In just a couple of moments, Lucinda decided, she was going to get up and walk away. She wasn't going to give an excuse, she wasn't going to try to pawn Andrea off with a line about needing to freshen her drink or use the washroom or any of the four or five excuses that Andrea had found a perfectly reasonable but entirely infuriating way to work around in her quest to monopolize Lucinda's entire evening with the world's most boring conversation. She was just going to exert her boundaries, say she was done talking, get up, and walk away. She could do it. She knew she could. She was just...working up the nerve, that was all.
Lucinda knew she'd been telling herself that for a while now. Not quite all night-when Andrea originally took a seat next to her at the bar, Lucinda engaged her in a perfectly polite conversation about the decor in the club. It was a conversation that should have lasted all of a minute, but Andrea ("I'm an architect, and so I notice little details about the way the design draws your gaze to specific places") managed to draw it out for close to a half hour.
And of course, she made sure that any time Lucinda's attention strayed even a little to some cute guy walking past or looking thoughtfully at her or working up the nerve to approach, she snagged it back with another fascinating lecture ("now if you look at the bar back, you can see they put that red glass bottle there just to attract your attention, because that vivid, intense red is very eye-catching, and you can just imagine yourself seeing it from across the room") so that Lucinda could never quite get away without seeming rude.
Lucinda tried hinting more than once that she wasn't really here for a lecture on architecture, and anyway she did generally find the bar without the need of a distinctive visual cues, but somehow her disinterested, monotonous 'mhmm's and 'uh-huh's and 'yes'es only seemed to encourage Andrea to keep going ("and you can see that the glass in that bottle is antique, it was handmade so it warps and refracts the light in all sorts of interesting ways"). Lucinda wasn't sure if Andrea thought she was making a new friend, or if she was just a compulsive over-sharer, but the other woman practically nudged their bar stools on top of each other before she finished talking.
And when Lucinda did make her first escape attempt of the night, mentioning that she really needed to use the facilities, Andrea leaped right past the hint with, "Oh, I need to freshen up myself! Let's go ahead, and maybe we can look for somewhere a little quieter on the way back. This is kind of a high-traffic area."
Of course it was. That was why Lucinda picked it. But somehow by the time they wended their way through the crowd, with Andrea continuing her one-woman show the entire damn time ("and you can see how this part of the room is dark, and quiet, for people who want to relax a little after an exhausting day") and made it through the restroom line ("isn't it funny the way your brain just sort of shuts down when all you have to do is stand and wait? You find time just sort of disappears while you're not really thinking about anything") and made it back into the club, Lucinda found herself being steered to a dimly-lit booth near the very back of the seating area.
And of course, that was when Andrea began dominating the conversation in earnest, her ramblings covering everything from the thrilling centerpiece ("the candle holder looks handmade too, see how the flickering firelight catches all those little imperfections in the glass and draws your eyes to it") to her outfit ("Do you like my necklace, Lucy? I don't normally wear jewelry, but this just seemed to call to me until I couldn't look away") to her boring office job ("and I was so tired, Lucy, like my head was wobbling on my shoulders from deep, powerful exhaustion and I just couldn't fight it anymore.") Lucinda could barely get in a word edgewise, and even when Andrea did prompt a response, it always just seemed to be waiting for Lucinda to say 'yes' so she could get back to talking.
Deep down, Lucinda knew it was unfair of her to resent Andrea for her bad habit of monopolizing Lucinda's time. It was Lucinda who bought into the subtle social pressure to be polite, to be a good listener, to nod and smile and pretend to be interested instead of admitting how she really felt. Andrea probably didn't even realize that her slow, soporific monotone nearly had Lucinda nodding off into her drink (and oh God, she had been so close to an escape when she finished her first one! But that waitress had wandered by at exactly the wrong time, and now she had another cocktail "on me! Since you're so easy to talk to-I really feel like we can relax together, you know, like we can just sit here in the dark, and the quiet, and let go of all the tension and just enjoy the warmth of each other's company...")
And of course, if Lucinda had a hard time breaking away before, the social obligation of accepting Andrea's offer of a free drink only intensified the feeling. It would be so rude to just stand up and walk away right in the middle of a sentence, but it seemed like Andrea's sentences never ended ("...and you're finally getting to let go at the end of such a long, tiring day because you feel safe here with me, just us girls, like nobody else in the club even exists except for you and me, it's so easy to tune them all out with just a little bit more focus on the candle, just a little bit more focus on my voice and my words and you can let everyone else drift away...")
But Lucinda decided she had had enough. She was really done with all this. Bad enough that she'd been sitting here for practically ever, to the point where she wasn't even really sure what time it was or if the club was still actually open or not anymore or if Andrea was holding the staff up too with her oblivious monologue. Bad enough that her whole night was probably shot and all the cute guys were gone and she was going to have to spend the night with Mister Rabbit again. (Not that Mister Rabbit didn't get the job done, but she was hoping for something a little more...intimate.) But she was damned if she was going to let Andrea think it was okay to just corral someone like this and go on and on at them all night. She was going to give Andrea a piece of her mind.
Just as soon as there was a gap in the conversation. Lucinda was upset, and all, but she was also a grown up. She wasn't just going to flail at Andrea like a cranky toddler just because the other woman didn't pick up on social cues very well. She was just going to wait for Andrea to pause, just listen a little bit longer-it wasn't like Andrea had an annoying voice or anything, it was actually kind of pleasant, almost ("soothing, like a gentle lullaby in your ears smoothing away all your cares and worries so that all you need to do is stare at the candle, stare at the still and peaceful center of the flickering flame and enjoy the comfort of my presence as your thoughts wander to nothing in particular, guided by my") soothing. Voice. Her voice was soothing. Lucinda blinked heavily, trying to clear the fog of exhaustion in her head.
