<i>"I'll be okay. Good evening,"</i>said the late arrival, sending a casual smile at the obviously busy hostess before she trudged inside and closed the door. Planting the nose of her right shoe against the heel of the other, she pulled first one foot and then the other out of her converse shoes, pushing them a bit to the side, into a corner, to have a chance of finding them again some day. Her worn messenger bag was thrown into the same small, forming pile for the moment. She was most concerned with getting a drink and a place to sit, to rest her feet.<br/><br/>She caught one short, brown lock of hair between two fingers and dragged it back into place, then blinked her lenses into place one last time and scanned the people she could see, a faint smile playing on her lips. A defensive mechanism, really, as she knew none of these people and had no real idea how she'd get to know them, either. Having been in the same circle of friends for so long had made her foreign to the process of making new friends, so she rapidly came to the conclusion that getting drunk first and talking second would be the best choice.<br/><br/>She set course for the line of bottles, looking through them until she found what she wanted. Malibu. Though the rum-based alcohol was relatively weak, its strong coconut flavor and smell had won her over a long time ago, and she ended up making a half and half Malibu and sprite. Simple, sweet, and easy to get drunk to on, because when it came to this specific drink, Cecilia was a bottomless pit. She worked hard to finish the first glass relatively quickly before she made another equally strong mix, knowing that as long as she finished this one in the next fifteen minutes, she was well on her way to a decent buzz. She turned, looking out over the gathered girls, taking in one after the other in silence as she sipped her drink.<div class="messageTextEndMarker"> </div>