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"This ain't happenin'." I thought, hoping with whatever dwindling and fragmented optimism I had that sheer willpower would be enough to bring my thoughts to reality. "This ain't happenin'. This ain't happenin'-"
"It's, uh, it's good to see you."
Ringo's nails-on-a-chalkboard voice rudely snapped me out of my once hopeful train of thought with a turn of phrase that sounded hardly fitting when pointed towards someone of my disposition.
My eyes, tightly squeezed closed in the endeavor that shutting them tight enough would make me go blind and prevent me from having to lay eyes upon the embodiment of regret sitting far too close beside me, finally and reluctantly opened.
They settled upon Ringo's form, shuffled over far across the bar-stool enough that he may as well have been sitting on mine, donned in a red plaid button-down fitting his slim figure and a pair of dark-colored pants flecked and dashed with scrapes of Mojave desert earth that had collected in the fine nooks and crannies of the denim.
His brown hair was swept back off his face, not gelled but rather kept there by what I assumed must have been sweat. He reeked of beer. It stuck to his clothes, the very air around him, expelled with each exhale that breezed across my face far too close for comfort.
I shuffled back a touch on my bar stool, less out of some intimidation of Ringo being too close but more to regain what little personal space I could without being forced to move seats.
Momma always said to never let folks feel like they had the upper hand in that sorta way. I had sat at the bar first, so why the hell should I be the one who moved, just because some caravan hand ain't ever heard of personal space and self-preservation once in his life?
I wouldn't be the first to fold.
Fuck that.
Even so, the coolness of the wall pressed firmly up against my right side became all the more apparent after I'd inched closer, inched further from the beer-stench sticking to Ringo like Bloatflies around a Brahmin carcass. I scrunched my nose at it, gritted my teeth in my mouth while holding the rim of the bottle to my lips like the stench of the whiskey was the only thing coaxing that visceral bracing reaction from me, rather than Ringo being outrageously close.
"Hell of a ways out from Goodsprings, huh?"
Ringo gave a slanted half smile, taking a sip of his chilled beer with his arm resting atop the bar counter, like he was about to try out some line on me that'd earn him a solid right hook to the jaw.
"Nice to see a friendly face around here."
"My face is friendly?" I scoffed lightly with a curl of my lip and stared at the caravan hand in sheer disbelief. "Of all things, 'friendly' is what you're gettin' from me?"
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Nevada: High Roller (Fallout New Vegas)
Fanfiction"Being shot in the head will teach you two very important things about life. The first thing it teaches you is that you're tempting fate when you take a shortcut on your delivery route through a graveyard. When you're already surrounded by the dea...
