This Turbulence is Beautiful.

Everything was much too hot. I felt my face flush as I took another deep breath to try and cool myself down, trying to walk down the street like I didn’t feel like I was about to pass out. Every so often I’d forget I was in public and a sob would sort of escape my lips, but for the most part I was pretty composed.

I couldn’t tell you why I felt so crushed by this. I hadn’t even felt this over-emotional when I’d discovered Taylor cheating. But this was heartbreaking; I had finally settled in Weybridge and finally maybe found someone that could make me feel a little bit of the normality I had been so used to before everything got turned upside down. I loved Matt more than anything, but he and his friends were anything but normal- especially seeing as after they had finished writing and recording and producing the album they were working on at the moment, they would be off around the world for eighty percent of the year. It could never be a permanent thing, me living here with them. Eventually I would have had to have found my own place and my own life that wasn’t revolved around them, as daunting as that felt. It wasn’t even like I could expect them to be able to take me on tour with them- there was barely enough room in the bus for them to take their girlfriends, and it wasn’t like I would particularly have a right to be there.

I had to stop thinking so seriously- the thought of living alone, without anyone around me or to phone me or to take me out when I was feeling particularly lonely was a horrible one, and it was a thought that was only making tears fall down my cheeks even more steadily than before.

A couple of old ladies smiled at me as they passed, but it was hard to tell what kind of smile it was. That is, whether it was a smile that was warm and friendly, because they didn’t like seeing people upset, even if they’d never seen that person before. A smile that said, “Don’t worry, dear, it’ll get better soon.” I wiped my cheek at the thought, a small smile on my lips.

But then, it could have been the kind of smile that said, “Oh, dear. Look at that silly broad, crying in the middle of the street. I’m telling you, youths today, they don’t know what they’re living with. All with depression and stuff like that. What have they got to be depressed about? They’ve got it all,” whilst the other one nodded understandingly, connecting with everything the first woman was saying. The smile faded off of my face almost as quickly, and twice as uneasily, as it had appeared in the first place.

Although, I suppose, in perspective, I shouldn’t have been complaining. I had a group of very good friends at home who would hug me and tell me it’s nothing to be worried about, like they had when I had told them about Taylor. “It happens to the best of us,” Max had comforted. I doubt they could say that about my situation at the moment, but even something along those lines would do the trick. Even the fact that Josh had laughed about Taylor had sort of made me feel better.

I don’t know if I could laugh about this though. I genuinely did feel like the worst person alive- how could I not have noticed that he was married? Surely he talked about her at some point, or at least mentioned something to do with her in passing without even realizing- unless he really did not care at all, in which case he probably never talked about her, to anyone. The thought made me feel physically sick. I bet his wife was a real sweetheart too. I never believed anyone if they said they were married but it was “on the rocks”. If it was really on the rocks and they cared, they should be at home trying to fix the problems, not out in a bar trying to pick up extra chicks to take their frustrations out on.

And I was that extra chick- there because Hayden fancied me, and nothing more. He couldn’t see us in a long term relationship, as that was what his wife was for. He didn’t want a life with me, he just wanted someone to go out with when his wife wasn’t around; someone to sleep with for when he was extremely bored, or just fancied a bit on the side. Who was to say he hadn’t done this before? And who was to say that every man in the history of time hadn’t done this before, and wouldn’t do it in the future? Was I supposed to keep an optimistic approach to life in these circumstances? Because this series of events was going to severely fuck up any apparitions I’d had of a normal life with a normal relationship, and maybe at a push a normal family; that wasn’t going to happen for me. All I wanted was a proper family to make up for the fact that I’d been robbed of mine. It wasn’t going well for me so far. So far, I’d been engaged only to walk in on my boyfriend cheating on me at that exact moment, I’d been the other woman on a relationship I didn’t even know about, hurting a woman I didn’t even know, and the only guy I was still seriously considering enough to put my already shattered faith in was going to be away for eighty percent of the year…

Shut up Rosie. Just stop this. You’re crying in public, talking to yourself in your mind in an extreme fashion and only making yourself feel worse. Let’s just get a coffee.

I walked up to the counter, pulling out the only small bit of change I had in my back pocket, probably from a night out months ago. A total of one pound twenty was spread across my palm, which I looked at deeply, willing it to at least multiple by two.

But then, if I could multiply money, I’d be a millionaire by now- probably with my own bus so I could follow the boys around when they went on tour. I could bring all of their girls along too- Lucy was a complete sweetheart, as was her friend Charlie, who was majorly swooning over Dan. Matt had Anna. I was yet to meet Max’s lady- but then he didn’t even know her name, and neither did I, so I couldn’t exactly get hold of her unless I fully stalked her on a regular basis like Max probably did- going out and buying coffee when he doesn’t even drink coffee. That’s how crazy he was.

Deep in thoughts of what I could do if I had all the money in the world, I was sort of staring at the barista stood in front of my, a smile on her face whilst she waited patiently for me to snap out of it. I shook my head slowly, looking back up to the board behind her to see what I could afford.
“Um,” I looked again, searching for anything else that I could afford, hoping for a little bit more kick than Peppermint tea. Luck wasn’t on my side, however. I tried to smile, “Could I have a peppermint tea?”

The girl raised an eyebrow at me and smiled slightly, but made the tea anyway, placing the teapot on the counter in front of me along with a small teacup on a saucer. I smiled and thanked her, placing the money on the counter, and went to sit at a table near the back of the café. It was relatively empty in here, with a couple in the corner and an old woman sitting near the radiator of the place, hugging her coffee cup to her chest warmly.

The girl behind the bar came over to me, pulling her apron off from around her waist and setting it down on the side.

“Hey, are you alright?” the girl asked, sitting down opposite me on the small table, “You look like you’ve been crying or something?”

Her accent was friendly to me, an Australian twang that I had been familiar with from growing up with my mother. The thought of this made me feel almost empty, but I looked at the sweet girl sitting in front of me, smiling at me curiously.

“I’m Pamela, by the way,” she smiled.

I nodded and smiled back, “I’m Rosie, and I’m fine. It’s just cold outside, that’s all. Don’t worry about it,” I smiled again, trying my best to hold it.
“See, when people say ‘don’t worry about it’, it only means there’s something to worry about- so come on, girlie, spill!”

There was something about the girl that seemed trustworthy, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to talk about it yet. However, the fact that she cared was enough to keep me happy, and I ended up talking to her about random things for a couple of hours. Although in this time, she had to go back to work, I went and sat behind the counter, occasionally getting a top up of my peppermint tea. She was sweet and caring- and in saying that, I realised that most of the people I’d met here had been- with the exception of Hayden who didn’t care about anything but his cock, clearly- fucking prick.

Eventually, Pamela locked up the small coffee shop that was a few miles away from my current residence. She offered me a lift, which I accepted, but only after convincing her to come in for at least a take-out pizza (which was, inevitably, what we would be eating tonight).



Bringing Pamela into the house was sort of embarrassing to say the least. Josh and Max were sat on the sofa eating ice-cream out of the tub, wearing nothing but their boxers and socks. As soon as Josh heard the door opening, he leapt up, almost squealing, but when I walked through the door, he sat down again.
Max was a different story when Pamela walked through the door, however.

“Bloody hell, Rosie, what are you doing?” He shouted, leaping up and looking at me, his face red, and his ice-cream cartoon dropping to the ground as he practically pushed past Josh, pushed past me, and ran upstairs.

Josh laughed, looking at me, “What did you do?”

“I’m not sure…” I stared up the stairs where Max had just ran, and then looked back at Pamela, ready to invite her through and apologise for a) the half naked boys in the house, and b) Max’s crazy behaviour, but I was completely distracted when I looked at her. Her cheeks were bright pink, and her eyes were focused on the stairs too.

“That’s Max,” she mumbled, almost too quiet to hear. I looked at her, a small smile on my face.

“How do you know Max then?”

Her head snapped to me, as she flushed a deeper shade of red, “Oh, I don’t really. He comes in for a latte occasionally. Well, a vanilla decaf latte, he always orders the same thing. It makes me laugh.”

Josh appeared next to me, a grin on his face, ice-cream cartoon still in hand as he shovelled more of the melted mess into his mouth, “I don’t think you realise who this is, Rosie.”

I looked at him, and then back at the newly confused Pamela, and then back at Josh, who proceeded to push another spoonful of ice-cream past his lips, studying us both with an amused look on his face. Max came down the stairs slowly, fresh jeans covering his previously bare legs and a recently washed t-shirt on his top half. He looked at Pamela, and she looked back at him. Suddenly, it hit me.

“Oh god! You’re the coffee girl!”

She looked at me, her forehead knotted with puzzlement, “Coffee girl?”

Josh nudged me lightly on my arm, “Subtle, Rosie, really subtle.” I covered my mouth in embarrassment, looking at Max and trying to convey as much apology as possibly without actually saying anything else.

Thankfully, I was rescued from my intense embarrassment as Matt came through the door, holding hands with a red-headed girl and laughing. Surveying the semi-awkward atmosphere, he immediately- and thankfully- went about diffusing it, introducing us all to Anna, whilst Max and Pamela continued to stare at each other, not even trying to restrain themselves. I smiled at Josh, who nodded in a way that I’m sure he thought was wise and knowledgeable, and we walked through to the kitchen, Matt and Anna in tow.

After about half an hour, I was getting fed up with the kissy faces being made across the room as we ate the pizza that Josh had ordered, and decided to head upstairs. I knew that I looked like a complete scrooge at this time, and I didn’t want to particularly sit in my room feeling sorry for myself, reading soppy romance novels that made me cry more than anything (because it was always so simple for them, and why could it not be that simple for me?) but right now, staring at the telly aimlessly was the last thing I wanted to be doing. Romance novels seemed like the best way forward, unfortunately, so I excused myself and headed upstairs.

I had been sat on my bed for about three minutes, trying to convince myself to stop reading the ever-predictable and always-enjoyable blurb printed on the back of my current expedition and actually open it. Josh’s face peering through the door was almost a relief, and I let a small sigh escape from my lips as I flung to book onto my bedside table and pulled my legs up to my chest, hugging them lightly. Josh flung himself on to the bed with a mixture of expertise and hope, and landed correctly, pulling at his ankles with his hands and crossing his legs- something that only could have been done because he wasn’t restricted by jeans at the moment.

He smiled at me, leaning across and picking up the book I had been studying before he’d rescued me from it’s addictive, heart-warming, and yet somewhat depressing clutches, reading over the back with a raised eyebrow, “…But she broke Dougie's heart and he's about to discover that she was paid to do it. She can never tell him the truth, so can she get him back? Well, Lola's very attractive and very persuasive. But even she's got her work cut out this time.” Rosie, you don’t really read this trash, do you?”

“Of course I do. It’s a nice story.”

He peered at the top of my book where the bookmark was poking out from the top, not even half way through the book, “You’ve not even finished it, how would you know it’s a nice story?”

I smiled, but it came out as more of a sneer, “Because they always are.”

“You don’t sound very happy about that.”

“It’s always the same ending, Josh- I like that. I like predictable, I like happy, I don’t like surprises,” I grimaced, as the words came out before I’d even realised what I was saying. I looked at him, embarrassed, and he tilted his head slightly.

“Surprises can be nice, sometimes. You never like surprises?” Josh flipped the book over in his hands, looking at the cover once more, and then chucking it onto the table it had been placed on before.

“Not when they’re to do with love.”

Josh pushed a hand through his hair and grabbed his ankle, pulling his legs closer together, “What if…” he paused, thinking it through carefully. Josh was a man of relatively few words, but the words he said were always coherent and cautious- he was obviously a lyricist at heart, it almost came to him naturally. He didn’t talk in a fast spurt of random mumblings like I did, or like Matt did- unless he was talking about his music or his band. Then he transformed, into this animated character that made jokes and laughed a lot to ease the intensity of it, probably for his own comfort. Matt had once told me that Josh was uncomfortable with his own passion- he couldn’t quite get to grips on how much he wanted to be in a successful band- the kind that sold out shows in arenas and stadiums in hours- and therefore tried to play it down. It worried him that he had no Plan B, all set out in his mind. A magazine interviewer had once asked him what he would be doing if his band was all to end tomorrow, and he had had to think for a while to answer, before meekly professing that he would return to college and finish the A-level qualifications he’d never started.

“Okay, what if, Hayden phoned you up now and said, “Surprise, Rosie, I’ve just booked a weekend trip to Paris,”? Would you hate it then?”

I considered this in a similar way Josh had considered his sentence before hand. If he really did phone me up right this second, I would probably shout at him, telling him to piss off and take his wife on holiday… or words to that effect. It wasn’t what I would tell him that I was considering- it was whether I should sit and complain to Josh about myself. I was starting to wonder if complaining to people about my life would eventually piss them off, and I was about ninety percent sure it already had done, to some effect. The pause I had taken to run through my thoughts was probably enough of an answer for Josh.

“Oh no, Rosie, I’m sorry. What happened?”

He got on his knees, shuffling forward before sitting next to me and slipping his arm around my shoulder, as I put my head on his shoulder in a purely sulky fashion.

“Nothing happened, as such. He just told me he already has a wife.” My eyes were watering and my stomach was filled with a great big knot, mainly because of how angry I was. My hands were clenched into a fist as my jaw grinded, without me even thinking about it. I don’t know why, but I felt angrier about this than I had felt about Taylor. Maybe it was because I saw Hayden as my way out of a complicated life.

I looked up at Josh, who was simply silent. We stayed quiet for a long time, during which Josh threw himself back to lie down on the bed. I said nothing as I fell back too, falling onto his open arm as he wrapped it around me. I put my head onto his shoulder, gripped onto his shoulder, and cried as silently as I could manage. Josh made no further comments; we were still silent, although it didn’t feel that way to me. The right arm that he had wrapped around my shoulder was making my skin prickle, the left hand running though my hair as he occasionally shushed me in a soothing tone was making me shiver, and the anger buzzing around my body when I thought of Hayden and Taylor and my mum and just life in general was grating on my nerves because it was stopping my mind from settling, although I eventually managed to stop crying and shut myself off from my head, focusing on Josh’s sleepy and slow breathing. It was the only thing that stopped the room from being completely silent.

Well, that and the noises emerging from the room next door as someone had incredibly loud and obviously mind-blowing sex.