagan's theory, scrutinizing the look on her face while he did so. She appeared smug, but that could have been the alcohol talking, though Reagan truly believed she was right.
"So what you're saying is," Dave began slowly, drawing out each word. "If I wanted to fuck you, I'd have to tell you that I'm the better drummer and that you stand no chance?"
"Yep," Reagan affirmed. She was doing her best to look intimidating, but Dave only seemed more and more fascinated by her sentiment.
"Okay then," Dave complied.
He hooked his fingers beneath his chair and slid it closer to Reagan, causing the legs to squeak in protest against the bar floor. His face was suddenly much closer to Reagan's, along with the rest of his body, but he spoke before she could pull back.
"Reagan," Dave said, his voice hardened by honesty that Reagan could not be sure was true. "You can play drums, but I play better. Shit, I would have done better tonight if it had been me. It would be my pleasure to prove to you that I play better than you ever will."
Reagan had frozen in her seat, her hands no longer tight around her glass. They'd gone limp, her expression falling slack over Dave's words. His declaration had been arrogant and patronizing, as rude and snobbish as he'd intended it to be, but she wasn't even miffed by that.
What had really turned Reagan into an upright puddle in her seat was not Dave's willingness to give her the response that she wanted to hear.
It was hardly that at all.
The one thing that had made her lose her train of thought and twist her tongue into a knot had been the way his voice swirled around her name, intense with meaning.
And suddenly, she never wanted to hear her name ever said by anyone else but him again.
________
Of all the ridiculous things that Reagan had done in her life, she would have never imagined that having sex in a broom closet would top that list. But within a single night, it miraculously had.
It might have seemed obvious that her intake of alcohol would have influenced her decision making, but she felt one hundred percent certain that she needed a stranger like Dave Grohl pressed up against her with his mouth on her neck.
Something about the way he had recalled her name by memory along with the shape his lips formed around it when saying it aloud had driven her insane. Without a hint of unwillingness, Reagan had simply asked Dave if they could go somewhere. And together they had, weaving in and out of the tables in the bar before finding a storage closet near the bathrooms filled with brooms and mop buckets.
There was no rhyme nor reason to how they proceeded. As soon as Dave had jiggled the handle to the door open, he'd turned and slid his arm around Reagan's waist. They staggered into the storage closet while remaining wrapped in each other's arms. He'd gone in for a kiss, but Reagan jerked her neck up, allowing Dave to instead kiss her neck.
She was coherent enough to know that she would not permit any kissing on the mouth.
Kissing on the mouth led to irreversible things, and those things then usually led to heartbreak.
Reagan felt her back slam up against the interior of the closet as Dave pushed against her, desperate to minimize the space that existed between them. More than anything, she wanted to be curled around him, clothes-less and aware only of the fact that he was with her. But the small dimensions of the closet limited certain things.
She closed her eyes, feeling them nearly loll into the back of her head as Dave's teeth nicked at her neck and kissed down to her collarbone. She barely knew him, but she knew for certain that he absolutely had experience in what he was doing.
No words were exchanged between them as Dave lowered himself down to his knees, undoing the button of Reagan's jeans swiftly. She hardly registered them sliding down her legs but had enough sense to kick them off, eager to free herself from the restraint of denim. Dave was almost as fervent as she was, and it was as if a competition had ensued between them both, a test to see who could pleasure the other first.
He curled his fingers around the waistband of her underwear and tugged them down, helping Reagan step out of them before placing them on her jeans. And then, with one brief glance up into her eyes, he moved his face between her legs.
It shouldn't have felt so nauseatingly good -- at least not while she was drunk and pushed up against the wall of a broom closet. But it did, and Reagan did not even try to conceal the groan of satisfaction climbing up her throat as Dave's tongue worked a magical wonder between her thighs.
Impatiently, she tugged her fingers through his mane of tangled hair. As much as she wanted him to continue tasting her on his tongue, they had limited time and a closet didn't seem like the best place for any oral endeavors.
Once again, words were not needed to gain understanding. Dave stood up, unzipped his own jeans and grabbed Reagan once more. With a strength that could have only come from the agony of wanting her so badly, Dave lifted her in his arms until her legs were tethered around his waist.
When he entered her, pushing hard against her hips and receiving a hiss of pleasure from her mouth in return, he tried to kiss her. She rejected him again, even in the midst of such gratification, and instead offered her neck.
Dave obliged, kissing Reagan once more against the thin skin of her throat as he thrusted hard into her. She didn't want him to take it slow, that much had been proven. And he himself knew of the finite time they had together. Soon enough, the Comet would close and Krist would be looking for them both.
"Fuck," Reagan panted, squeezing her eyes shut. The ache in her lower body could only be accredited to the way Dave moved inside of her, relentlessly bearing into her with unfulfilled need. She stretched her neck upward, her face toward the ceiling as she relished in how good it felt to have her legs around him and her hips against his.
As Reagan lowered her chin, Dave caught her without delay. He kissed her, this time on the mouth, unaware that she had been avoiding this very moment from the beginning.
But Reagan didn't push him away.
Just as when Dave had said her name earlier, something came unhinged from within Reagan as she felt his mouth connect with hers. It was a slow kiss, strangely contrasted by the speed at which he moved against her. But this was the one thing that Dave preferred to take slow.
He could have kissed her all night without realizing that time had even passed.
It wasn't like the other kisses that Reagan had experienced. It felt like the most natural thing in the world, feeling his hot breath mixed with hers, his lips fitting perfectly against the shape of her own. She couldn't even believe she had tried to avoid it when it felt so meant to be.
Dave's fingers dug into Reagan's lower back as he held her tighter, pinning her against both his chest and the wall. He wasn't holding back on her -- the rocking of their bodies, ramming against the closet had started to shake the cleaning supplies around them. A broom had fallen and several bottles of bleach and other cleaners rained down from the shelving above.
Reagan did not even wonder if Krist and the others outside could hear. She didn't care. Her only primary concern was getting to the place where she'd feel her body explode and her mind disintegrate from the sheer bliss of what she was feeling. She hadn't visited that place in so long.
"Reagan," Dave breathed, his breath washing over his face and causing her eyelids to flutter.
That was all it took. He said her name in the same way that he had while sitting at the table, and Reagan felt her insides combust in response to his husky voice wrapping itself around her namesake.
For the first time since they'd been in the closet together, Reagan paid mind to the level of noise they were making and reduced her moan to a hush. Her legs constricted tighter around Dave and she knotted her fingers in his hair, overwhelmed by the shaking that erupted all throughout her lower body as she finally found the place she'd been seeking.
Dave followed suit, gasping into the crook of Reagan's neck and falling limp against her. Together, they breathed hard, still wrapped around each other like tied up string. Reagan ran her tongue over her lips, trying to commit to memory the flavor of his kiss.
"Shit," Dave muttered. His forehead was against Reagan's shoulder, warm with the cramped air of the closet and the display of stamina that he had just exerted.
Reagan lifted her hand to her head, running her fingers back through her hair. She steadied her breathing, coming back down to earth as she started to pick apart reality once more.
"I've . . . we've got to go," Reagan rationalized. Dave let her down, her legs slipping from around his waist.
"Right," he agreed. He bent down and retrieved her jeans and underwear for her.
Silently, Reagan dressed herself, trying her very hardest not to look at Dave. Almost as quickly as it had happened, the memory of how wonderful it felt to have him inside of her was evaporating. Despite still being somewhat drunk, Reagan was starting to remember her drive home to Olympia.
There would be no inconspicuous exit out of the storage closet. Reagan smoothed down her shirt and walked out first, sliding past Dave and into the hallway. He followed her and together they rounded the corner back into the bar. Every pair of eyes that was still present fell upon them and then hastily looked away.
Damn it.
Reagan lowered her head and walked with big strides over to the table where her bag sat. She grabbed it, only looking up to face Krist, who was doing his best to train his eyes elsewhere.
"Bye Krist. Thanks for the drinks."
"No problem Reag, let me know --"
She didn't let him finish. Reagan threw her bag over her shoulder and with the same hastened pace she'd used before, walked out of the bar and into the dark parking lot. The first sign of Dave following her was the swinging door to the bar that did not close shut behind her.
"Reagan, wait --"
She would have to take care of it right then and there. There was no use in waiting to explain to him how these things worked, at least for her. Reagan always assumed the role of the guy in these situations. And not only was she the guy, but she was the bad guy, getting the hopes up of men she'd only ever disappointment.
She could never love someone else when she barely knew how to love herself.
"Listen, I'm sorry. I didn't mean for that to happen."
Dave blinked, confused as Reagan made her statement. He shook his head, holding out his hand to her, pleading for her to pause.
"That's not what I'm talking about. Are you okay to drive? Leave your car here. Let me help get you home."
"I'll be okay. I'm sober now," Reagan promised.
She felt strangely lucid enough to drive. Something about kissing Dave and hearing her own name in her ear, spoken from his tongue had shook her from her stupor.
"Okay," Dave said carefully. His eyes were searching her face. "Is that all? You're just going to leave?"
"I've got to leave. I told you, I have work."
"But . . . I want to see you again."
Reagan gritted her teeth. She had been waiting for that.
What made it worse was feeling like a part of her wanted to see Dave again as well.
"Look, I've really got to go. I'm so sorry. I've just got to go," Reagan said, though she knew there was no way to justify her rushed goodbye. She turned around, not wanting to see Dave's face for a second longer. Looking at him made her think more of what they'd just shared in the closet, pressed as close together as two people could get.
She didn't even stop to ponder her haste. She refused to.
The only thing that mattered then to Reagan was doing everything she could to forget what had happened.