Not surprisingly, Cassie, the lead singer's mind was sent spinning by setting over-achievable targets. The target of taking roller coaster notes like Celine Dion was never meant to be a piece of cake for anyone whose throat wasn't trained enough to hit the high notes and drop to falsetto smoothly. As a result, she had to step down from the stage on the pretext of quenching her thirst. The pause that she took was just to get her normal voice back, which was more like a dying mule's cry according to Ruby.

Surprisingly, Ruby planted her right foot forward and filled the spot smartly. Even as she stood in the spotlight, her cheeks rose high in happiness. She was facing a gulf of disbelief by watching people who walked hither and thither sparing glances at her. Among them were some hot blonde dudes pointing at her. Maybe it was the dress playing center of gravity. Or whatever.

Being a part of a choir was not an independent choice, rather she was forced by factors like- poverty, shelter crisis, and parentless condition. The choir had ten members including Emily and herself. These two never stood a chance to take the center and face the audience. They only provided the backup vocals from standing behind the other so-called gems.

By the end of the song, she realized that everyone had flocked toward the buffet lines, but she was sure about someone standing in the nook who had kept his eyes skinned for her for a very long time.

Before Ruby could direct her gaze at the unknown's face, Emily bounded over to her, their faces pressed together. Her movement, not wanting to scare her more than to surprise Ruby.

"You were so good. I felt like a proud sister rooting for you from behind." Her large gray orbs fixed into Ruby's widened ones. She was so rarely told by others that she was a brilliant singer, apart from Emily who never missed a chance to underline the fact. Oddly, it was just for a second she felt a shiver-giving discomfort when Emily's untrimmed fingernail pressed into her skin.

"Better than that dud, Cassie Lacee?" Ruby's body movements were rife with confidence. "So, how much did I score?"

"If there was any number," Emily crooned and clasped Ruby's hand tightly.

Ruby turned a suspicious glare at Emily's mannerism that was subjected to excessive possessiveness. She pulled her back, raising their laced fingers in objection. "What are we at?"

"I suspect myself to be jealous of any boy asking for your hand. Seeing you in this red, hot dress would turn any guy crazy. I just don't want to share you with anyone." Emily was consistent in her resolve. Her eyes grew big as she went back at her words and mentally screened them. She cowered down and Emily mounted on her as they both shared loud laughter.

"No, I didn't mean as lovers." Emily's cheeks flamed out with embarrassment.

"Yikes," Ruby spoke in her temporarily cracking voice taking the boy as the subject, "You see, no guy will ever leap forward to take my hand. Once he sees where and how I survive each day in that dark and high well lodged in some dirty corner of the world, Seattle will become an existential threat for him." Nevertheless, she resumed laughing; she had to find a reason to laugh, smile, or live if said in the right terms. And right now, since they were in a cheerful ambiance, it was easy. "Gawd, I think if I continue to laugh like this I'll soon build six pack."

They got down off the rostrum and the earlier thought slipped off her mind like a bride's nightie.

While all the other members stayed together like a herd of sheep with Horan as their herder, the two of them whisked away without wanting anyone to sit on their heads while they had their share of food. They showed themselves to Horan from a distance only to keep him cognizant of their presence.

Ruby didn't miss on anything, knowing the frayed certainty of the banal feast that included canned beans on the heel of bread as her everyday meal ─ she took from Lebanese chicken fries to Korean barbeque chicken to Mexican black bean salad to Gado-Gado salad; searching for more different varieties. She tore away the couple like a deranged mother looking for her child and grasped the tongs to add yet another item to her plate. She didn't know care to know its name so far it was on the table.

It started from an amorphous heap and soon became the great-big, Mount Everest on her plate; the weight thereof drowned her to her knees and the two of them cornered themselves with the mission of chewing, gulping, licking every last bit on their plates like cannibals.

As she was distracted by the food, Emily nudged her elbow into Ruby's abdomen. "You see that's Gucci."

"Who? Oh, the one in a magenta gown mopping the floor at the same time? Oh yes! I can see her Gucci and also the multiple uses of her Gucci." Ruby's mellowed giggles rang in her friend's ear.

"Ssshh. . . Ruby," Emily sneered ever-so-slightly. "It's the latest Gucci collection. Layla showed me a catalog." Emily covered her mouth in fear of getting caught gossiping. "The price is many times greater than booking the hall!" she poured poisonously into Ruby's already perked-up ears.

Ruby whisper-laughed sarcastically. "You mean to say that dress? Oh, give me a break."

"Ruby, keep it low," Emily warned with a downward gaze, crushing her jaws altogether.

"Poor lady, I saw the same dress hanging and gathering the dust of the downtown market──and at flat fifty percent off! Nobody even cared to look at it. It won't surprise me if the owner of that shop has seen it himself," Ruby stated dryly, not hesitating to degrade the lady's pride in a microsecond.

Unable to resist the texture on her plate, Ruby opened her mouth with a spoonful of crab salad aloft only to shut it close. Amid the emotional crisis with the food, she heard subdued voices from behind her back; it wasn't anything extraordinary as these voices fell into silence.

She retained her attention and opened her mouth again. Damn. As if to mock her, the whispering sound became more incessant and she couldn't take a bite of anything. A niggling feeling certainly told her what they wanted from her. A bunch of perverts. Her fingers plunged the fork into a piece of chilly chicken cube begrudgingly, as she stuffed it inside her mouth, chewing it hard and gulping it down thickly.

She turned around dramatically to scan the faces of what happened to be two fine men. One had brown skin, an unruly cloud of black hair, and dancing eyes, while the other was big-boned, had a prominent jawline, and looked more serious, so much so that even his muscles were praying to come out of his jacket.

He got the idea that she was the same girl after sneaking a confirming glance at her hair. But the things that blew the air out of his lungs were her eyes, nose, lips, and that holy mole above her lip. He dropped his plate in slow motion after fixating his eyes on her face for the first time. His onyx orbs enlarged and his breathing slowed down to a turtle's speed.

She bore a similar reaction but with a different reason. Her dress (which was not hers, technically speaking) was marred with blotches of ketchup and some good amount of thick curry just like those unnamed, scattered mini-figures on an atlas.

"You dickhead! What did you just do?" Ruby oozed such petulance that it never felt like the boys were in with a chance to end the problem.

On some ordinary day, Joseph would have followed the regime of bitch-slap, knockdown, or karate chop if it were a boy for calling him a dickhead. But it was a girl, and she was not just any girl. She looked painfully familiar to a picture that was seared into his memory permanently. Indeed, so much more familiar to let all those comments slide.

A curious stillness seemed to seize the atmosphere and the noise of the shattering plate muted through and through. Ladies and gentlemen, walking past them metamorphosed in the air. And Ruby could only see his gaze dipped into hers, and her oscillating focus on his pendulous lips and dark eyes.

Wow. He is a normal-looking everyman, mature, quiet man. No, but is hot. Anyways, she tapped into her warrior spirit and snapped her fingers before his eyes.

A little late but quick with her words, Emily thumbed at the crew as Ruby leaned backward to take her words. "Ruby, we should join them back."

Ruby snapped at her and didn't let her eyes break the connection with his moderately splayed eyes. "Na, na. He has to pay a price." She passed her plate to Emily. "Hold this."

The thing that got her baffled was that he had his hands stuck midway as if they were dipped in icy water and froze that way. Suddenly, the yammerings slowly began to drill in their ears and dragged them out forcefully to the real-time scenario. People started to stare at them, and she apologized by bowing down (if anyone who loathed bowing down in front of anyone was her) and wearing a timid smile to melt down their displeasure.

As a result, she shot him a disgustful glance. No sooner had she opened her mouth to question his identity, than closed it shut after seeing the parade of well-suited waiters charging toward them in no time, picking up the littered salsa from the floor, shards of the plate and decomposing it in the tray with stilted etiquette.

He suddenly slouched down. His sculpted back through the jacket couldn't hinder itself from defining the outline of his muscular cuts. He picked up the fork, keeping it on the waiter's tray as he complied with the curtsey.

In the meantime, Ruby's monkey mind worked with the greatest speed as she fed every single detail related to his outlook in her memory; he wasn't that good-looking but had some oscillations of handsomeness. This was the first time that anybody had come this closer to her and more importantly paid attention to her. Ruby was delighted and also uncomfortable to the point she was mentally questioning herself if she had scrubbed the blackheads on her nose properly.

Anshuman cut through them and apologized to Ruby, who didn't look convinced, "I'm sincerely sorry on his behalf. He's a fine man but I guess he just lost it . . ." He patted his back, mouthing with urgency, "Dude, there's safety in not swimming amongst unfriendly crocodiles. Let's go." He winked and pulled Joseph in another direction, away from the two girls, among which the auburn-headed was a proverbial female animal.

Joseph slipped his arm from his grip, and said, rather blandly, "Could you just excuse us, Anshuman?" Then he looked at the floor, concentration taking the form of stiff nods. "Yeah, could you?"

For a man like Joseph, his idiosyncrasy of remaining silent was utterly siphoned out of his body. Every time he opened his mouth to ask one question, the other one raised its head. His mind was struck with an urgent thought: That damn mole above her left lip. Her diamond shape face. Her dark hair. Perhaps if she's the same person he's imagining, then she should know his name. At last, he asked softly, "Do you . . . know me?"

She retorted in her virago style, "I know you very well because I'm not blind like you. But do you know this dress ain't mine-"

Unexpectedly, he landed on his knee and pulled a handkerchief from his pants pocket. A yelp darted out of Emily's mouth, just as he started wiping it off.

Totally taken aback, Ruby watched him silently. Having never before been treated this way, her cheeks were on the verge of bursting. "Hey, what are you doing? Just get up. You have already done enough." She felt small in his eyes for a fleeting second. Does he have no self-respect?

He rose to his full height.

His constant urge to discover Ruby's every nook and cranny struck a high point, she roared with enhanced hate, "What now? I don't mind an occasional look, but a stare is really uncomfortable. Take your bloody eyes off me."

"I-I . . ." Disbelief flared on his features as he stuttered.

Anshuman who for the sake of their friendship hadn't gone too far returned. For him, watching Joseph stutter was like watching the sunrise from the west. That wasn't right. Emily and Anshuman were standing in between Joseph and Ruby, facing each other.

"Okay. Let's be honest with each other I know who you are." She crossed her arms against her chest.

Joseph blinked at this, as he parted his mouth to say something, she added hastily, "You and your supposed friend were having the time of your lives when I was up on the stage. You surely were more interested in me than in my performance."

Anshuman echoed, not aggressively but when the adverb gently took the form of dramatization, "And what's the major deal with staring at you? We are sentient beings, not popes! Instead, you should be dancing in happiness that you knocked this man unconscious. Joseph Holden, a man who has never spared two minutes of his life on any girl before." He wiggled two fingers and rested his elbow on his friend's shoulder, flashing his teeth in pride.

"Listen, I bet this food is way tastier than hearing your over-the-minute cooked justifications. My brain is wired to notice who is decent and who is not, and it's very good at its job," Ruby spoke in a closed tone, using her malleable face to empathize on the matter. "Just maintain the conduct: get a drink and leave the party just as normal people do. I don't know who you are, and you don't know who I am. That's it."

At last, Joseph found a stretch of silence from both Anshuman and Ruby's side that helped him assert in an exceptionally low voice, "Miss Ruby, I think you are overreacting. For one, I'm not a pervert." He smiled, still giving her a chance to start their conversation cooly, "And for another, I think you owe me something."

Glaring at him with deceptive confidence she spoke, "Oh. But I think that you owe me an apology for eye-raping me all this time."

"Eye raping you? That's a big allegation. It's something ostensibly meaningless gone so horribly wrong, capable of damaging everything I hold dear in life, from people to principles. I'm sincerely sorry," he spoke in measured tones throughout.

Emily was crushed by his etiquette and diction that was synonymous with educated family background. She clutched the younger's hand, and a hushed gasp left through her lips. Emily looked intimidating, causing Ruby to rethink her audacity of back-answering him. "Ruby. Apologize to him."

"But why? Is he some godfather?"

"Dear, stop seeing everyone from the same optic. Not all rich are bad people." The poison in Emily's tone suddenly morphed into nectar. "Go ahead."

Ruby launched forward and whispered through her teeth, "Your eyes are very weird. Either they are of a criminal or a . . . sick lover."

A furtive smile rewarded her with suspicion as he replied in the same manner, she blinked several times, "I must say, you have a farsighted vision." This was Joseph's alter ego. That's it. She gulped, hating the fact that her heartbeats went mad in her chest. He's a bloody crook. She looked around to see if Emily had noticed what she had, that he didn't deserve to be treated like a king.

He cocked his head, calling for Emily's attention. "She's said it."

When did I? Ruby's lips left space for an astounding sigh.

"It was lovely meeting you, Miss Ruby." Joseph released a breath as he beckoned, spinning around only to find a confused Anshuman with a question mark etched on his face.

Walking away, he was just a stone's throw from them, Ruby uttered loudly, freezing him in his tracks, "You said that I owe you something?"

"What something?" Emily's body shook as her eyes narrowed at Ruby.
Ruby gave her a black look and returned her gaze to him.

Joseph parted away and she half expected him to answer with, "Until next time."

His search stopped finally as his deep-seated hope of spotting Elizabeth's lookalike was fulfilled.

Word count - 2720

a/n; Marking the beginning of mystery, aspirations, love, and the main blueprint which will come out in the next chapter... most probably.

Despite being so much confident, Ruby is dumbfounded, but by whom? :(