Clara finds refuge between the mannequins displaying Cherry Tease Lace and Midnight Temptress Mesh. These shop lights are dismantling her. Accelerating her hangover towards end-stage liver disease. She’s abandoned Steve at the other end of the shop, where he’s queuing for the till. She should have clarified what he needed her to do before agreeing to this “errand”. But standing up straight is difficult enough. Just as well she hadn’t committed to anything more. 

Steve reaches the till. He takes out the item to be exchanged and launches into the torrent that he had rehearsed all the way here. The in-depth explanation about how his girlfriend had desperately wanted Petal & Pulse’s latest vibrator model for her birthday and that it’s no longer working. He will leave out the fact that his girlfriend hadn’t realised it wasn’t waterproof. And after using it (whether this was with or without Steve’s presence had not been established), she had left it in the sink, damaging the circuitry beyond repair.

The clearly used, clearly water damaged item shrinks on the counter. The girl at the till shakes her head, looks at Steve and then to Clara. Likely assuming her to be the girlfriend. The clumsy sex toy handler. Too embarrassed to admit to her own mistakes. Great. 

Clara lurches out of the girl’s eyeline. This is her first time in any sort of sex shop. Even a high street sanitized version like this, with fluffy pink ruffles softening all the handcuffs and whips hanging in the back section. She shambles past the underwear sets spread out like butterflies pinned back on display. Empty bodysuits dangle from hangers, sagging skeletons of straps and buckles. There are too many reflective surfaces here. Too many reminders of her eyebags so cavernous they would soon be leading out the back of her head.

Going out last night had been a mistake. She’ll admit that. There should have been nothing but suspicion when Dave asked her to meet him at World HQ. They never went out. That wasn’t their arrangement. He came to hers. When he had time. Preferably when her housemates were elsewhere.

They had sat there with elbows sticking to that already filthy table. Unable to hear the not much they were saying to each other, with the staircase shaking overhead and the desperate press of people towards the bar next to them. Dave ended up having to shout. 

“I just want someone I can love,” was the confession that necessitated all this. 

“Like, something I can really feel,” 

Well. That could have been a message. Nothing worthy of an 11pm taxi, £15 entry and a £2 coatroom fee.

“I’m meant for something deeper than what we’re doing,” he continued “I need a spark, something that really touches me, you know?”

Clara wasn’t sure that she did. 

He hadn’t even looked at her while he said this. Eyes drifting with the crowd flowing by the table. Sizing up their lovability, perhaps. He’d said nothing else. Just waited for her. To agree? To encourage? To-?

“I need another drink,” was all she’d said, sliding away from the table and into the crowd.

The girl at the till won’t be getting much more than minimum wage. Not enough to listen to Steve. All he’s doing is holding up the queue. Inconveniencing the other simple, respectful people who just want to pay for their tingling lube and continue on with their Saturdays. The girl looks again for Clara. Glaring this time. Come over here. Collect this idiot.

Clara scrutinizes a selection of thongs. Models show them off in the pictures above, staring down with lamplight eyes. The lace curves deliciously, begging to be teased off. Would a couple of pairs of these improve her lovability?  Her faded cotton knickers had had an unfortunate hole or two, the last time Dave had pulled them down. Maybe he’d actually noticed. Maybe that’s what had made him rethink. 

After escaping Dave, she had fought at the bar for another drink. Necked it. Waited for another. 11.45pm was too early to leave. You couldn’t be collecting your coat while the just-arrived were still fighting to get rid of theirs. There would be sniggers. Pitiful eyes. Leaving already? It’s not even tomorrow.

It had to be the upstairs room, then. Where no one would be declaring anything about their feelings, or lack thereof. Everyone too busy losing themselves in a mess of synth-sludged guitars. Strobed into spectres. Clara’s own self was infuriatingly always there. Impossible to shake. She tried another drink, then another. But she was still there, still clinging.

The girl at the till has drafted in her colleague for support. They’re subjecting the vibrator to the interrogation bright lamps, twirling it in a full 360 degrees inspection. The colleague has it suspended with a pair of scissors, sparing her long, cherry bright nails. Steve has flushed a matching colour, words stumbling. But these ladies don’t know Steve. Never seen his dinners of borderline biohazards scrounged from the supermarket reduced section. Never heard the absurdities concocted to get out of buying a round of drinks. 

He won’t back down. 

“It was correctly handled. There was no misuse,” 

A groan unites the crowd behind him. This might be the truest act of love that Clara has ever seen. 

Someone to love. Such lofty aspirations to come from Dave, a man who struggled with the most basic things, like turning up. Clara had just been aiming for someone to tolerate. Had he imagined her hanging on the time between his inattentively spaced text messages, nurturing dreams of anything more?

Jesus.

On a Friday night in World HQ, the power of five simultaneous, contradictory DJs distorted the club into an Escher-esque confusion of stairs and doorways. So, once it had reached an acceptable time to leave, Clara was no longer sure of the way out.

She’d taken a wrong stumble into the reggaeton room, where everything and everyone was pulsing. Sweat sheening. People pushing up against and into and almost through each other. She escaped through a side staircase into the techno bunker. Where the DJ raged at a heart hijacking bpm and people jerked and stomped around her in solitary orbits. 

Someone to love. Where would that be found here? She tried door after staircase after door, searching for the exit. Was a drink from every bar she went past necessary? Absolutely not. But what else had she been meant to do with her hands? 

The girls at the till are threatening to summon the manager from the back room. The woman two behind Steve has an optician’s appointment in seven minutes. Could this please be hurried up? But he’s relentless. Completely off-script now. Invoking trading standards. The Consumer Rights Act. Clara pulls some random bras from hangers, hoping the changing rooms might have a chair to support her through the rest of this. 

Eventually, a fumble down a previously unnoticed, unsympathetically uneven staircase had taken her back to the main room. Her escape path clear. But, fuck her life. Dave was still there. Not waiting for her, of course. Different table. Different girl now. Hands all everywhere, in a way they’d never been with Clara. Lips greedy at her neck. Someone he’d arranged to meet beforehand? Or had his quest for love just needed a treble vodka and a roving eye riding a bassline. 

She couldn’t stagger past him like this. It would provide too perfect a spectacle for dissection over a post-night brunch. Poor Clara. She took that hard. Should have seen the state of her trying to get down those steps. But Dave didn’t get to claim this. This was accidental. A circumstantial shitfaced. As if she needed an excuse to get into a state.

She had to retreat. Following another staircase that led down to the cellar bathroom. Tiled in a fleshy, salmon pink colour that had been forgotten since 1970-something. A discoball quantity of mirrors expanded the space into infinite possibilities of bathrooms. She’d had thoughts about escaping through the mildewed windows. But instead ended up slumped on a bench by the door, while everything carrouselled around her. 

A group of girls stormed in to renew themselves. One of them must have noticed her crumpled amid the discarded tissues and empty glasses. They descended in a fairy godmother flurry: 

Where are your friends, hon? 

Who are you out with?

She has no friends!? 

Out with some fella, was it? 

Fuck him, babe. He’s not worth it.

They leave her, refreshed with a spritz of perfume and smudge of lip-balm. Clara would have liked to go with them. Absorbed into their swarm of solidarity and spare lipstick. But by the time her legs cooperated, there was another clamour of girls at the mirrors. Amongst them, the one that Dave had been so entranced with. 

The buzzing, bleaching striplights had somehow haloed her. She was radiant. No melting 2am makeup. No one else’s sweat cloying in her hair. Her underwear probably always matched. 

Clara wobbled up. Too many different angles of herself stared back. None of them good. She felt it was very important to say something to this girl. A question: Who are you? What did you do? Or a warning? Stay away from him, he’s such a prick.  

But when Clara opened her mouth, it wasn’t words or wisdom surging up. She diverted into the nearest cubicle and made it just in time. The girl didn’t notice. Touched lipstick to those kissable lips.

On the way to the changing rooms, Clara’s stomach twists in sympathy with herself of too few hours ago. And twists. And twists. Until it’s a hard knot that won’t stay down. Cold sweat breaks. Her legs seize as she throws aside the changing cubicle’s curtain. Again, she makes it just in time, knees softening, heaving into her handbag. Hoping the desperate choking is only this loud for her. 

Afterwards, she curls on the floor. The carpet badly needed a hoover. Discarded price tags prickle one cheek. Dust tickles her too raw throat. But she feels purged. Maybe this was a Moment. A turning point. Life had to grant her an upward swing after something like this… right? 

So Clara rises. Resurrected. More human than she has felt all day. She rescues her purse. Everything else – including whatever had happened last night – can be left congealing.  

Outside, Steve is going into battle with the manager. Clara finds the toy that looks the closest to the damaged one and hurries to the till. 

“We need to leave,” she says, pushing it towards the girl “Just get this one,” 

Steve is outraged then betrayed then quiet as he realises that she’s paying. The girl can’t package the thing quickly enough. Once she dismisses them with a savage have a good day, Clara manhandles Steve away from the till. They reach the door just ahead of the squeal ringing out from the changing rooms. 

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Laura O’Meara is a writer who grew up in the UK and has since translocated to Valenica, Spain. Her short fiction has appeared in Nature Futures, Turn and Work, and In the Veins. She is currently working on her first novel.