A Love Like War

Vicky was sat with a glass of wine and a bundle of messy papers when Chloe came home from the shop. She'd set a task for her class when they had gotten back from the museum yesterday, making them have to recall what they had seen and heard during the guide around the place. Mostly, she'd set the work to determine who out of the class was actually paying attention and who spent the time messing around with their friends. Truthfully she should have looked at the worksheet last night but by the time nine o'clock had come around, their electricity was out and they'd had to call on their neighbour to check it out as he was an electrician.

"Hey," Chloe greeted, coming into the room and dumping the bag on the table in front of Vicky. "Have you done it yet?"

She shook her head. "No."

"Why not?"

Reaching out for the bag, Vicky rifled through it and pulled out the chicken sandwich. "I've been busy," she replied, nodding to the pile of worksheet she'd dumped next to her.

Chloe scoffed. "Bull," she said, perching on the edge of the sofa. "Even I could mark these sheet in ten minutes."

"I never said I wouldn't reply to him, it's just...he texted me on the same day I gave him my number. Even I would wait a day to do that."

"What's so wrong with that? Please, if that were me I'd have met him and fucked him by now if he's as nice as you described." Vicky shoved her sister away and took a bite of her sandwich. The guy from the museum was definitely nice to look at, but since breaking up with her ex over two years ago she hadn't been interested in having a relationship with anyone, and meeting this guy definitely did not change that.

With a mouthful of food, Vicky replied, "It's just the fact that he was nice, sweet and interesting. The last time I found that in a guy, I was thirteen and lost my virginity in his linen cupboard."

Chloe shrugged. "At least you can't lose that this time."

For a moment she contemplated dumping the rest of the wine over her sister but then resolved that she needed it more and drained the glass. "Well, you're right about that," she agreed. "I guess it wouldn't hurt to respond to him but I don't know what I'd say. Is it just 'oh, hey, I would love to go to dinner or something with you but I'm really not looking to make this anything more than just a few nice dates with you,' or is it 'sorry you have the wrong number?'"

"Well, if you don't want him, give him my number and I'll test him out for you," Chloe said before standing up from the sofa and going to leave the room.

"Get me another bottle?" Vicky asked, holding out her glass.

Chloe nodded at the glass. "You just finished it."

With a sigh, Vicky put it back on the table and finished up her sandwich before getting up, putting some shoes and calling out to her sister that she would be back in a minute as she slammed the door shut behind her. Every week she ended up having to leave the house and go to the nearest shop for a bottle of wine, and from the frequency of her visits, the boy behind the till knew all too well what she would buy. How he was even able to sell alcohol was a mystery to her because he didn't look a day past eighteen.

The shop had a few customers in when she popped in it, giving a smile to the boy when he noticed her enter the place. It wasn't a massive shop but it was fairly decent in its range of products which meant that there were quite a few different choices when it came to buying wine. However, when she went to reach out for the same wine she'd just finished, a man's voice interrupted her. "If you pick that bottle, that's a bad taste in wine that you have."

Vicky whipped her head round to stare at the man who was stood next to her. "Excuse me?"

"It's so cheap and tasteless. You look like someone who has a taste of the expensive, nice stuff," he continued, indicating to the bottles on the shelf above the one she'd been reaching for.

"You're saying that I look like a gold-digger?" she asked, completely outraged.

He shook his head. "No, no, just that you're a woman who has good taste."

"But this wine isn't good taste?"

He smiled at her. "Exactly! But then, I guess a lot of women don't look for a good taste in wine unless it's brought for them."

Vicky's hand twitched to smack the man across his face but instead she just grabbed her desired wine and stalked off, not sparing a look at him as she made her way to the counter where the boy rung up the bottle for her. "My mom likes this wine and she has good taste in everything," the boy told her, making her laugh.

"And what about you?" she asked.

"I prefer beer. Wine has a weird taste to it."

She paid for the bottle and left the shop only to find herself being followed by the man after a moment. "Did I offend you?" he asked, reaching her.

"I would prefer if you don't talk to me," she said curtly.

"I didn't mean to. It was just an observation."

Vicky stopped and turned to face the man. "The nerve of you astounds me. It's one thing to insult someone you don't know, and then it's something quite different to then follow said person and add further insult," she snapped, putting one hand on her hip. "I don't know if that line worked on anyone else but I really hope that I don't see you again."

"It wasn't a line-"

She cut him off. "I know when a man drops a line. Sometimes they're bad lines and sometimes they're not. Yours was just incredibly dumb."

"So it definitely didn't work?" he clarified, a small smile playing on his lips.

"Goodbye," she said curtly and strode away from the man, grateful that he had some sense not to follow after her again. Her grip on the bottle stayed tight until she reached home. Chloe was looking through the worksheets when she entered the sitting room and placed the bottle on the table. "Has being around kids seriously impaired me that much?"

Chloe didn't glance up from the paper. "Yes. You even talk to me like I'm seven sometimes."

Removing the lid from the bottle, Vicky then poured a new glass of wine and took a long sip from it. "You are seven sometimes," she said before grabbing the bottle and going into the kitchen, making sure to screw the lid back on properly before putting the wine away. She had only wanted one more glass of wine tonight, and unfortunately her routine of having three glasses a night whenever she marked a piece of work made it so that she had to go and buy a new bottle if she'd wanted to continue with her work.

Sometimes she found herself wondering whether she truly did love teaching children if she had to end her day with wine. She had been determined back when she was in school that she wanted to teach children, and that continued right the way through her senior year while led to her applying to college to fulfil her desire. It had even been encouraged by their parents, especially when she actually graduated from high school and went off to college. It was something that they had wished for Chloe to do but she hadn't been one who wanted to continue with education, instead having told them that she would have dropped out of school if she had been allowed. Vicky could understand their parents being disappointed in Chloe but at the same time she could also understand how she just didn't like education. There were a few kids in her class that she knew struggled with the work, and some of them were because they just didn't find anything interesting about it.

Vicky finished her drink and rinsed her glass, placing it on the draining board before she left the kitchen and went back into the sitting room. "Where's my phone?" she asked, looking to where Chloe pointed in reply. She moved over to the television unit and picked it up, unlocking the screen and scrolling to her messages. The message she was looking for was the first one in the list and all it took was a few seconds for her to click on it and write in the reply that Chloe had been pestering her to say: 'Hi, I would love to go to dinner or something with you! My best night is Friday.'

With a smile, she locked her screen, bid her sister goodnight and went up to bed.