Only In It For A Minute

I placed another box on the floor of the slightly bare apartment and sighed.

“I think that’s the last ones,” I said, resting my hands on my hips as John followed me in,

“Finally,” John half-smiled. “Who knew you’d acquired so my stuff in the couple of months you’ve been here?”

“Hey, this is your stuff too, asshole,” I joked, lightly hitting his chest. “We’ve still got to unpack it all yet though,” I moaned.

“Yeah that doesn’t really sound like fun,” John commented. “But just think, this is our place so we can have everything exactly where we want it.”

“I’m so glad we did this,” I smiled at him.

It had taken us two and a half weeks to find an apartment that we both liked and that suited all our needs. We were both getting fed up of looking around and were beginning to lose hope until we found this one. It was in a good location for me to get to work, there were two bedrooms, so we had a spare for John to use as his music room whilst I was at work and it also meant we had somewhere for people to stay. We even had a small balcony where we could enjoy the Californian weather and still have a bit of privacy.

“What do you wanna do first?” John asked, looking around at boxes.

“I wanna curl up with my boyfriend on our new sofa and watch some crappy film and just enjoy being completely on our own for once,” I sighed.

“Well, alright then,” he said, walking over to the new sofa we had bought for the apartment. “Care to join me, pretty girl?”

“Of course, but first,” I said, opening the box I could see marked ‘DVDs + CDs’ and found a film I wanted to watch. “Movie,” I told him as I held up the case.

“Tangled, really?” John raised his eyebrows as he sat down.

“Hell yeah! I fucking love this film!” I laughed, putting it in the DVD player. John had, of course, unpacked the essentials already.

“I know you do. I pretty sure I’ve watched this film five times with you,” he told me. “I think I know all the words now!”

“Good, then you can be my Flynn Rider,” I teased as I joined him and he put his arm around my shoulder.

“Whatever you want, darling,” he breathed, quietly.

“Now, this is home,” I commented as the film started and we got comfortable.

----------

“URGH!” I groaned loudly, as I entered the apartment after coming home from work.

“What’s up?” John asked from where he was stretched out on the sofa. We’d been living together a couple of months now and this sight was almost a regular occurrence now.

“Nothing really,” I sighed, walking over to the couch as John sat up so there was space for me. I laid down so that my head rested on his legs and my legs were hanging over the end.

“No it’s not, come on, tell me,” John urged.

“It’s just- I feel like since I moved over here I have really made any friends and I miss having people to hang out with,” I told him. “I mean, I know I have you and I love you but I’ve sort of jus been living in this John bubble since I’ve been here.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” he laughed softly.

“I know but I miss having girl company, I guess,” I said.

“What about the people at work?” he suggested.

“Yeah, they’re alright but they all just seem to do their own thing, like as soon as the day’s over, they leave without another word. Saying that though.” I smiled up at him as he played with my hair. “I don’t mind it just being me and you.”

“Well, hate to make it worse, but I need to go to Tempe for a few days,” he told me.

“So now you’re leaving me too”” I whined.

“Yeah, I’m sorry, babe,” he sighed. “Just a couple of band things to do and then I’ll be back.”

“When are you going?”

“In two days, but I’ll be back before you know it,” he said.

“Alright, but don’t be surprised if I’ve replaced you when you come back,” I teased.

“Hey, why don’t you invite some people from work over while I’m not here,” he suggested. “Maybe have a girls night, get to know them better.”

“Girls night? Do you think we’re going to play truth or dare?”

“No, although I would like to think you’d all be in your underwear or something,” he said, earning a frown from me. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding,” he laughed.

“Good,” I said, folding my arms over my chest.

“So, talking about a John bubble, how about we go out for dinner tonight?” he asked.

“Sounds good,’ I grinned.

----------

It was Saturday night, John was back in Phoenix and I was doing as he’d suggested and having a few girls from work round to the flat. They were due to arrive any moment so I was just waiting now. I’d spent the afternoon tidying my home as we hadn’t had anyone round yet.

I couldn’t work out if I was being an impatient host but I just wanted them to arrive already so I knew they were going to turn up. That was my biggest worry, inviting them and no one actually coming. I shouldn’t have worried though, as the door buzzed at that moment and eased my worries.

Over the next 15 or so minutes, Katie, Jenna and Maria arrived and I greeted each of them.

“I really like your apartment, Tash,” Jenna commented. “You live here with your boyfriend, right?”

“Yeah, he’s had to go back home to Phoenix for the weekend though, so I have the place to myself,” I said.

“So, I brought something I thought we could pop open,” Maria said, holding up a bottle of wine.

“Great idea, I’ll go and get some glasses,” I smiled.

Once the alcohol was flowing, we couldn’t stop giggling as we told stories from each of our own lives. Even though we’d been working together around four months now, we’d only ever spoken about work-related stuff before so it was a nice a change.

“When I was at college, there was this one girl and she used to walk around in like short pans and tight shirts, you know, there’s always one,” Jenna began. “And she used to walk around like ‘oh, I know this person and this person’, and I was always like ‘no you don’t, please shut the fuck up!’ She totally used to drive me crazy.”

“Yeah I think we all know those,” Katie laughed. “I worked my ass off for years at university and then worked shitty jobs for ages before I got this one and during that time, I’ve been contact with so many bands and you get to see all these people, mainly girls, just clinging on to them for the fame,” she said. “No offense, Tash.”

“None taken,” I told her, although, honestly, I was kind of offended. “I know the sort of people you mean, I’ve seen plenty of them.”

The conversation continued like this for a while and I felt like every comment was a dig at me. Jenna’s boyfriend was an editor for a newspaper, Maria’s husband worked in real estate and Katie had started dating a guy from a different department at RAW. It felt like they thought that compared to each other their relationships, dating a guy in a band was the same, or maybe it was the fact we were in the industry and they thought they could judge his type.

A couple of hours later, my company had left and to be honest, I was glad. After the endless digs, I was getting a bit annoyed with the conversation and was running out of energy, and alcohol, to be polite. Once I was alone, I changed into my pajamas and crawled under my bed covers, pulling out my phone. ‘Not doing that again any time soon’, I quickly sent to John before putting it down and rolling over.

Time to go back into my John bubble.