Nobody likes a warm Coors Light.

At the best of times, Coors Light is what you drank on a hot day when water isn't alcoholic enough and a real beer is too heavy. Ordering one at a bar just seemed like an exercise in futility--what was the point of going to a bar and [i]not[/i] getting drunk? That home-away-from-home nonsense never really clicked with Michelle, who understood bars the same way every eighteen year old who occasionally slipped past security thinks they understand bars. Most of what she understood was that warm beer was gross and the fastest way to get a new drink was to pour through the one she had, so she drained it about as quickly as is socially acceptable for a young lady to pound down a shitty beer and flagged down a waitress.

She had to admit, there was something...[i]off[/i] about the place tonight. The only way she could describe it was through scent, but that wasn't really right. Big Bad might have had a nose that could smell a quivering meal from a mile and a half away but Michelle very much didn't, and it was hard enough to describe the senses she [i]did[/i] have half the time. It was an undercurrent, like ozone, and as far as she could tell it was coming from the three hipsters front and center watching the show. All glasses and flanels and--shit, were those [i]cowboy boots?[/i]--they didn't exactly look like the kind of people she thought she'd see in a place like this. 

Though admittedly, it did have a weird ass instrument on stage that made music when you waved at it. It didn't get much more hipster than that.

Bars were for getting drunk, and getting drunk took alcohol. 4.2% was [i]not[/i] going to make a difference. With a (relatively) flush wallet and a decent enough night for it, Michelle was ready to make a trip to the bar worth it, and that meant girly drinks. The kind with umbrellas and syrups and a dozen and a half different liquors that she would never in a million years bother buying. What was the point in stocking that shit if you weren't ever going to use it? Once upon a time she'd have beat up a girl like her ordering something that ended in -tini, but with a self-conscious little quirk of a smile she did exactly that as she caught a waitress on a drive-by.

Happiness was something for other people, and Michelle was prepared to accept that in some emo little corner of her soul that was willing to just say [i]Fuck It[/i] to the notion. She didn't like smiling not because she had anything against being happy in particular, but because when she did she could feel the stretch at the corner of her lip, the tight scar tissue tugging at it just enough to be noticeable. Normal people could smile and not even care, but every time she did it felt like a little reminder, a quiet nagging reminder that she was kidding herself in the end. Like when she saw the tattoo on her neck in the mirror before she covered it--and she [i]always[/i] covered it. Tonight it hid behind a thick leather choker she'd studded herself a while back, so worn it felt natural on her. 

[i]Every bitch needs a collar, right?[/i] She could actually remember that one motherfucker [i]saying[/i] that to her.

She could also remember what his zygomatic bone tasted like.

The appletini, when it arrived, was a very welcome distraction.

As she did her best to drink down that shitty hyperventilating feeling she was getting in the back of her throat, her eyes crawled over the crowd again in an attempt for distraction. When she clicked onto the new guy who stepped in looking like part of the staff, she smiled to herself over the violently green drink. She might have found someone who looked as awkward as she felt about this whole 'being in public' thing. By the time he managed to decide he was staying, she was already finding herself looking back over to the three Musketeers bonding over their craft beers or their five o'clock shadow or whatever it was they were doing. For some reason it was these individuals that kept catching her eye, even when she tried not to let them--there was just [i]something[/i] about them.

About the time she was tilting the green glass up and feeling cold ice clink on her lips--who the hell put ice in a martini glass?--she realized it was time to get another. Back to waitress-hunting.