A Date With Disaster

Valerie did not like this woman. She got the impression that she would have not liked her that much, even if she hadn’t attacked her in public and wrecked her expensive dress. She was loud and coarse, ratty and unrefined, spoke like a sailor and smelled like one. The more she spoke, the less she liked the things that were coming out of her mouth. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t paying attention to them. Not quite.

Enough attention suss out that this woman was not, in fact, her date.

She laid in the muck for a moment. As unpleasant as it was, she was aching, and couldn’t do much sudden moving without exacerbating a dozen pains. Once she had a solid grip on the table, she pulled her way up and wobbly made her way forward, using the table and chairs and anything she could to stay erect.

”This-” She slipped, fell to a knee, then hurriedly pulled her way back up with the wall for support. ”This isn’t a match, this is a date. I had a date coming, we were supposed to meet here, that’s it!”

Her shoes, her shoes, where they fall out at? She was trying to find them, but her ears were coated in a variety of juices, none of which improved her vision. ”There’s no ref, no match, I was just here for a date. A wild guess, but you’re name isn’t Adalie, is it?”

Valerie finally found where her shoes where - still placed neatly together where she’d been kicked out of them - and started to bend over to pick them up, only to jerk straight up when her back decided not to go along with the effort.

Welp, Zoey’s night was officially ruined. Hope Valerie was happy.

As she went on with her explanation, the idea that his wall just some sort of really elaborate act had begun to all but vanished from Zoey’s mind. This woman clearly wasn’t just trying to make her think. Trying to gain leverage over the situation. Trying to go for a surprise pin or knockout or whatever.

Nah, she’d been scolded by her mother far too many times to not recognize those features. The deep indentations on her forehead that just seemed to stretch wider as time went on. The eyes that went back and forth between Zoey’s pupils. The tight lips, furrowed brows, and still gaze that exploded all at once whenever she had something else to say. This wasn’t a joke. Valerie was so fucking pissed.

One one hand, she was kinda right in being mad. She’d come here expecting a date, and she didn’t show. Hell, by the looks of it, she must have been waiting for a long time if her patience was so thin that she’d just be willing to let Zoey sit down with her. She wasn’t expecting a match. She was expecting a pleasant evening to herself.

Which brought her to what was on the other hand. Zoey wasn’t getting paid for this. She was getting punked and chewed out all at the same time. So what the fuck?

With her number of shits to give now at a comfortable reading of absolute zero, Zoey merely looked on with pursed lips and a droopy pair of eyelids as Val went to collect her shoes. Seeing her flinch as she went to pick them up at least got a snicker out of the TKD chick. She walked over to Valerie, stopping just a couple steps to her side.

“It’s Zoey.”

She tucked the shoes under her arm, looking back at Valerie with her opposite hand on her hip. She blew a bit of air out of her nose, crooking her mouth to the side for a second before she spoke.

“So, lemme get this straight. I canceled all my plans for tonight, drove all the way down here, felt sorry for making you wait,-” She leaned over to Val’s table and picked up the roses, shaking them violently in the blonde's face. “-got fucking roses for you to make up for it,-” She slammed them back down to the side. “-’cause I expect a good match. But what really happened is you fucked up, got me down here unscheduled to beat on your weak ass, all because you haven't gotten any in so long that you were desperate enough to go to blind dating?” Her eyes looked Val up and down, scoffing and shaking her head slightly from side to side. “Nice. Real nice.”

”Right. Zoey.”

In a small way, hearing that name was relief. It meant that she wasn’t crazy, that her date wasn’t some evil woman who got her rocks off ambushing her for whatever reasons. As much as she wanted to be mad at the woman before her, she could only get so hot knowing this was a simple misunderstanding.

...then again, no, it couldn’t be simple, coud it? How was she brought into a match that never existed? She’d heard of the AFW setting up surprise matches, but that couldn’t have been what this was. She’d been expecting a date. Was supposed to meet someone. So how could they set up a surprise match on that? Where was Adalie? The real Adalie?

That was the question of the moment, but one she had little time to seriously ponder, because Zoey was talking again, and what she had to say left Valerie quite stunned.

”You-” She broke her own sentence to stare at Zoey for a moment, trying to properly process the rather odd words that had just come out of her mouth. ”Firstly, the state of my sex life is no business of yours.” She brushed enough of the wet, matted hair out of her face for her newfound ‘friend’ to see the irritation on her face. ”Secondly, I am having a hard time following your logic. You came here. You attacked me. You didn’t give me the time to explain anything. Clearly, this is not how I planned to spend my night.”

She waved her arms about, indicating the wild mess they’d made, before she reached out and tried to snatch her heels away. ”Someone is at fault here, but it’s not me. Be angry at someone else.”

“Cooler heads prevail” was a phrase that never sat well with Zoey. In all of her arguments, all of her fights, all of her times getting up in someone’s grill, the cooler head was the one who typically left with a busted lip.

Kind of like Valerie right now. She was trying to be cool about things. Trying to gain leverage over the situation. Trying to make Zoey think. Well, guess what? She wasn’t fucking biting. That was the thing about talking down to someone. You don’t get to control the conversation after getting laid the fuck out.

So, it pretty much went without saying that Zoey couldn’t give less than a shit about Valerie’s two cents. But oh, did she talk. She talked and talked, made her points, redirecting this way, deflecting that way, even making a lunge for her. For someone that thought they were so smart, she sure did do some stupid shit.

She stepped back as Val snatched for her heels, bringing her leg immediately afterward to snap a quick kick between them. Nuh uh. Run up, get done up.

The TKD chick was of a mind to correct her would-be date’s mistake. She threw her a nasty glare, getting all heated up just for a second. But all at once, it dispersed. Zoey drew back, straightening her eyebrows and looking back at the Russian with the corners of her mouth crooked and

“You know what? You’re right.” She relaxed, speaking with an oddly pleasant tone. “Why don’t I go do that?”

Zoey pursed her lips and grew a wry little smile. She took one of the shoes out from under her arm, giving it a quick little look over in front of Valerie before bringing her foot up behind her. She brought the shoe around and down her back, placing its soles against her own. After a couple seconds, she looked back at Valerie with a knowing smile as she brought her foot down.

“Huh. Whaddya know? Just my size.” A couple inches short, actually, but she’d make them work. She put her foot back down, turning around and facing the front door. “Follow that logic.”

She walked towards the exit, kicking away a broken chair and pushing aside an overturned table. Her eyes watched the ground as she did her best to avoid any spills and leftovers on the way out. Didn’t want to bring any shit onto the taxi floor and ruin someone else’s night. She made a point to give Val the finger as she went through the doors. Thanks for nothing, cunt.