&. ji nee / @pcrkjinee​ event: st patrick’s festival. location: the temple bar.

It was a bad decision to have followed the whims of an invitation she hadn’t been expecting, and stone cold sober in a crowd of drunken Angelenos who fancied that they could outdrink the Irish, Chloé had come to realise that she needed a drink. Or thirty. Whatever would kill her faster. She had managed to fight her way to the bar before she had been caught, surrounded by camera flashes picking out an easy target separated from the herd — wasn’t this a private event? — and she swore, holding up her lukewarm Guinness as a shield, struggling to breathe. “Motherfucker! Leave me alone, fuck off!”

&. bryce / @brycbrooks event: st patrick’s festival. location: the temple bar.

Expecting drunken men not to be assholes was ridiculous. She knew that. Her bar was practically on the ground. And still, she was let down. Someone was persistently catcalling her, yelling at her to ‘take off your top, blondie’, and she spun around to scream back. She was met with as unwelcome a sight as possible: the king of SoCal Sinners, or whatever it was. “Try me. Say one more word and you’re going to get a whisky to the face.” Chloé knew his voice, everyone knew what Bryce Brooks’ sounded like after six years of his stupid show, and the voice yelling at her hadn’t been his. But — he was a man. So — threatening him was good enough.

&. evie / @lcrkspur​ event: st patrick’s festival. location: the temple bar.

Cardinal rule of being an Angeleno: don’t acknowledge celebrities — unless, of course, they were your boss and you wanted to fuck them. Ignoring someone’s fame, or infamy, was now Chloé’s own personal rule. She knew the woman trying to order a drink, or at least get some water, was Evie Larkspur. She pretended she didn’t. “Hold on, I’ll get his attention. What do you want?”