“Here, have a drink,” A man slurred.
A tall, red, plastic cup of heavy smelling alcohol hovered in front of me, like a moth around the flickering flame of a candle.
The cup laughed in my face and dared me to grab it; the peer pressure pouring off of the drunk’s lips was like a buzzing fly that wouldn’t leave me alone.
“No thanks,” I told him.
“C’mon, it’s just one drink.”
I sighed, because I’d been down this road before.
Because just one drink can’t hurt anything, right?
It’s just one.
One that allows a drunken ******* who otherwise has no control over women besides offering ‘just one drink.’
But the flashback that started playing inside my head was a movie screen that felt like a drive-in film where everyone was welcome to watch.
Except they couldn’t.
These drunken “friends” on the TV inside my head who I’d been with a few months ago had wandered off with their own boyfriends, leaving me
Stranded and vulnerable, like a car on the side of the highway without any flashing hazard lights warning other drivers that I was parked there.
They abandoned me.
And who knows how long I would have been stranded until a car decided to pull over and approach my vehicle, tow straps to carry me away.
But he didn’t save me from the other passing cars. Instead, he hauled me around a sharp curve of the long stretch of road,
Left me as a wide open target for his own truck to smash into me, leaving me broken and battered, with no witnesses to call the police, an ambulance or a fire truck.
I was left all alone, bleeding and scarred in the dark curve of the highway where this drunken driver escaped without a single bruise or tear on his body, unlike my own.
“It’s just one drink.” The intoxicated stranger pried at me again, feeling his question burn into me like a red light that just wouldn’t turn green.
“No,” I said and turned away from the drunk.
It was the first time I said no to the smell of dark liquor and whatever was hiding beneath and dissolved into the liquid that was harbored in the tall, red cup.
I said no to being victim again to a ******* drug.