Noises

Words couldn’t describe how I felt as I watched Hollie walk away from me, hand in hand with the stupidly smarmy guy she had come in with. I almost tried to call for her to come back, but I couldn’t even begin to form the words. Instead, I was stood, watching in a mixture of fury and horror. As she stormed out of the room, she glanced over her shoulder one last time, looked straight at me, and practically sent me a death glare; her way of telling me she did not appreciate what I had just done in the slightest.

I don’t know what came over me. She took every ounce of stability away from me, along with every hint of common sense that I had left. The worst thing was, part of me was enjoying this game, although that part was hidden at that moment in time under layers and layers of animosity. Not for her- never for her- but for this character she was holding hands with who seemed to be leading her directly towards his car.

I brought both of my hands to the top of my head and ran my fingers through my hair, letting out a low growl of anger. I swivelled sharply on my toes, almost knocking into a couple who were leaving at that particular moment in time but not making the effort to apologise.

“Dick,” I heard the guy say under his breath. The girl shushed him, but it game with a small giggle. I turned immediately.

“Excuse me?” I spat, making the couple turn to face me.

The guy put his arm around the woman’s waist protectively, “You heard me.”

“I’m not sure I did, I was too busy deciding whether or not it was your girlfriend that I banged last week. I’m pretty sure it was, even though to do so would have been way below my standards,” I saw the girl go red in the face and turn to her boyfriend to defend herself, but he barely gave her a chance.

“Seriously, Charlotte? Have you met this dick before?” he spat. She shook her head timidly, but he hardly even looked at her. “I can’t believe you would do this to me again!” He pulled his arm from her, but I failed to see how the rest of the scene unfolded, because I stormed back to our table post haste.

Max stood up immediately, and came towards me, “What the hell happened to you? You look like you’re going to kill somebody!”

“I just might if I don’t get home soon,” I bent down to grab my coat from under the table and pulled it around me quickly, “I’m going. I’ll see you later,” I started to walk out, before turning around, “Cheers for the fucking boys night out, guys, it was a great success,” I titled my head towards Sophie, who had make-up stains flowing down her face as she cried and screamed about the ‘fucking bitch’ who had hit her. I bit my tongue and moved away, not even waiting for a reply from Max.

Stepping out into the cold night came entirely different to how I had imagined. There was no ditsy blonde hanging onto my side, my arm wrapped around her and both of us struggling to stand straight. I wasn’t going to be heading back to my flat for a quick one night stand. There was no reason to get a taxi, because even though I had drunk an absurd amount that probably equalled more than my body weight, I suddenly felt a lot more sober than I had fifteen minutes ago, and in the bright light of sobriety realised that I had in fact, already spent my put-aside ‘taxi fund’ on alcohol that had helped me along in way to making more of a mess of everything.

I walked along the street, my feet dragging and scuffing the ground with every step I took. I couldn’t believe how stupid I had been. All I had wanted to do was make her stop talking and listen to me, and when I had thought that the only logical thing that popped into my mind seemed to be to kiss her. She had looked so hurt when talking about Sophie- about how I was supposed to care about her and such. She clearly didn’t even understand how much of an effect she was having on me- it was her fault I had even thought about going after Sophie in the first place.

It wasn’t like either of us were looking for a romantic thing anyway. The stupid blonde type was the opposite of what I went for, and the situation was probably similar for Sophie. She would have only had to see what I looked like in the morning to check herself; what with my messy hair, unshaven face and figure that could most definitely do with a little bit of work. It didn’t matter how much I went to the gym, I could hardly escape junk food when it was all I lived on for a generally high percentage of my time spent touring.

I guess, though, in hindsight, the only logical thing to do would be to forget that Hollie even existed, which would be a lot easier said than done. She was firmly rooted in my mind already, and no reasonable number of blonde girls that would actually be willing to have casual sex with me would fix that. All I would end up with then was a bad case of Chlamydia or something along those lines, and Hollie would still be in my mind. Except, if I actually had an STD, she’d be even less likely to want to sleep with me.

I walked into the small metro supermarket that just so happened to be en route to my apartment and fiddled about in my pockets to find some change. I was pretty sure that I had at least some silver coins hanging around, and sure enough, I hit the jackpot. A large two pound coin sat in my palm, along with about two further pounds in silvers and coppers. A small smile on my face, I made my way to the back of the store, where the freezers and refrigerators were situated.

I stood for about five minutes trying to choose between the minimal amount of alcohol I could afford and decided instead to go with what I had actually come in here for. I opened the freezer and picked out a tub of ice-cream, and with one last count of my money to make sure I had enough to cover the extortionately-priced-yet-oh-so-good food and moved towards the counter. There was a small queue in front of me, so I stood behind the last guy in the line and waited, staring at the back of my ice-cream tub and reading the text that was printed on it. I decided against looking at the calorific content due to my already pretty sour thoughts about how unappealing I was right now.

A cough sounded out from the man in front of me, and I raised my head to look at him. He was smirking at me and looked down at the food stuffs in my hand, “Girls night-in?”

I looked at him and frowned, and sunk my head as I realised who it was: cue my inner thirteen-year-old cravings to throw the ice-cream at his face and rugby-tackle him to the ground. I ignored such feelings and laughed slightly, keeping the majority of my eye-contact with everything in the store but him, “I guess so,” I added to my obviously false laughter. I hoped that my short statement that seemed to come out with a hint of somewhat unnecessary venom would put him off, but it didn’t.

“So, how do you know Hollie?” he asked, tilting his head slightly in what looked to be amusement as I snapped my vision up to meet his at the sound of her name. Just because she had walked out on me hand in hand with him at the pub, didn’t mean that he needed to know details.

Of course, I didn’t say anything close to that; I simple shrugged, “I just know her from around.” I was tempted to ask him how he knew her, but decided against it. I’d rather not hear some tale about how they were childhood sweethearts who had finally bumped in to each other, or how it was just fate, or how they had been making kissy faces across a coffee shop one morning and he just had to ask her for her number.

Didn’t stop him from telling me, though, “Same here, I guess.” The addition of a smirk to the end of that sentence wasn’t helping his case in the whole thirteen-year-old ideals because it made him look like even more of a cocky asshole.

It struck me that a month ago I would have never passed judgement so easily on someone I didn’t know. But then, a month ago I didn’t even know such people could exist, and by ‘such people’ I meant people who could provoke instant hatred for no real reason.

We moved forward in the line and Hollie’s lad stepped up to the counter, placing the item he had in his hand on the counter with a pretty loud thud. I looked and instantly averted my eyesight when I saw he had, in fact, placed down a box of condoms. I tried to shut my mind off, but couldn’t help but listen to him, “I’ll have a twenty pack of Marlboro Lights too, please.” He turned and looked at me as if we were stuck in deep conversation, “So, have you got much planned for the rest of the night… Sorry, what was your name again?”

I looked back at him. He was leant against the counter, completely oblivious to the fact that the woman behind him was trying to get his attention, “Josh. You might want to,” I nodded towards the woman to try and signal what I was trying to say, but he either didn’t notice or ignored me.

“I’m Ben. It’s nice to meet ya,” He smiled, “Funny; Hollie’s never mentioned you before.”

I bit my lip and shook my head, “I don’t really know her that well.” The woman at the counter coughed to try and get his attention, and he finally turned.

She smiled at him, “I’m going to have to see some identification.”

His comfortable position faltered and he stood up straight, “For what, exactly?”

The woman pointed to a sign that read the sale of tobacco products is prohibited to those under the age of 18. “For that. Can I see some ID, please?”

I bit back a chuckle as he fished around in his wallet for his driving license. He plucked out the pink photo card from in between the leather folds and practically threw it at the woman. She quickly checked the age, and handed it back to him, “Sorry, it’s policy,” she muttered, and took the cash he had placed on the table, placing the change into his open palm. He turned to exit the store, and I saw that his face was slightly flushed.

“Have a good night, mate,” he muttered, obviously wanting to get out of there as soon as possible. How dare you call me mate.

I smirked, “Yeah, you too.” I think the scene was going to be stuck in my head for the rest of my life. When I was stuck at home thinking about how much I missed Hollie, I could always think about what a tit he’d made of himself.

He looked down at the two boxes in his hand, before them both into the pockets of his jacket, “Yeah, I reckon I will.” He smirked at me one last time before leaving. I walked up to the counter and placed my already melting ice-cream down with a little more force than I expected, along with the money I had counted out. I leant on the counter and rubbed my eyes warily as the cashier counted out the money.

“Um sir?” she chirped.

“God, don’t tell me you need to see ID?” I smiled tiredly, still leaning on my hand. She laughed slightly back, but picked up the carton from the counter. The bottom of it was dripping melted chocolate ice-cream pretty steadily. She looked pointedly down to my legs. A trail of chocolate had dripped down on to the thigh of my jeans. I groaned, but made no effort to clear it off. Rubbing my eyes once more, I picked the money up from the counter.

“You know what? Forget it. I don’t need it,” I smiled at the woman, who had her eyebrows raised in empathy, a slight smile on her face. She mumbled her apologies, but I shook my head for her not to worry, and, after checking that I didn’t drip any ice-cream on the floor, I exited the shop, wiping the excess off ice-cream from my jeans with my finger and flicked my hand so that it flew off. I wiped the last bit on my finger back onto my jeans and started shuffling along again, getting more and more desperate to go home.

I heard a horn beep behind me, and turned to see Ben driving, with Hollie in the passenger seat. He waved, and I just stood and pushed my hands further into my pocket and turned my back on the car as it drove past me. I watched it head up the road and turn left. It took all of my power not to pull my hand from my pocket and shake my fist like an old man shooing young kids from his front garden.

The thought put a smile on my face, despite the glaringly obvious fact that it was clearly one-nil to Ben at this moment in time. I picked up my feet and carried on the walk home, turning right at the end of the road when really every piece of common sense told me to go left and run after Hollie.

I ignored it.

Once I had actually got home, I quickly shed the jeans I was wearing and my t-shirt, and slumped in front of the telly on the sofa in my boxers. I flicked on the television and checked the time on the small digital clock in the left hand corner.

It was half past one in the morning, but I didn’t particularly care. I was in no mood to sleep, especially not when thinking about the millions of things that Hollie and Ben could be doing- not that it actually mattered what they were doing at the moment in time. It would all bowl down to one thing anyway, hence Ben’s little stop in the shop for the ‘necessities’. I guess he’d known Hollie a lot longer than I had.

I guess that I should have been sort of happy for her if she’d actually found someone that could make her happy instead of bugging her with unnecessary phone-calls and the like, but part of me was still stewing on the fact that, when I first kissed her, I thought I had felt her smile into my lips. Ben’s words kept playing over and over in my head as well: funny, she’s never mentioned you.

I was a fork-in-the-road: should I up my game or just fling the dice out of the window? I knew what the answer should be, it was just whether 1) I could bring myself to, and 2) I could actually stick to it. But surely it would be a lot easier to give her up now that it would be further along the line?

I was growing tired of thinking, I knew that much. I let myself finally concentrate on the programme that was on television and tried to shut off for the rest of the night. I had made it my half-resolution at the pub, and I was sure as hell going to try sticking to something that night, seeing as every other plan I’d made had been royally fucked up every time.