"Three Drinks on Camelot"

[Guest Laarell]

Laarell sat with a starburst mimosa in one hand and twirled a strand of hair with the other, ignoring the, frankly, rather ugly Bolian that kept sitting next to her at the bar and looking at her like she was the latest piece of fun cargo that his freighter (or whatever he'd ridden into Camelot on) had picked up. By the dark goddess, she hated men, especially stupid ones. And smart ones, too... but Laarell had promised herself when she went out for a drink that she wasn't going to dwell on that particular issue.

 

So here she was. Drinking some froofy little drink (or the third, or fourth) that didn't hit the spot, pretending like she was scoping out the seedy little bar when, really, she was sulking. Yes, sulking, like her vapid little sister finding out that one of her boytoys didn't want her anymore. This was absolutely intolerable and absolutely unacceptable behavior for Laarell, and she was going to stop it. If Tandaris was going to be ridiculous, then he could just watch while she started playing with someone else who'd serve nicely as both a rebound for her and a reminder to Tandaris of what he was missing. There were a few new, cute medics who'd been smiling at her in the mess hall, not to mention most of the marines, or even that one quiet crewman in engineering, or anyone, really...

 

... so why wasn't Laarell cozying it up with the hot little lieutenant that was in the corner?

 

Whether or not Laarell would have admitted it to anyway, being unceremoniously... dumped... might have... zapped her. And there was no reason that she should have had to have jumped on the first thing she saw, was there? No. She was perfectly capable of parading around without some boy-toy to make every other man jealous, and the fact that she was currently without a man (and loving it, thank you very, very much) was just fine, and no reflection on her status as the ship's sex symbol.

 

The Orion paid for her (low, she told herself) bartab, tossing around ideas in her brain. After all, if she were single in the most puritanical sense, she had more energy to dedicate to her science labs, and some old projects that she'd lost interest in. It would be good for her to be doing something other than one of the ship's Trill.

 

And if she was also in a good position to start plans for her next conquest, that was beside the point. She was past all caring about men and sex and anything that related to those topics. And if, in her utter apathy, she still ended up proving the axiom that no hell had any fury like an Orion female scorned, then that wasn't her fault, either.

 

Laarell smiled, heading back to the ship. Suddenly, her bad mood seemed just a little sweeter.