Take It Slow

It all started with a pint of Guinness.

It was a Tuesday night at Bolton. I’d just gotten out of class – a lecture titled “Germany 1919-1941”, which I really didn’t mind but didn’t love because I was more of an ancient historian, myself – and was headed back to the residential village when my phone chirruped in my pocket.

Train station at 730 x

The text had been from a friend I’d met in the three months since I’d been a student at Bolton. Her name was Bryony and she was an art major. She was petite and fashionable with skinny jeans and boots and an asymmetrical haircut that made me want to kill myself because I could never pull off such a thing. Her smile was perfect and she had that certain artists’ flair which ensured that she’d go home with at least one number every night we spent out on the town. I hated her for her perfection, but she was the closest thing I had to family on this side of the Atlantic, and she also had a particular talent for making me laugh. She became one of my favorite people, and I hardly went anywhere without her.

By contrast, I was a lanky oddball with a name my parents clearly hadn’t thought through very well. I was called Milo, and it wasn’t short for anything. Just Milo. I was a history student with a penchant for all things dated before 1500, and a habit of drifting off into thoughts of my dissertation and ways to avoid returning to the ‘States. My hair was awkwardly long and unmanageable, my eyes were far too large, and the rest of me was relatively un-noteworthy, right down to the soles of my too-small Doc Martens.

Bryony and I balanced each other out relatively well, and, for this reason and because I had absolutely no desire to tackle the four chapters and two barely-started essays that awaited me back at my dorm, I typed out a “sure”, hit send, and rushed to deposit my schoolbag on my bed. I didn’t bother checking myself in the mirror (no amount of makeup would ever make me some alluring, attractive thing), and instead applied a layer of chapstick, stuffed some money in my pocket, and hoofed it back out into the gathering night.

Bryony was seated on a bench at the train station, swinging her combat boot clad feet back and forth beneath her. She glanced up when she heard me coming.

“You couldn’t be bothered to curl your hair, then?” She asked, wrinkling her nose at the long, tangled mess of dirt brown that fell down almost to my stomach.

“Nope.” I said simply, walking to the edge of the platform to check for the coming train. “Where are we going, anyway?”

“Bobby’s having a bar party at Noho and invited us.” She said simply. Really, that translated to “My latest hookup who you’ve never met in your life told some friends to go to some over-rated bar in the middle of Manchester. Because you’re hopeless at involving yourself in the social scene, I’m making you come with me”.

I nodded and sat next to her on the bench. It wasn’t too cold that night. I couldn’t see my breath but still was glad that I was wearing a jacket. Bryony was well-dressed as usual, with a pair of hunter green skinny cargo pants, brown suede booties, a charcoal grey leather jacket and impossibly perfect straightened hair. I, by comparison, looked like I was trying too hard to be edgy. The train rumbled down the tracks, and I fiddled with my nails until it pulled into the station.

We showed our student passes and took our seats, and Bryony talked about her new sculpture piece and how her professor had offered to take her out to dinner – again – and then looked at me like she’d never seen me before.

“Your eyes are so pretty.” She finally said, and then busied herself arranging my hair around my shoulders. “We are going to find you someone tonight, and I mean it this time.”



Noho was absolutely overrun, as usual, and Bryony and I elbowed our way through group after group of drunk twenty-somethings until we found her “friend” Bobby. He was reclined across a leather armchair, surrounded by blondes and a couple guys ironically wearing smoking jackets. I instantly wanted to leave. Noho was the place you went with your hipster friends to drink martinis you didn’t actually like and wear clothes you knew made you look like an idiot but that were something of a status symbol so you did it anyway. Ew.

Bryony and I exchanged a glance which I’m certain contained a silent conversation something along the lines of:

Can we go, this is ridiculous.
Hush, it’s better than the dirty pubs you usually like.
I don’t even drink martinis.
You’d be home writing a thirty page paper if it weren’t for me. At least pretend to show a little gratitude.
Fine, but those smoking jackets are stupid.

I went to the bar and got a Guinness and stood leaning there for a minute, scanning the room for someone who looked relatively normal. I was a quarter through my pint when I spotted it: an Aston Villa jersey which looked just about as out of place as I felt. I took another look, but the person wearing it had disappeared and I wasn’t going to chase them. Regardless, I was glad I had seen it. It made me feel a little bit better to be nursing my Guinness in my Doc Martens, knowing that someone else here was wearing a soccer jersey, probably with jeans and sneakers. In a sea of berets, loose sweaters, and fashionable blazers, Aston Villa and I were a couple of chums, even if they (he?) didn’t know it yet.

I lost track of Bryony and Bobby after a while and ordered another stout. Someone slouched into the barstool two to the right of me and ordered a Newcastle. I wasn’t really paying attention until it occurred to me that they hadn’t ordered a martini or anything faux-impressive, and, from the corner of my eye, I noticed the dark red and light blue. Hooray, Aston Villa was practically right there. I indiscreetly turned and studied them – actually, him.

I recognized him from somewhere, I realized. I ran through my lecture halls in my head, wondering if maybe he was a Bolton student I’d seen around. When that failed, I thought back through previous nights out, thinking I’d seen him at this bar or that one sometime over the course of the last three months. When that failed, I stared some more, trying so hard to match his face to a memory.

Suddenly, it clicked. Oh god oh god oh god. I knew exactly who he was. Well, I supposed, not exactly because he could have been one of two people. A twin. And the reason I hadn’t placed him so easily at first was because I had never seen him without red hair.

Phelps. James or Oliver Phelps. One of the Weasley twins from the Harry Potter film series. I nearly choked on the sip of Guinness I’d taken to try to calm myself. He was in profile to me; I recognized his smile, his height, the sloppy part in his hair. And then I felt sort of weird because I knew a lot about this person and he had never set eyes on me before. So, instead of introducing myself, I hurried away, looking for Bryony and some guidance on what I should do. Because, all things considered, he was pretty attractive and Bryony had said she was going to find me someone while we were out. Was it too much to ask that it be this particular someone? Was it too much to hope that he would somehow develop an insatiable desire for me right there in that stupid hipster bar, take me home, fuck me silly, and we could live happily ever after in a love nest in the fashionable part of Manchester, him making movies and me reading historical documents from the thirteenth century for the rest of our perfect lives?

Probably.

Still, I finally came across Bryony sitting in Bobby’s lap on a loveseat in the corner. I threw myself onto the open cushion, frantically brushing my hair off of my forehead and slopping a little beer down my front. Bryony regarded me curiously over the top of the glass she was sipping.

“You found someone.” She stated, her pretty smile spreading across her face. She turned to face me without leaving Bobby’s lap and grabbed my wrist excitedly.

“Who is he?” She asked, looking around the immediate area for some guy that I might’ve been hiding. “Where is he?”

“Not here. I haven’t talked to him yet.” I said, biting my lip. “I sort of need your help in that department.”

“You’re hopeless.” She rolled her eyes. “Come on, show me.”

She stood up and took my hand, dragging me behind her through the bar. I could feel the Guinness churning through me, making me warm and giving me a swollen-lipped, heavy eyed feeling of apprehension that had to do with hoping I looked good enough. I thought it was odd that she was dragging me – hello, she didn’t even know who we were looking for – but then we ended up at the bar and I knew she was choosing a spot from which to observe.

“Okay, where is he?”

I scanned around for a glimpse of dark red and pale blue in the dim light of Noho. And there he was, standing by himself about fifteen feet to the right of us. He was leaning against the wall, staring down at the screen of his cellphone, his Newcastle nearly half gone.

“There.” I said, nodding in his direction. Bryony looked for a moment and then furrowed her brow at me.

“Out of all the put-together and nice looking blokes at the bar, you go for the one in a football jersey and trainers. Are you joking?”

“Fine, then. Don’t help.” I said, turning my nose up.

“No, no.” She said, adopting a martyred expression and pinching the bridge of her nose. “Okay.”

I waited for a minute, staring at her desperately. She remained silent, deep in concentration as if this issue was some crucial thing; as if lives were hanging in the balance, not cheap dates and potential orgasms. A minute or two later, I glanced over at the Phelps twin to see that he wasn’t where he had been. I scanned the crowd, panicked, afraid that I’d missed my shot and he was gone forever. A vast wave of relief washed through my pathetic self when I saw him again near the coat check. He was getting ready to leave, shrugging into a jacket with his phone to his ear.

“Bryony!” I hissed. She opened her eyes and shot me an annoyed glance.

“I’m thinking!” She said, “I’ve got to make this perfect.”

“Okay, but make it perfect fast because he’s just about to stroll out the damn door.” I said, tipping my glass slightly in his direction. Bryony stared dumbly for a minute or two, then seemed to snap back into her typical self: all business, all action, all “let’s get you/me/everyone laid”.

“Drink that.” She said, pointing at my glass. I obeyed, slugging down the rest of my Guinness in a most unladylike fashion. She grinned when I had finished, set my empty glass on the bar, then spun me around and pushed me forward . I struggled against her hands on my shoulders.

“Bry,” I said, tripping over my own feet. “Bry, what are you - ?”

And then he was there, six feet away with his back turned in my direction. He was reaching for the door. I could hear him laughing and suddenly I was more terrified than I had ever been in my life.

“Good luck.” Bryony chirped, then shoved me (surprisingly hard for such a small girl) in Phelps’s direction. As if in slow motion, I toppled forward. My face must’ve screwed up in horror before it planted – with astonishing force – into the middle of his canvas-clad back.