Alas, I Cannot Swim.

To a woman he hardly knows.

Starbucks was busy for half past eight in the morning, people rushing in and out to pick up coffee before they got to work, people sitting around reading the mornings newspaper in order to find out what disastrous thing was happening in the world today. The bright lights in the room offered a more pleasant start to the day than the dreary rain and low hanging grey clouds outside.

A gust of wind blew in from the door as a young female made her way into the building, heading towards a table where, presumably, her friend sat as she struggled to close her bright pink umbrella properly, her heels clicking across the tiled floor. The girl already sat at the table, two fresh mugs of steaming coffee in front of her, stood and embraced her friend. Sitting down across from each other, the girls launched into a talking, laughing frenzy as if they hadn’t spoken to each other in years.

Thomas’s daydream was cut short when his cheek was hit with a flying napkin. He turned to face the two other boys at his table, his brother Oliver and friend Matt Nicholls sat staring at him with matching grins spread across their faces, before rolling his eyes and turning back to the blonde haired beauty in the corner. Her friend had left the table and the shop altogether causing her to have pulled out a book from her bag submerging herself in a world of words.

“Why don’t yeh go talk to ‘er?” Matt questioned, his accent think. His eyes shifted between the younger Sykes brother and the mysterious girl. The Sykes did always have a knack for falling for the prettiest girls and this time was no different.

Thomas started at him incredulously, not quiet sure wither to take that as a joke or not. Oliver was always the one able to speak to girls, never Thomas. He was always the shy one, not so much living in Oliver’s shadow but more living just a couple of steps behind him to make sure he was doing the right thing. He always looked up to Oliver.

Oliver stood from the table, slowly making his way over to the girl that had caught Thomas’s attention causing Thomas to make quiet threats at him through clenched teeth and Matt to start laughing hysterically, choaking on a mouthful of coffee. Thomas’s heart sank when his pleading went unheard and his brother continued on his journey.

“S’not funny Matt” Thomas scoffed turning to face the laughing idiot, not wanting to see his brother score with someone he seen first. He could picture exactly how Oliver would go about talking to her; stick out his stupid tattooed hand in a polite gesture, introduce himself, wait for her name, compliment her and then ask about her. Oliver could write a book on how to seduce women, Thomas was sure of that. He was also sure that every man in the world would be able to bed a supermodel after reading it.

“You need to get over yer fear man” Matt choked out. “We need to go anyway” He stood up from the table yelling at Oliver to hurry up. Thomas followed him out of the small coffee shop, the blast of fresh air a refreshing change from the overwhelming smell of coffee, even if it was a bit damp.

Once Oliver joined them the three made their way to Thomas’s car prepared for the drive to Thomas’s flat where they would be doing work for his clothing company. Why Oliver couldn’t do it himself was something no one would ever know.

*****

Thomas shared a two bedroom flat with his best friend Corey. He was almost the complete opposite to Thomas; blonde hair, dark brown eyes, taller and thinner. The boys had met in high school and had just never seemed to grow tired of each other.

The flat was a mess of clothes, magazines, console games, empty food containers and beer bottles. Not that either of them minded, as long as it never turned into a landfill site they were quiet happy. The walls were a cream color which had proven to be not the smartest choice of paint color after parties where countless mysterious stains had found themselves a place to live. Even after scrubbing for hours on end there was still evidence of the no vanishing stains.

Oliver had set up camp at the island in the kitchen, clearing the surface so he had somewhere to put a box of paperwork and documents. Oliver’s definition of ‘clearing’ was different to everyone else’s, he simple pushed things out of the way until thee was enough free space to satisfy him.

Thomas decided to start his break early and instead of joining everyone else’s around the island he sat up on the counter beside the sink, watching as everyone else worked. He didn’t feel the need to help as he had done his bit the previous day having to put up with awkward models on his photo shoot. Most guys would love to spend all day with models but when they were stuck up and complaining all day Thomas would gladly hand over his camera to the first willing person. Once he had returned home he had phoned Oliver demanding to get new models for the next shoot.

Staring off at the chrome clock on the wall facing him, Thomas’s mind drifted back to the girl from the coffee shop. He had seen her around Sheffield a couple of times before, each time he couldn’t stop thinking about her for days afterwards. She wasn’t one of the girls he would mentally undress with his eyes and imagine what it would be like to have her wriggling around underneath him, well at least not until he went to bed, she was one of those girls that he wanted to have a conversation with, one he craved to know everything about.

“Tom!” Oliver yelled finally gaining the attention of his little brother. “I got you new models”

Thomas stared skeptically at Oliver. The grin spread across he four boys’ faces told him they knew something he was oblivious too. Not that he minded too much. He had learned from years of experience that it was just better to find out in your own time rather than try to find out off of any of his friends. That only proved to end in humiliation.