When Ilinca raised her glass to him, Victor just bowed his head back once in a nod and noticed she was sipping at it now instead of gulping it down like before. “Welcome!” She was… really beautiful. And apparently just as in need of hydration as anyone else, no matter how other-worldly she looked; the thought gave him some hope for the rest of them. He wondered if a woman like her could tell he wasn’t like most men here just from his reaction to her, but he told himself that she wasn’t a mind-reader and it was silly to be so nervous over that. The Jack Daniels at least helped him talk himself down from the tallest reaches of logic he knew, it had to be good for something.
While the other act was taking place on stage, he let his eyes travel over to it, took another sip of his drink until she spoke again. “Yes, it is!” he replied, leaning towards her as she spoke more. God, he loved her accent. She sounded so… sexy with her accent and he felt like he was back in high school and the most popular girl in the school was talking to him. He laughed against the rim of his drink when she said that she liked it and the songs were catchy. “Me too.”
When she announced her shoes were coming off, he tried to become more alert, not quite sure why he attempted to, but did, all the same. She probably even had pretty feet. His feet just looked… like feet. They were kind of boney too. He could only imagine the pain of wearing high heels and dancing. Not that he did either much at all. “It must feel a lot better,” he called to her. “How many inches are those things, anyway?”
When she mentioned the rainbow shot, he lit up a little and said, “Great! It’ll take a bit but business is slow right now, so why not? I put in grenadine and strawberry liqueur, grenadine and a splash of pineapple juice, pineapple juice and a splash of Triple Sec, Midori and vodka, vodka and Curacao.” He carefully mixed splashes here and there and poured them down the back of a spoon and into the shot glass with all the patience and care he could muster (which was really quite a lot) and expertly layered the colors so it was red, orange, yellow, green and blue.
“It really should be a cocktail, but I decided to try to put it into shot-form…” he told her, carefully slipping a napkin under it and pushing it in front of her. “Unfortunately, no purple. Which is probably my favorite color. I hope you like it.”
He watched her as he had another sip of his whiskey, trying to reign in the anxiety. For some reason, it meant a lot to Victor that Ilinca liked the shot and he watched her quietly, intently but tried not to stare a hole into her.