Just as she thought this, a clearly completely wasted man walked by Eve. Eve didn’t notice as she danced and bumped into him and the man ended up stumbling over his own feet, falling flat on his face on the sticky club floor. Eve also almost lost her balance, but some stranger caught her before she hit the floor. 

“Hey! Watchhh where you’re going, idiot!”, Eve exclaimed, eyes unfocused and a slur to her words. 

“What the fuck bitch! You watch where you’re going!”, the man argued back as he struggled to his unsteady feet, holding his hand over his face. His nose bleeding as he hadn’t caught himself and had fallen face first to the floor and broken his nose. There was blood dripping everywhere. 

“Who you calling a bitch, bitch?”, Eve fired back, now completely riled, ready to throw hands. 

“You! You fucking whore!”, the man shouted, anger apparent in his aggressive stance. He wasn’t far from getting physical, either. 

“Excusssse me?”, Eve slurred as she tried to point a finger at the man, but her hand wasn’t pointing in quite the right direction. 

“Want to fight? Say sorry or I’ll sue you for breaking my face, bitch!”, the man growled as he stalked closer to Eve, looking intimidating. 

“Sssue me then, fucker! I don’t give a fuck! But you ssshould really be thanking me ‘cause that ugly face needed a nose job anyway!”, Eve stuck out her tongue at him like a child and before the man could escalate the situation further the club's security escorted him away. 

They were also going to take Eve away to figure out the situation, but before they could Irene intervened, but not in the way Eve would have wanted. “You should’ve just said sorry, why do you always need to pick a fight?”, Irene questioned Eve. 

“Me? Wha-. He-. It was him!”, Eve tried to argue back. 

“I’m tired. I’m so done with your antics, honestly. You’re an adult, so act like it. I’m going home.”, Irene said with a sigh and left towards the exit. 

“What? You’re just going to leave me here alone?”, Eve shouted after her perplexed. 

“Yes! It’s your mess, you clean it up!”, Irene yelled back over her shoulder on the way out from the club. The onlookers thought the drama was annoying as they just wanted to party and Eve felt the whole situation was unfair as security dragged her away to a backroom to discuss next steps. 

As neither the man nor Eve were ready to back down, the man decided to sue her and Eve got kicked out the club that night. No lawsuit was filed that night as both were too intoxicated to do it, but the man vowed that he would as soon as he got a hold of his lawyer. He was sent to the hospital cursing her out the whole time. 

The next day Eve lay at home in bed, contemplating the night before. She still felt it was unfair of Irene to take the man’s side, but she did now understand her point. The man’s lawyer had been in contact and it seemed like it would be in her best interests to just pay for his hospital bill instead of making it into a big issue. So she had, because she didn’t want the issue to reach her parents or Irene. Eve was thinking about Irene’s words - grow up, is basically what she meant. It was true that Eve had noticed that none of her old friends wanted to go out anymore as much after college. That they had easily given up the drinks and the drugs, the wild parties and the clubs. So, she had gotten new friends, and they still liked to party, and they were fine, weren’t they? So, so what if it was true that she had noticed that no matter how many times she promised Irene or Audrey that she wouldn’t get high anymore, she still did. Every time. And that the doses she used to take didn’t give her the same high they once had. So she used more and it wasn’t that fun anymore. But she could quit, right? If she really tried? Right? But was it really necessary? Eve wanted to make Irene happy, she really did, but she came to the conclusion that this dispute at the club was just a one-off and that Irene was overreacting. Eve dismissed it thinking it wasn’t really that bad, and usually she was fine when she was high or drunk, she wasn’t hurting anybody, she knew her own limits. She would just have to be more careful with it in front of Irene, so she didn’t piss her off, because losing Irene was the last thing she wanted. 

.

Irene and Eve had scheduled a practice session for Mrs. Montfort’s birthday performance, but as the agreed upon time came and went, Irene was getting more and more frustrated. She was sitting at the grand piano at her parents house, clinking the keys aimlessly as she waited. It had been some time since Mr. and Mrs. Ellison had last met Eve and they were waiting with her in hopes of seeing her before they had to leave as they had tickets to the opera. “Is she not here yet, dear?”, Mrs. Ellison asked her daughter. “Should you call her and see what’s going on? We should be leaving soon.”, Mr. Ellison added as he looked at his watch. Irene agreed and went to a different room to make the call. 

“Where are you? We were supposed to practice like an hour ago?”, Irene hissed when Eve picked up. 

“Oh, shit, my bad! I totally forgot to tell you that I’m meeting a friend. Can we reschedule? Pretty please?”, Eve rushed out her excuse.

“What? Who? Nevermind, my parents really wanted to see you.”, Irene sighed, the corners of her lips turned down. 

“Awh, tell them I said sorry! I’ll visit soon, I promise. Gotta go, my friend is here!”, Eve hung up the phone before Irene could properly say goodbye. 

Irene went back to her parents who were getting ready to leave for the opera and relayed Eve’s apologies and added her own excuses, saying she had forgotten that Eve had other plans tonight. But all she really could think about was what friend was Eve seeing that was more important than their plans together? Did Eve not even want to hang out with her anymore? It felt like she was always late or flaking on their plans these days, always texting and meeting friends she hadn’t heard of. Irene had been acquainted with Eve’s close college friends, but it seemed like Eve had new friends now that she didn’t know at all. Irene was also worried about Eve not having a job, or more about the lack of wanting a job at all. It was true that they didn’t really have to work, since they had money, but shouldn’t Eve do something? Other than just hanging out with her friends. Irene decided to skip piano practice all together and just call it a night, she was in no mental state to focus right now. What was Eve doing? Irene really wanted to know.