“I really can’t stay…,” I told him, biting the left side of my bottom lip. Which, you know, wasn’t untrue. Sam Vallas was having an end-of-the-semester party, and I told Jackie I’d go with her. But Eric was right — it was freezing out, and the snow was falling harder every minute. He wore that same sardonic smile, tight-lipped and crooked, the way he does when he thinks he’s being just so fucking clever. Still, it was cute, if a little smarmy. He looked at me with narrowed eyes as he swept the shaggy brown hair out of his face like some kind of rock star.
“But baby, it’s cold outside. And your eyes…your eyes are like starlight now,” he whispered.
“Thanks. I really had better scurry…” I looked down at my feet and smiled nervously as I took the two pink gloves out from my left hand coat pocket. I always kept them in the same pocket together, one rolled inside the other. But before I had a chance to put them, Eric cupped his large, rough hands around mine.
“Are you sure? It’s pretty bad out there. And your hands feel like ice. Come on. I’ll put on a record on, we can have a drink. Just one more. It’ll be quick. You can tell Jackie you were stuck waiting for the train or whatever.” He played this routine in precisely the way that both Sarah and Meredith told me that he would. Every line rehearsed, every action carefully choreographed.
But I still went along with it. “Well…maybe just a half a drink more,” I answered, finally looking up from my feet and re-connecting with his shit brown eyes. Sure, there was a part of me that knew what was going to happen, or at least thought it did. But I played dumb against myself, or else I was just stupid all along.
“Great. Here, let me take your hat.” I tried to hold it on my head — the knit wool hats always messed my hair up, and I didn’t want him to see. “I think your hair looks cute like that. And gosh your lips look delicious.” And again, he had me, though I’m still ashamed of falling for such an awful line.
He went over to the iPod stereo dock and turned on the Postal Service, then left for the kitchen to fix our drinks while I fixed my hair in the mirror by the door. He returned with two full pint glasses that looked like rum and coke.
“I thought I told you half a drink?” I said with a flirtatious smirk, cocking my head to the right.
“You did,” he said, again with that stupid smile. Every time I saw it, it looked a little bit seedier, and a little bit sexier. “Cheers.”
When I took my first sip, I noticed that something was off, but I couldn’t quite place my finger it. “Say, what’s in this drink? Is it — ” I took another sip. “Is this Coke Zero, or Vanilla Coke, or…something different about it.”
It wasn’t until I woke up in his room the next morning that I realized it was rohypnol.