Take It & Run (Harry Styles)

Here's

~The Night We Started~

part one.

That night I had convinced myself to put on the slinkiest dress I owned and go out to a speakeasy. Speakeasies were illegal clubs that you could go to back then to drink and do other obscene things. Seeing as the government had yet to drop all that prohibition nonsense, they were quite popular, but admission usually came with a price. My price was nothing as bad as some of the girls. They would sleep with real criminals to get in or offer to get onstage and dance the most disgusting dances I’ve ever seen. All I had to do was dress up and flirt with the guard. He used to go to my school, and he had a nasty J.C-fetish… I’m J.C.  Julia Cramer by birth, but I refused to associate myself with my drunk of a father, more than necessary. I guess that also explains why I refused to drink.

My mother died when I was thirteen, leaving my father, my brother, and I. We were scarred, but we were living well enough, until Jason decided to leave. He couldn’t stand to be around me any longer, because everything I did reminded him of mom. So he just picked up and left during his senior year. Seems to be a trend in our family, I dropped out recently to help my aunt and uncle support my cousins and I. Of course I live with my mother’s sister, I said I didn’t want to associate myself with that drunken bastard. The first time he took a drink, I let him because I felt his pain. The first time he hit me, I took a frying pan to his head and called the cops. I’m not a force to be reckoned with.

Since I was fourteen, I’ve been living with Aunt Wilma and Uncle Larry. They’d been nothing but good to me, but like Jason, I couldn’t stand to be around a constant reminder of what I lost. So I decided to go out tonight. Not to get drunk, to get away.

I threw the pile of gold tassels over my head and buttoned the back with the help of a mirror, straightening out mom’s pearls afterwards. Then I applied some goopy mascara and rose red lipstick. I put on my dancing shoes and my pea coat, grabbed my shoulder bag, and I was out.

I supposed it was foolish to go walking the city’s streets after dark, but I had willpower, not a car. If walking three miles was what it took to try at happiness, I was all for it. I passed by a group of seemingly suspicious men, knowing it was best to walk on like I didn’t see them, but I couldn’t take my eyes off of one particularly handsome man who was standing at the center of them. The second he licked his lips and winked at me though, I wrinkled my nose in disgust and turned back to my mission.

It was another twenty minutes before I arrived at my destination: the abandoned theatre house on 22nd. It was dead and rotting at first sight, but once you were inside it was nothing but alive.

I patiently waited my turn in line as David sent one person after the other on their way. When I finally approached the door, I could see his devilish smile reach to his eyes through the slot in the door.

“J.C, J.C, J.C. How many times do I have to tell you to come to the front of the line whenever you come here?”

“As many times as I come here,” I fake smiled. “You know I’m all for fairness.”

“Yeah, well I’m all for you, and you know that. Come on!” He undid several latches, before cracking the door open, just enough that I could squeeze through. As soon as I was in, David hooked onto my waist and called over another guy equally as meaty as him to do door duty.

David was my price.