Juliet & open
The Cat was loud, and warm and it felt like coming home. Like all those kind of bars that cultivated home, layered it over the bones of booze and people looking for a good time with a little mood lighting, a little pool, and a positive cornucopia of ways to get shit-faced. Small, comparatively, but weren't all bars outside a city goddamn small? Busy, and Juliet was appreciative looseness, easy lines and long limbs on her way in. It wasn't the apartment. The apartment was fine, it was chill. It was isolated, just her above the tattoo place and the front door had newly acquired hardware. But it was empty, and there was only so much a girl could do with a can-do attitude and no booze in the freezer.
She didn't try to blend. In the city, she blended fine - monochrome black, over more goddamn black, tight and blunt-black hair, the faint perfume of cigarette smoke, clean air ozone and a woody scent all dark notes carried along with her. She was used to running solo in a crowd, and she walked up to the bar and leaned, elbow and hip cocked.
Back to the wall, instead of the door. Habit. She looked for the exit before she looked for a drink. But this? This small town with the Christmas cheer shaken out of a movie, snowflakes starring in her hair as the heat slid them into water, this was breathe easy. Exhale smog, and city expectation into the deep, still, solitude of a small town that knew how to get drunk in style.