Chapter 1
My mouth dropped open with disbelief, a gentle shake of my head cleared my head of the alcohol running through my bloodstream, well for a brief moment, enough for the long-haired Viking looking man to repeat his question,
“Isn’t it creepy to ask a random person ‘Do you want to make-out’?”
The looks on the girls faces that surrounded him seemed to match mine, but with a weary sense of ‘this isn’t going to work’ but I, having had many, arguably too many drinks and feeling petty and spiteful to prove this handsome stranger wrong, simply replied,
“Well, do you want to?” And with that, he cupped my face with his warm hands, leant in and kissed me, the taste of vodka and sambuca sweet on his lips mixed with the faint smell of aftershave, pulling me closer in. The kiss held so much tenderness but underlying passion that I wanted to just dive deeper into it, had I not felt the back of my head being bored into by the brown eyes of the boy I could not get off my mind, staring at us from across the bar.
I pulled away and was torn between chastising myself for snogging some guy in a pub, knowing that he was there, and congratulating myself for kissing someone that wasn’t him. You aren’t defined by the boys that surround you, the phrase I tried to repeat in my head, but nothing I did could disrupt the look in his eyes as I turned around. A mix of anger, sadness and disgust was hiding beneath a slight smirk of intrigue, almost of a challenge. Catching his eye and matching his smile, I hitched my skirt up a little higher and made way to him, allowing the platforms of my boots to part the crowd, the soles sticking to remnants of drinks spilled on the floor.
“Like what you see?” I mumbled into his ear.
Without missing a beat, he replied, “You and I both know that should be me,” a low growl escaped him on the last few syllables. A small laugh came from me as I looked at his blonde curls under the coloured lights and pictured my hand running through them, the softness and familiarity calming my skin, but I pushed that image from my mind and made my way to the dancefloor to dance the night away.
Over the course of the night, I continued to go to the bar to drink away the thought of his hands snaking their way up the top of my leg and continuing up my sides. Oh, wait, I guess I’d drank so much that my mind and reality began to seep into each other, and I couldn’t distinguish between what was really going on. The only thing I knew was the bass of the music thumping throughout my body and the alcohol coursing through my veins, burning its way down my stomach, lighting me on fire from within and allowing myself to feel so free from the bounds of life like work, family and... boys with brown eyes. Which was my last thought before everything went dark.
—
I awoke several hours later in my own bed; my eyes groggily scanned the room, and I pulled my phone out from beneath me. A few texts notifications had come through and with each ping a thump pounded its way to the front of my head. Nothing interesting was there, it was mostly my friends asking if I’d gotten home or if I was still alive, ha ha. Another notification came through, this time from Snapchat and a name I didn’t recognise.
‘Hey, had a good night with you last night. Would you maybe wanna hang soon?’ Almost after reading it, another Snap came through.
‘It’s Josh btw’ Huh? Who the fuck is Josh?
Oh. Oh shit, tall Viking man. The events of last night didn’t exactly rush back, more like popped up and I began to piece everything back together as best I could. Not before checking my story; there was nothing embarrassing on there, that’s a good start. My hand shook as I opened up my camera album, and I almost dropped my phone in shock. There was at least 50 or so photos and videos of me and brown eyes, mostly dancing and being stupid but at some point, it became a lot racier, it was us making out, the usual, I thought, and then of me in some weird, contorted positions. At which point my face flared bright red and I shut off my phone, not wanting to watch anymore. My head dropped and my heart started racing, I didn’t remember any of that, I remembered the argument that Josh was having with those girls, I’m guessing they were his friends, about how it wasn’t fair that so many people managed to find others to hook up with and they couldn’t. That’s where I came in and destroyed his argument about how weird and creepy it is to just ask someone random if they wanted to make-out. Whoops.
Beep..beep. My phone lit up with yet more Snapchat notifications, several in fact.
‘IS THIS YOU??!!’
‘OMG you whORE!’
‘Who is that guy? He’s fit!’
Each message accompanied by a video of mine and Josh’s faces mushed together in that amazing kiss and my stomach dropped, but nothing could compare to the next video that was sent to me by one of my mates;
‘Wow girl, two guys in one night, how would they feel if they found out...oh wait?’ The first one was me and Josh but from a different angle, and in the background there he was, as it zoomed in on his face it turned from happy and smiling to pure anger, I heard a smash and you could see the broken glass on the floor when the angle changed again. That’s weird, I didn’t remember him smashing a glass when he saw. Then the realisation hit, that was not the first kiss. Which means I fucked up. I clicked play on the second video. It wasn’t me and Josh this time, but me and those gorgeous brown eyes, locked together as we danced, I cringed as it showed me begin to grind and kiss him and I just about died when I heard a voice from the speaker,
“Who the fuck is that?”
It was Josh. The camera panned to him looking like sad puppy and walking away. If the drink hadn’t made my heart hurt, these videos certainly did. I pulled the covers back over my head and buried my face into my pillow. I didn’t want to think about either of them. That wasn’t the case and for the whole day all that was replaying on mind were those videos and the looks on both of their faces.
“Here darling,” My Mum said as she placed a bowl of pasta in front of me, “you need to eat and stop stressing about whatever it is that has got your face all screwed up.”
I gave her a look and gently took the bowl, nothing could cheer me up like my Mum’s cooking even though as a queen she had people to do it for her, “Thanks Mum, but nothing’s on my mind.”
And in true Mum fashion, she pulled the same huh really face at me and smiled sympathetically, “So you’re sure that it has got nothing to do with Noah?”
My heart skipped a beat, “What do you know about Noah?” I tried to ask nonchalantly, desperate to keep my cool.
“You kept muttering his name when you came home, you seemed pretty out of it. I’m guessing he’s the boy who waited at the end of the driveway by the gates until you made it inside.”
At this point I was ready to have a heart attack and drop dead, but I could not prove my mother right. My internal panic continued to have a hold on me, and I didn’t want to keep asking questions lest she get suspicious, but also because I did not want her to confirm more embarrassing stories of drunken me.
“Did you see what he looked like?” I managed to force out, if I knew which one of them, she saw, I could play it off. I think. If it was him then that’s fine because then at least I wouldn’t have to argue why I was talking about some other lad in front of him, but if it wasn’t then I would be screwed. She paused for a moment before replying,
“I didn’t, it was dark and he was wearing a hoodie, almost didn’t see him except for...” My head whipped up, she’d tell me a valuable detail and I’d know who it was straight away, “his phone falling out of his pocket with the flash on.”
Oh, that didn’t help at all, thanks Mum. I couldn’t exactly ask both of them if they dropped their phone outside my home, because it would give away that I was with someone else at the end of the night. But it didn’t matter, because they had both witnessed me making a fool out of myself with each other. I checked my phone in-case any of them had messaged me, but no, nothing. A slight sadness crept along my shoulder blades and settled at the base of my neck, why do I feel like this? Hopefully Noah had forgotten about last night, he usually drinks until he blacks out, maybe Josh had as well? He seemed really eager to message me this morning without any ill feelings about what he saw. I’m not sure who I would want to remember the night. Noah or Josh.
Once Mum had left my room, I pulled out an old book from the shelf, the pages inside had been cut out in the middle to make room for my tin which contained my weed and tobacco. I took out my grinder from its own hiding space in my jewellery box and began to roll a joint. Mum isn’t the most supportive of my smoking but as long as I don’t do it in the house, she cannot really say a lot, Dad however has smoked with me in the past, only when she isn’t home.
I made my way downstairs and down to the gardens, still dressed in my pyjamas. Still have no idea if I got myself changed or Mum did, considering she was up when I got home. I sparked up and took a picture and added it to my story with the caption ′wake and bake is the best hangover cure’. Not before I took my second drag, my phone buzzed with a text, I opened it, and it was from the very boy I wasn’t sure I wanted to message me.
‘Getting baked without me? Where was my invite?’ with a sad emoji next to it.
I couldn’t help but smile faintly at it. He did care enough to text, and weirdly enough the first to view my story, as usual. I took a shot of the empty bench seat next to me and replied,
‘Always space if you wanna join’ and hit send. And as soon as I did that, I regretted it, because that right there, was the reason I could never shake him off or let him stay in the past. I would do anything to have him sit next to me and get high and just chat pure shit for hours like we used to. The waves of nostalgia mixed together with the weed, and I let myself give in to the chill bliss.
