The bouncer did not like us. Since day one, I tried every Saturday night to get the six foot, seven pitbull to crack us a smile. I became an amateur magician thanks to that bouncer. By the end of the semester, I had pulled his driver’s license from the giant’s ear, made it reappear in his other hand, and even learned to cut with scissors and reattach it back to its crinkled, beer-stained form.

“Of course, it’s his job not to like us,” I finally told Regan as if it was obvious to both of us from the start. At that moment, I realized I was in the middle of breaking the bad habit of telling people something I just learned as if I had been teaching a college class on it for years like I was tenured or something.

“Of course he’s not supposed to like us,” said Regan. “What were you expecting, Allan?”

I could only crack a smile, “He’s not supposed to like you, Regan. I mean, who doesn’t like Asian magicians?”

“Maybe you could your disappearing act on us right now,” Regan said nervously while we walked into the local college dive bar. He lifted his eyebrow the same time as his glass when we got our drinks, a habit I don’t think he knew he had, and one I wasn’t ever willing to tell him. It’s like he was playing a prank on himself, and I didn’t want to get in the way of it. Maybe, as his wingman since the fifth grade, girls would find it charming. He knew what I was talking about because he didn’t ask what.

Instead, he said, “Code red?”

“Code red,” I nodded while dipping my head into my shoulders to a degree turtles would envy. I just wanted to hide in myself, and after last week’s break up, I had so much of nothing in me that you could hide a tank where my heart was supposed to be.

Regan pushed my moppy head down while he about-faced to face our enemy. “Alicia,” he managed to say with a practiced brightness in his voice. “Did you know Allan and I call you code red?”

My recent ex rolled her eyes, “Cuz of my hair?”

Regan didn’t bother sipping his cheap beer. “No, cuz you’re a cold-hearted bitch. Wait. Yah, you’re right. It’s your hair.”

“Very funny Regan,” she said. I wanted to back him up but the words seemed to melt out of my brain.

“Let’s go to a different bar.” I didn’t say it because it bothered me she was there, but I couldn’t ignore that she was. And that it did bother me. “We have two hours before last call. We’re not going to waste them here.”

“So you’re gonna let her win?”

“What?” I said. “There’s no winning or losing. I just want to leave.”

“We didn’t come all this way for you to bitch out.”

“If we aren’t leaving, I’m definitely taking a piss,” I said. I pushed my Busch Lite into Regan’s hand and walked passed Alicia to the men’s room. After taking my sweet time and splashing some cold water on my face, I walked back out.

The bar was crowded but easy enough to walk through the room. I sidestepped a girl running toward the door with her hand over her mouth. As I moved, my elbow hit something soft. Something I would always want to touch but not in this way. The boob I hit turned to face me.

The brunette turned to me with a face more pleasant than I expected. I don’t know if it was how embarrassed I looked, but she gave me a grin. “You make habit of this?”

“I think habits are something nuns wear.” She cocked her eyebrow. “Sorry, I’ve had some beers.” Her face looked unconvinced. “My ex is at the bar, and I’m not sure how to act, I guess.”

The brunette looked where I was pointing. “Her? With the hair?”

“Sure,” I said. Who doesn’t have hair?

“Don’t let her know she’s getting to you.” She must have seen me smile. “Nothing gets under the skin she’s already under than indifference.”

I wanted to talk to the brunette, but I wanted to avoid Alicia more. My face must have been doing the talking because she read me like a road sign. I just couldn’t tell if I was a warning sign that said “Wrong Way.” I was doing my best not to look like a “Dead End.”

“I’m Allan,” I said before realizing I should probably put my hand out for her to shake. She slapped it.

“Sideways high five? You’re really off your game tonight.” She said.

“Sorry,” I stammered. “Do I actually know you?”

“No, but I like strays and you look like one lost puppy,” She smirked. “I’m Danni.”

I looked over my shoulder and saw Regan doing his best to charm himself away from Code Red and into a pile of sophomores. He had forgotten all about me. Great wingman.

Danni gave me a curious look, “Something important over there?”

I let out a breath. “Besides my beer, not really,” I said the words because I wanted to mean them.

“You look like you’ve got a lot on your mind. We’ll see if we can get you to have some fun tonight after all,” she said with a kind smile.

I looked at her. I guessed she was an older sister, took care of others. Maybe even had a string of rotten boyfriends she had to drag across the finish line. “Are you a nursing major?” I asked.

“I’m heading to The Blues Club with my friends. You can ask your questions there.”

If the bouncer was a pitbull, the silent threat of muscle behind a glass window, Danni’s friends were poodles, their noses high enough to look down but statures too small not to make them look like anything but cartoons. Maybe it was the fact I was five drinks and two dances deep with Danni when I finally felt myself relax a little in the Blues Club.

Everything about the Blues Club had nothing to do with blues music. Rap and grind on your girlfriend as pre-game to sex music roared through the club. Everything inside the club was blue, and damn could Danni dance.

I never stood chance. The music was too loud, too primal for me to get any questions across. Maybe that’s why she chose the place. Talk was too much. Trying to forget something just made me want to remember more.

With all that blue in the club, it was easy to see the fleck of red flame burn closer toward us. She was pulling a guy behind her who looked like the real life version of Shaggy from Scooby Doo. Alicia waved and screamed something at us with her sharp smile. I was too lost in Danni to pay attention for long. Danni’s friends pulled her away, drowning her in looks that said, “He’s trouble,” or “Not again, girl.”

Maybe I was a walking stereotype, or archetype, or whatever Dr. Hanneson said in an English lecture I fell asleep through earlier in the week. Though I came to the club to find light, I didn’t realize the shadow on me the whole time.

All the advice I received from friends, post-puberty, came back to me in an instant. Don’t crowd her. Act disinterested. Women respond the more you ignore them. Alicia was still waving at me. I walked back over to Danny amidst her friends.

“Can you help me with…can you do me a favor?” She handed me a flask from, well, somewhere.

“Seems like you could use a drink.” Being in college, I happened to agree, being without one for the past twenty minutes. I took a pull off what turned out to be the cheapest vodka that’s ever melted my esophagus.

I coughed. “Thanks.” I wanted to say more. I could still see Alicia out the corner of my eye. Suddenly, I felt something else take over. A loss of judgment, maybe. Caution, that was someone else’s problem.

“Let’s get some fresh air. I want to show you something outside that I think you’ll like.”

We walked out into the cool night’s air. “So there was something you wanted to show me?” she asked.

I reached into my back pocket. Regan kept telling me how women dig magicians. Every time we went out, he would give me an extra deck of playing cards to hold on to. I thought he wanted me to get confident enough to try magic to impress some girl but realized it was because he always ended up losing his.

I pulled the deck out and spread backward it in my hands so she could only see the backs of the cards while I looked at the faces. “Pick a card.”

“Are you serious?”

A Frank Sinatra song came to mind. “Serious as a broken leg, sweetheart.” Why did I say that? Who says that? I don’t even think Sinatra said that.

She went to reach, and I pulled them away. “Sorry.” I turned the cards down so neither of us could see the faces. She smiled.

Grabbing one, she looked at it. “Memorize it and place it back.” She tried to place it back, and I snapped the cards together too quick for her. “Sorry, slipped.” She tried again and I did the same thing. “Third time’s the charm?” She slid the card back into the deck.

Every word dripped out of me like I had done it a thousand times. “And now, I need you to kiss my cheek for luck.” She hesitated and then planted one. I pulled the card off the top, “The ace of spades.”

Danny shook her head. “No?” I said. “This isn’t the ace of spades?” A burst of laughter came out of her.

“You were doing so well,” She said with a mix of disappointment and pity.

I knew I had messed up. I remembered my mom telling me, what suddenly became the most important advice with women, at that moment. She said that men talk and everything is fine, but then they keep talking. It was that effort, that extra push, which ruined moments. I tried, and trying was a mistake.

I pulled the cards back, holding their faces tightly to my chest. I looked wounded to her. She shook her head and pulled me close for a hug. In the club, I felt nothing but heat and rhythm and the pounding of my blood begging me to breathe down her taut stomach as she lay on her mattress. But now, I felt like I had the week before, like myself, and I didn’t like myself then. She was definitely an older sister.

I half expected her to say, “There, there,” and give me look of glossy-eyed pity until I finally realized I should run away with my tail between my legs. Instead, she kissed me with no romance. First, on the forehead, like all the thoughts I had worked so hard to spill in the primal dance of the Blues Club had pooled up between my eyes, and her lips were sucking them away.

Then, to my surprise, she kissed me on the mouth. Looking back, I never wondered why. Only later did I realize that why didn’t matter. She just wanted to be there for me. I couldn’t tell if it turned her on to pick up strays and bandage them, but we were on her mattress in the span of a ten minute walk to her dorm. The whole time I explored her warm body, I felt like a guest. I was supposed to leave. And it’s ok to leave, and maybe, to be left by.