Happy

[001]

Alex Gaskarth was sat by the bar in a little local pub in Essex, a bottle of beer in hand as his eyes scanned his surroundings. He needed a break from everything, so he decided to head back to his birthplace and stay there for a while, maybe two or three weeks - today being his first night back. There weren't many people around in the pub, meaning that there wasn't anyone there to bother him, to which he was eternally grateful for. It wasn't that he'd suddenly grown a massive ego and decided that the fans weren't worth his time anymore. Oh no, it wasn't that.

If anything, he was extremely humbled by the fact that after ten years of being in a band with his three best friends, people were still supporting them whole-heartedly. As for his ego, it was at an acceptable level.

It only heightened when he was drunk.

Which would be soon. Very soon.

He sighed, taking the final swig from his glass bottle before waving the bartender over. The bartender, a youngish woman, maybe about his age, raised an eyebrow, silently asking about what drink he wanted.

Alex shrugged his shoulders. "Something strong. Really fucking strong."

She subtly raised an eyebrow but nodded anyway, getting out a clean glass and then filling it up with various colourless liquids, sliding it over to him afterwards. Alex smiled gratefully, taking in a huge gulp and wincing as the hot liquid travelled down his throat. Whatever she gave him was most definitely something really strong.

She shrugged. "You said you wanted something strong."

Alex tilted the glass in her direction, sending her a crooked smirk. "That I did."

"So." She smiled, leaning against the bar top. "Drinking to forget, or drinking to cope?"

Another heavy sigh escaped the twenty-five year old. "To forget, I guess." He mumbled half-heartedly, taking another gulp of the drink; again, wincing as the liquid burned his throat.

"Wanna talk about it?" She offered.

He almost let out a laugh at how it cliché the whole 'bar-tender-being-a-psychologist' thing was. He never thought that he'd be one of those people who ended up spilling his guts to a stranger, but hey, things changed, didn't they?

His slightly glazed over puppy brown eyes danced across her face, his brows furrowing as he realised that she was actually pretty freaking good-looking. Her hair was an obvious dyed bright red, with lighter, orangey ends and though it was pulled up into a high ponytail, it reached well past her shoulder blades, maybe even to three-quarters way down her back. Her eyes were, from what he could see, a hazel colour. But he could be wrong since the lighting in the pub was absolute shit and his vision was getting blurry. She had a silver lip piercing in the bottom of her corner lip, and multiple piercings on one side of her ear, and Alex couldn't help but find them all to be so fucking hot.

He blamed the lack of sex.

"Let's not name names, okay?" He asked, not really expecting a reply as he took a breath, setting the glass down so that he could start moving his hands about.

Talking with hand movements brought a point across better, in his opinion. And if anyone else didn't think so, they were wrong. Obviously.

"Sure."

"Okay. So." He took another breath in. "There's Girl #1, okay? She and I? We've been dating for, like, I don't know, maybe eight years? Nine? But it's always been on-and-off with her, and that's what bugged me. 'Cause, like, when I'm on tour, she says that I'm allowed to go, um, sleep with other women if I want to, because we weren't together. Then when I get back? Boom. She yells at me. What the fuck, right? Right?"

"Right." She nodded anyway, probably more to show that she was listening instead of genuinely caring for what he had to say.

"Right. So I go on tour, okay. It's summer, and it's in 2012. Twenty-fucking-twelve. Last year!" He huffed, his hands flying about animatedly as he spoke. "I had this, um, summer fling, I guess with, uh, let's call her Girl #2. I had a summer fling with Girl #2; nothing serious, just a little fun and kissing and maybe sex a couple times, because, I'm a guy, okay? I have needs. She had needs, too. Then when tour ended, the fling ended. Simple as. End of, right?"

"Um... Right?"

"Wrong!" Alex almost shouted. "She suddenly calls me up again like early this year, saying that she misses me and wants to give the whole relationship a shot. I tell her that I'm in a relationship with Girl #1 and Girl #1 then tells me that since I'm, and I quote: 'such a fucking slut and couldn't keep it in my pants for three months, I should date her, instead.' I mean, what the fuck? Dude, you said that I can hook up with anyone I want and - I - ugh." He eventually groaned, letting his forehead hit the wooden bar top with a thud, allowing an "ow" to escape from his lips.

She breathed out a chuckle, before a gentle hand was laying on his head, softly patting down his hair in a very awkward manner.

"Sometimes I feel like the world has something against me and I'll never get to settle down and have kids and stuff." He mumbled, turning his head to peer at her through his eyelashes as his cheek flattened against the bar top.

"Give it time." She smiled, removing her hand, earning a small whine from the man. She laughed lightly, shaking her head. "You're, what? Twenty-three?"

"Twenty-five." He corrected. "Turning twenty-six this year."

She shrugged a shoulder. "So what? You're still young! Most people don't find the person that they're going to marry and stay with for the rest of their life till they're, like, thirty."

"But it's different for me." He moaned in annoyance, pouting his bottom lip as he lifted his head from the bar top.

"How so?"

Alex ran a hand through his hair, taking another gulp of the various mixed alcohol. "I dunno, it just is." He mumbled, even though he knew damn well why he felt that it was different for him. He just felt like it was such an effort to talk.

All he wanted to do in the current moment was chat some bird up, flirt with her a little, and then hope to God that she'd let him bring her home and in her pants.

But he was also currently in a pub occupied by old men and cougars. No thanks.

His head suddenly snapped up, eyes wide with realisation as he stared at the bartender. She was young, pretty, and kinda cool. She knew that he was sort of having girl problems, so she wouldn't be mad if he slept with her and then walked out the next morning... right?

"Can we have sex?" He blurted out, his words slurring while his mind fogged up. The filter that was usually present was now gone; thus his bluntness.

She blinked, an amused grin pulling at her lips. "As tempting as that sounds... No, we cannot."

"Why?" Alex immediately whined, pouting his bottom lip exaggeratedly as he blinked his big, brown eyes at her. That look had gotten him girls plenty of times and he was only hoping that it would work on her as well.

"I don't do one night stands." She replied simply, shrugging a shoulder, pulling out a beer bottle for someone sat a couple stools down from him.

"It won't be one." His drunken self spoke, merely making her laugh.

"Sure, mate." She shook her head before she walked away, handing the beer to the middle-aged man and then going back to Alex. "Look, I'll call you a taxi and you can go home and get some sleep, okay?"

"But I don't want to sleep!" Alex whined again.

She raised an eyebrow. "Too bad, 'cause I'm not serving you any more drinks."

"Why not?"

"You're probably gonna go hook up with a random girl and then possibly regret it when you get back together with either Girl #1 or Girl #2."

"Will not."

"That's what you say now." She chuckled. "Come on."

With very little struggle from the brown-haired man - since he knew that, deep, deep, deep down that she was right - she got him out and into the taxi that seemed to have magically appeared in front of the pub. He managed to slur out the address of the flat that he'd rented for his stay in Essex for her as she pushed him into the backseat of the vehicle.

"Don't you want to give me your number?" He half-grinned, eyes lidded.

"What for?"

His teeth exposed in the smile he flashed her next. "So that you know I made it home okay."

She looked at him for a moment before she laughed, grasping the phone that he'd held out to her, tapping her number in and then saving in the contact. "Smooth."

"I try." He smirked - a rather smug one, at that. "I don't know your name."

"I don't know yours, either, so we're even."

"I'm Alex."

"Zooey."

"How do you spell that?" He asked, blinking slowly.

Zooey rolled her eyes, pushing his head in so that it leaned against the headrest and then shutting the door, giving the driver a thumbs-up. Alex pouted, though she couldn't see it from the outside, earning a small laugh from the driver.

"You've a good friend, kid." The driver smiled at Alex through the rearview mirror.

Alex shook his head slowly. "She's not my friend."

"Oh, sorry. Girlfriend?"

"Nope."

"... Sister?"

"Nah. She's my alcohol supplier." Alex half-smiled, quite literally with only one corner of his lip turning up higher than the other.

The driver laughed. "Bartender?"

Alex nodded. "Hey sir?"

"Yeah, kid?"

"How do you spell Zooey?"