Gravity

Part 1 - Gravity

Work parties are the worst.

I stood at the bar of SODO's Showbox club with a glass of wine in my hand, wondering why, in the name of the Weaving, I had subjected myself to this.

The staff appreciation party was full of teachers from Stadium High school and their significant others, hanging off of each other and moving singularly or, often, together on the dance-floor as some obscure cover-band I had never heard of played top 40s music from when we were all teenagers.

Amazing. 

I mean, seriously; not only was I being subjected to a work party, but I'm being reminded of my age, or, at least, my supposed age, by the terrible music that was all the rage when I was an awkward duck in high school.

Stadium High really knows how to throw a shindig.

Granted, My Band would have been much better for this kind of thing, but we won't go there tonight.

There were a couple of consolations to my being here, one of which was that my best friend in the world and roommate, Julia, was a fellow teacher there, and so was also in attendance. 

The other was that my long time crush, Melanie Lawson, was also present.

I had been anguishing over how to ask her out for weeks now, either being too shy or too busy with my other profession as a professional Wizard-slash-Defender of this reality.

And dad has to wonder about why I never bring any girls home for him to meet.

In any case, there I stood, leaning against the bar and sipping on what was, honestly, pretty decent wine. Good or no, it didn't matter for squat, my Outsider physiology metabolizes alcohol and renders it pretty inert. To put it mildly, to me, any variety of alcohol, save for Mead, was the equivalent of me drinking grape juice.

That's right friends, and this bar did not have the good stuff. I mean mead, if you hadn't grasped that yet. Tonight was going to be awkward and sober.

Yay!

I had been neck deep in my own thoughts when I spied all 5 foot and 5 inches of pale, raven-haired, preternatural perfection sauntering in my direction. Her dark green pantsuit shimmered with an eerie kind of opalescence and clung to her form in a way that made everyone she passed stop in their tracks and stare for a moment or two. 

Or it could have been the other thing. 

"Jules, I think you might accidentally be pumping out pheromones again." I asked taking another sip of my wine as she approached the bar. "You've practically got the entire club ready to eat out of your arm-pit."

Julia sneered, she never really took to the nickname I gave her, and I never relented when it came to addressing her with it. "What are you talking about, Malak?" her Irish soaked British accent rolled from her mouth like a deep shade of honey that might have been laced with arsenic. She looked behind her and noted all of her admirers; all of them, standing almost perfectly still and staring, more or less, at her. "Oh. Shit." She cursed half under her breath. "Sometimes, I really do hate this." She mused, taking a deep breath and turning back to the bar, doing her best to not look as embarrassed as she obviously felt as the entranced party-goers suddenly snapped out of their haze and went back to enjoying the party.