you're too young & eager to love

I'm not sure how to label this. More real-people fiction? If such a thing exists.

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She is anxious. She shows it by smoking too much, inhaling in sharp, impatient little puffs. Miraculously, this is the only warning sign. In every other regard, she is poised. She’s proud about that – her ability to maintain herself, to look dignified in a bar when it’s nearing midnight. Her straight-backed position, relaxing with the shoulders, legs crossed and one hand idly resting in her lap. Hair down and, to her, pretty now that the length has grown past her shoulders. Her foot bounces, toes pointed in the direction of the woman sitting directly across from her, but she’s keeping time with the jukebox music. Someone chose Neil Diamond, and the drunks are pounding on the bar top, singing in raucous voices that make her laugh.
The thing is, she shouldn’t be anxious. It wiggles in alongside her weariness, a distaste for bland things and common grounds. There are three other women seated around a speckled green table with her, and she knows each one considerably well. She can toss back obscure movie quotes with the redhead. With the one across from her – the one her toes point at beneath the table – reflects a timid awkwardness, still unaccustomed with a bustling crowd and how forward human nature can be. The other, the brunette with the Egyptian eye makeup, interjects the conversation periodically to reflect on a rumor. But the air is easy, familiar, broken by laughter and agreements and all the other side effects of friendship.
Still, she has done this before. These are good people, who have been good to her, so it stands that she then should have a good time. The difficulty is her inability to accept such simple routines. There’s nothing here that stands to surprise her. And doesn’t she feel a little guilty for that, really, for being dissatisfied in a situation that usually entertains her? The cigarettes help. And the tequila.
“I don’t think it’s a bad thing,” she says abruptly, spoiling a theoretical conversation on the location of souls within the body, and ushering forward in her fast-speaking way, “to find something pleasant to be, in actuality, inadequate.” Her hand holding the cigarette, the one with the ring in the shape of a rose, flutters when she talks and accentuates her words.
The brunette leaves the table, not unkindly, but with a note of uncaring. She slides her weight against the bar, still within eye contact from the group, and signals to the bartender for another round of drinks. The one she likes the most, the one who seems both her confidante and equal, taps the table thoughtfully and gives her an easy smile. “I don’t think it’s a problem to want more out of a situation.” The redhead is in concurrence, or would be if she weren’t preoccupied with looking for a lighter. Still, she pauses long enough to add her own insight. “But remember – what you find inadequate now is probably the thing you’re going to want when shit starts hitting the fan.”
She gives a monosyllabic answer behind the filter of her cigarette and tries smiling with her eyes.