Liability
instant regret
may 17, 2014.
I had always been good with dates. Birthdays, anniversaries, and even seemingly non important dates, like the day I took my goddaughter to the cinema for the first time or the first time I got kicked out of a club for being far too intoxicated. I remembered it all because I’ve always been a hopelessly sentimental mess of a person. Material things were never a top priority for me, my apartment being a reflection of this as I barely owned any furniture. I had lived there for over a year and all of the furniture that was in it had been what was left behind by the flat’s previous owners. All I had brought for decoration was box after box of photographs, each one with a date scribbled on the back. Most of them I had begun to tack up onto the walls of my bedroom, but there were still stacks of boxes piled up in my living room waiting to be sorted. I was a memory hoarder, but nothing beat the ability to catch a glimpse of a photo on the wall and instantly remember that specific date and memory.
I also kept a journal where I wrote one line a day about what I had done or accomplished on that particular date.
Last night’s journal entry was supposed to read ‘Broke up with Jackson.’ Instead, scribbled across the page was a note to myself stating that I would regret that one. True to what I had written in the journal late last night, instant regret would probably be the best way to describe how I felt waking up that morning.
My king size bed had never felt so empty as it did that Saturday morning. As my eyes adjusted to the light shining through the window of my flat, the empty space next to me confirmed Jackson was long gone, not that this action surprised me anymore.
We had met and fallen in love at 18. August 14, 2010 to be exact. A sickeningly cliche story of girl meets boy in a coffeeshop, followed by some nonsense whirlwind romance that had resulted in 4 years of a hot and cold relationship. At that age you’re still trying to figure out who you are and what you want to be, far too young to be trying to figure out who someone else is as well. Jackson always seemed so sure of himself, and as tumultuous as our four years together had been, he was the only constant fixture. That same year my mother, God bless her, had finally begun to date for the first time since my father had passed away when I was around 11. She was off travelling the world and being spoiled by her new boyfriend, popping in and out of my early adult life as she pleased. After the routine fight with Jackson, when one of us would storm out of the other’s apartment, I would ring her. But she usually ended up rambling on about her own boyfriend, and I would shy away from admitting that my relationship wasn’t as picturesque as everyone wanted to believe it was.
This morning marked almost a month to the day that I had come to the conclusion that Jackson and I needed to break up.
I always suspected he cheated, but he had begun to get too lazy to even try and hide his infidelity at this point. As of yesterday, we had not kissed each other in over a month, until I rang him to come over so we could talk. I had my speech planned out, he seemed to know what was coming as well.
And then we kissed.
Flash forward to the next morning where I’m waking up naked and alone, again, in this too big bed.
Instant. Regret.
Just thinking of what the girls at the salon were going to say when I saw them next made my stomach turn. All of my coworkers had been advocating for the end of Jacks and Trixie for months. Just yesterday I had promised them I was breaking it off.
I only had one client booked for this afternoon, so I took my time getting out of bed and making my self presentable enough for work. I opted for public transport to the salon that day, the commute feeling like the longest it had ever been. The door to the Bleach London salon hadn’t even fully closed behind me, when my best friend Sam spun around in the chair she was seated at, a disapproving scowl already evident on her face. Alex, my boss and Sam’s co-owner of the salon, was working on applying a colour rinse on a regular client whom I recognized, Sam seated in an empty client chair next to her where she had obviously been chatting with the two before I had arrived.
“You didn’t bloody do it, did ya, Trix?”
I didn’t reply to Sam as I headed to the far corner, dropping my purse down onto the counter where I had my station set up.
“She promised us yesterday she was breaking up with her slime ball of a boyfriend.” Alex informed the girl in the chair who nodded in response.
“And you didn’t do it!” Sam yelled, looking at me expectantly for some sort of explanation.
I sat down in the empty chair in front of my station, finally turning it to look over at the three girls who were all staring at me. “I had full intentions to, I promise.”
“Beatrix!” Sam cried out, exasperated.
“What could he have possibly said this time?” Alex questioned.
“We didn’t really do much talking, honestly.”
“You slept with him?!” Sam dramatically dropped her face into her hands as she cried out. “You are ridiculous, Trix.”
“I’m an idiot, I know.” I agreed, slipping my phone out of the back pocket of my jeans.
“And let me guess,” Alex started, placing the bowl of pastel hair dye onto the counter in front of her as she finished applying the colour to the girl’s hair. “He was gone this morning and you haven’t heard even the slightest peep from him.”
I ignored her, focusing my attention on the screen of my phone as I scrolled through my inbox to check and make sure Jackson hadn’t texted me and it had just gone unnoticed.
“She always goes silent when you’re right.” Sam pointed out to Alex and the girl, rising from the chair she had been seated in, and heading towards the back break room.
“We all make mistakes!” I called to her before she disappeared into the room, giving a wave over her shoulder to dismiss me.
It was no secret that all of the girls at Bleach weren’t a fan of Jackson. Honestly, I wasn’t even a fan either anymore. But I guess I had grown comfortable with the idea of being in a relationship, even one as shallow as the one Jackson and I had. We were terrible for each other, opposites that clashed in nearly every aspect of our lives. When we had met I was a shy teenager who was struggling to find my place in the world. Jackson had been the one to encourage me and insist that it would be okay for me to drop out and call it quits on my brief stint of studying psychology at university. I was only in school because I thought that was what was expected of me, and I’d never amount to anything unless I went to uni like everyone else. Thinking back on it, that may have been the only positive thing Jackson had ever done for me, acting as my support system as I left uni and spent a few months working odd jobs and struggling to come to terms with where I wanted my life to go. And then I entered a cosmetology school and finally found my place in life. I also met Sam, who instantly became my best friend and the older sister I never got a chance to have. There was nearly a 9 year age gap between Sam and I, but you’d never know it by the way our friendship took off. Sam was a wild spirit, who coaxed me out of my reserved shell, and recruited me to come work at Bleach after I graduated. Her and Alex had just opened the salon less than a year earlier, and while Sam was the one who took care of the business aspect of it all, Alex was the head hair stylist and brought me in to help out when their client list began to grow too big for just her to handle. There was now a fairly large group of stylists all working at the salon, and with a new and healthy support system around me, I didn’t really need Jackson anymore.
Alex set a timer for how long the colour needed to process on the girl’s hair before sitting down in the empty chair that Sam had previously been sitting in. Feeling her eyes on me, I locked my phone and dropped it into the front pocket of the loose flannel shirt I was wearing.
“Alright, spit it out.” I could tell just by looking at her she was dying to provide her own two cents on my lack of a break up.
“Nothing!” She threw her hands up in surrender, signalling that she had nothing to offer.
“Honestly? You’ve got nothing to say about the whole thing?”
“Oh, I’ve got plenty to say, love.” Alex laughed, shaking her head. “But what good’s it going to do? Can’t really go back in time and unsleep with him.”
I rolled my eyes, which did not go unnoticed by Alex as she sighed audibly.
“It’s just you come in here every day and you just look so drained!” Alex began to reason. “You’re constantly telling us about how the two of you are at each other’s throats. Proper shouting matches and everything. And don’t even get me started on his cheating.” The last part of her commentary was directed towards the client who was behind her. Apparently a dye job at Bleach now came with a complimentary gossip session about my questionable life decisions. I tuned Alex out as she began to launch into a story I had previously told about Jackson getting drunk and trashing my apartment a few weeks ago, apparently filling in this client on our back story.
“Sounds to me like you should tell this guy to piss off.” The girl finally added in as Alex finished.
I mentally weighed my options of what would be more painful, remaining here and listening to Alex and this girl who’s name I didn’t even know provide commentary on my relationship, or escape to the backroom and have Sam corner me and do the same thing. I pushed myself up from the chair, deciding Sam might be the better of my two options.
“Yeah, thanks for the tip.” I called over my shoulder as the two girls chatted animatedly about potential clubs they were probably going to drag me out to in order to find some guy to replace Jackson.
*******
My only client for that day happened to be Sam’s twin sister Lou who had popped by the salon just to say hi to everyone. A hair stylist herself, it was rare of her to come in as a client, but I knew her boyfriend Tom was watching their young daughter that day so she was more here for the relaxing experience of not having to be on mum duty for a few hours rather than out of necessity for a dye job. I was mixing up a bleach paste to touch up Lou’s dark roots that had begun to grow in, when Sam let it slip that I had failed to break up with Jackson the night before. Lou made no effort to hide her disappointment as she shook her head at her twin sister.
“What happened this time?”
“She slept with him instead of breaking’ up with him.” Sam answered for me from where she stood behind me, watching me begin to apply the bleach to Lou’s hair through the mirror that sat above the counter in front of us.
“Trixie!” Lou scolded, and I instantly felt like I was being ganged up on by a group of disapproving mothers with the way these two were speaking down to me.
The rest of the salon was empty, as Alex, Sam and myself were the only three scheduled to come in that day, and Alex had just popped out for a lunch break.
“Sorry, mum.” I replied bitterly, and Lou rolled her eyes in response to my sarcasm.
Crossing her arms across her chest, Lou looked me in the eye through the mirrored reflection. “Gemma and I were talking last night about you. She bet that you’d chicken out and not do it. Glad the two of us didn’t place money on it, cause I had faith in you.”
“Piss off.”
“We meant it in a loving way, of course!” Lou reasoned, offering me a small smile. “I’m sure Gem will be disappointed to hear that she was right if that’s any consolation to you.” Gemma was a good friend of Lou’s and had become a fairly regular client of ours here at Bleach. Lou’s full time gig was travelling with Gemma’s younger brother’s band, styling the boys of One Direction’s quiffs before they hit the stage every night on their international arena tours. Not a bad gig, but I knew the constant travel was tiring and Lou never got to be home as much as she would have liked, an especially difficult matter as she had a young daughter who was going to be starting preschool soon and would’t be able to freely travel on world tours with her anymore.
Sam moved to take a seat in the chair next to Lou, propping her feet up on the edge of the counter in front of her as she watched Lou take out her phone.
“Gotta fill Gem in on all of this.” Lou gestured towards her phone as she began to type away. Sam tried to stifle her laugh as she noticed my unimpressed reaction.
“What about Gemma’s little brother? Isn’t Harry single? And he’s about your age, Trix.” Sam hinted, and I could see Lou’s eyes light up at the idea.
“No.” I firmly shot the two of them down before they had a chance to get too carried away with the idea of setting me up with someone else already. “Not a chance.”
Sam crossed her arms over her chest in protest, but bit her tongue when I shot her a glare warning her against saying anything else. “Fine.”
“We’re done talking about this, okay? I’ll break up with Jacks when I’m good and ready to. On my own terms.”
Lou began to snicker to herself as she looked down at her phone. “Gemma says next time just try sending him a break up text. That way you can’t end up accidentally sleeping with him again.”
“You two are ridiculous.”
I had always been good with dates. Birthdays, anniversaries, and even seemingly non important dates, like the day I took my goddaughter to the cinema for the first time or the first time I got kicked out of a club for being far too intoxicated. I remembered it all because I’ve always been a hopelessly sentimental mess of a person. Material things were never a top priority for me, my apartment being a reflection of this as I barely owned any furniture. I had lived there for over a year and all of the furniture that was in it had been what was left behind by the flat’s previous owners. All I had brought for decoration was box after box of photographs, each one with a date scribbled on the back. Most of them I had begun to tack up onto the walls of my bedroom, but there were still stacks of boxes piled up in my living room waiting to be sorted. I was a memory hoarder, but nothing beat the ability to catch a glimpse of a photo on the wall and instantly remember that specific date and memory.
I also kept a journal where I wrote one line a day about what I had done or accomplished on that particular date.
Last night’s journal entry was supposed to read ‘Broke up with Jackson.’ Instead, scribbled across the page was a note to myself stating that I would regret that one. True to what I had written in the journal late last night, instant regret would probably be the best way to describe how I felt waking up that morning.
My king size bed had never felt so empty as it did that Saturday morning. As my eyes adjusted to the light shining through the window of my flat, the empty space next to me confirmed Jackson was long gone, not that this action surprised me anymore.
We had met and fallen in love at 18. August 14, 2010 to be exact. A sickeningly cliche story of girl meets boy in a coffeeshop, followed by some nonsense whirlwind romance that had resulted in 4 years of a hot and cold relationship. At that age you’re still trying to figure out who you are and what you want to be, far too young to be trying to figure out who someone else is as well. Jackson always seemed so sure of himself, and as tumultuous as our four years together had been, he was the only constant fixture. That same year my mother, God bless her, had finally begun to date for the first time since my father had passed away when I was around 11. She was off travelling the world and being spoiled by her new boyfriend, popping in and out of my early adult life as she pleased. After the routine fight with Jackson, when one of us would storm out of the other’s apartment, I would ring her. But she usually ended up rambling on about her own boyfriend, and I would shy away from admitting that my relationship wasn’t as picturesque as everyone wanted to believe it was.
This morning marked almost a month to the day that I had come to the conclusion that Jackson and I needed to break up.
I always suspected he cheated, but he had begun to get too lazy to even try and hide his infidelity at this point. As of yesterday, we had not kissed each other in over a month, until I rang him to come over so we could talk. I had my speech planned out, he seemed to know what was coming as well.
And then we kissed.
Flash forward to the next morning where I’m waking up naked and alone, again, in this too big bed.
Instant. Regret.
Just thinking of what the girls at the salon were going to say when I saw them next made my stomach turn. All of my coworkers had been advocating for the end of Jacks and Trixie for months. Just yesterday I had promised them I was breaking it off.
I only had one client booked for this afternoon, so I took my time getting out of bed and making my self presentable enough for work. I opted for public transport to the salon that day, the commute feeling like the longest it had ever been. The door to the Bleach London salon hadn’t even fully closed behind me, when my best friend Sam spun around in the chair she was seated at, a disapproving scowl already evident on her face. Alex, my boss and Sam’s co-owner of the salon, was working on applying a colour rinse on a regular client whom I recognized, Sam seated in an empty client chair next to her where she had obviously been chatting with the two before I had arrived.
“You didn’t bloody do it, did ya, Trix?”
I didn’t reply to Sam as I headed to the far corner, dropping my purse down onto the counter where I had my station set up.
“She promised us yesterday she was breaking up with her slime ball of a boyfriend.” Alex informed the girl in the chair who nodded in response.
“And you didn’t do it!” Sam yelled, looking at me expectantly for some sort of explanation.
I sat down in the empty chair in front of my station, finally turning it to look over at the three girls who were all staring at me. “I had full intentions to, I promise.”
“Beatrix!” Sam cried out, exasperated.
“What could he have possibly said this time?” Alex questioned.
“We didn’t really do much talking, honestly.”
“You slept with him?!” Sam dramatically dropped her face into her hands as she cried out. “You are ridiculous, Trix.”
“I’m an idiot, I know.” I agreed, slipping my phone out of the back pocket of my jeans.
“And let me guess,” Alex started, placing the bowl of pastel hair dye onto the counter in front of her as she finished applying the colour to the girl’s hair. “He was gone this morning and you haven’t heard even the slightest peep from him.”
I ignored her, focusing my attention on the screen of my phone as I scrolled through my inbox to check and make sure Jackson hadn’t texted me and it had just gone unnoticed.
“She always goes silent when you’re right.” Sam pointed out to Alex and the girl, rising from the chair she had been seated in, and heading towards the back break room.
“We all make mistakes!” I called to her before she disappeared into the room, giving a wave over her shoulder to dismiss me.
It was no secret that all of the girls at Bleach weren’t a fan of Jackson. Honestly, I wasn’t even a fan either anymore. But I guess I had grown comfortable with the idea of being in a relationship, even one as shallow as the one Jackson and I had. We were terrible for each other, opposites that clashed in nearly every aspect of our lives. When we had met I was a shy teenager who was struggling to find my place in the world. Jackson had been the one to encourage me and insist that it would be okay for me to drop out and call it quits on my brief stint of studying psychology at university. I was only in school because I thought that was what was expected of me, and I’d never amount to anything unless I went to uni like everyone else. Thinking back on it, that may have been the only positive thing Jackson had ever done for me, acting as my support system as I left uni and spent a few months working odd jobs and struggling to come to terms with where I wanted my life to go. And then I entered a cosmetology school and finally found my place in life. I also met Sam, who instantly became my best friend and the older sister I never got a chance to have. There was nearly a 9 year age gap between Sam and I, but you’d never know it by the way our friendship took off. Sam was a wild spirit, who coaxed me out of my reserved shell, and recruited me to come work at Bleach after I graduated. Her and Alex had just opened the salon less than a year earlier, and while Sam was the one who took care of the business aspect of it all, Alex was the head hair stylist and brought me in to help out when their client list began to grow too big for just her to handle. There was now a fairly large group of stylists all working at the salon, and with a new and healthy support system around me, I didn’t really need Jackson anymore.
Alex set a timer for how long the colour needed to process on the girl’s hair before sitting down in the empty chair that Sam had previously been sitting in. Feeling her eyes on me, I locked my phone and dropped it into the front pocket of the loose flannel shirt I was wearing.
“Alright, spit it out.” I could tell just by looking at her she was dying to provide her own two cents on my lack of a break up.
“Nothing!” She threw her hands up in surrender, signalling that she had nothing to offer.
“Honestly? You’ve got nothing to say about the whole thing?”
“Oh, I’ve got plenty to say, love.” Alex laughed, shaking her head. “But what good’s it going to do? Can’t really go back in time and unsleep with him.”
I rolled my eyes, which did not go unnoticed by Alex as she sighed audibly.
“It’s just you come in here every day and you just look so drained!” Alex began to reason. “You’re constantly telling us about how the two of you are at each other’s throats. Proper shouting matches and everything. And don’t even get me started on his cheating.” The last part of her commentary was directed towards the client who was behind her. Apparently a dye job at Bleach now came with a complimentary gossip session about my questionable life decisions. I tuned Alex out as she began to launch into a story I had previously told about Jackson getting drunk and trashing my apartment a few weeks ago, apparently filling in this client on our back story.
“Sounds to me like you should tell this guy to piss off.” The girl finally added in as Alex finished.
I mentally weighed my options of what would be more painful, remaining here and listening to Alex and this girl who’s name I didn’t even know provide commentary on my relationship, or escape to the backroom and have Sam corner me and do the same thing. I pushed myself up from the chair, deciding Sam might be the better of my two options.
“Yeah, thanks for the tip.” I called over my shoulder as the two girls chatted animatedly about potential clubs they were probably going to drag me out to in order to find some guy to replace Jackson.
*******
My only client for that day happened to be Sam’s twin sister Lou who had popped by the salon just to say hi to everyone. A hair stylist herself, it was rare of her to come in as a client, but I knew her boyfriend Tom was watching their young daughter that day so she was more here for the relaxing experience of not having to be on mum duty for a few hours rather than out of necessity for a dye job. I was mixing up a bleach paste to touch up Lou’s dark roots that had begun to grow in, when Sam let it slip that I had failed to break up with Jackson the night before. Lou made no effort to hide her disappointment as she shook her head at her twin sister.
“What happened this time?”
“She slept with him instead of breaking’ up with him.” Sam answered for me from where she stood behind me, watching me begin to apply the bleach to Lou’s hair through the mirror that sat above the counter in front of us.
“Trixie!” Lou scolded, and I instantly felt like I was being ganged up on by a group of disapproving mothers with the way these two were speaking down to me.
The rest of the salon was empty, as Alex, Sam and myself were the only three scheduled to come in that day, and Alex had just popped out for a lunch break.
“Sorry, mum.” I replied bitterly, and Lou rolled her eyes in response to my sarcasm.
Crossing her arms across her chest, Lou looked me in the eye through the mirrored reflection. “Gemma and I were talking last night about you. She bet that you’d chicken out and not do it. Glad the two of us didn’t place money on it, cause I had faith in you.”
“Piss off.”
“We meant it in a loving way, of course!” Lou reasoned, offering me a small smile. “I’m sure Gem will be disappointed to hear that she was right if that’s any consolation to you.” Gemma was a good friend of Lou’s and had become a fairly regular client of ours here at Bleach. Lou’s full time gig was travelling with Gemma’s younger brother’s band, styling the boys of One Direction’s quiffs before they hit the stage every night on their international arena tours. Not a bad gig, but I knew the constant travel was tiring and Lou never got to be home as much as she would have liked, an especially difficult matter as she had a young daughter who was going to be starting preschool soon and would’t be able to freely travel on world tours with her anymore.
Sam moved to take a seat in the chair next to Lou, propping her feet up on the edge of the counter in front of her as she watched Lou take out her phone.
“Gotta fill Gem in on all of this.” Lou gestured towards her phone as she began to type away. Sam tried to stifle her laugh as she noticed my unimpressed reaction.
“What about Gemma’s little brother? Isn’t Harry single? And he’s about your age, Trix.” Sam hinted, and I could see Lou’s eyes light up at the idea.
“No.” I firmly shot the two of them down before they had a chance to get too carried away with the idea of setting me up with someone else already. “Not a chance.”
Sam crossed her arms over her chest in protest, but bit her tongue when I shot her a glare warning her against saying anything else. “Fine.”
“We’re done talking about this, okay? I’ll break up with Jacks when I’m good and ready to. On my own terms.”
Lou began to snicker to herself as she looked down at her phone. “Gemma says next time just try sending him a break up text. That way you can’t end up accidentally sleeping with him again.”
“You two are ridiculous.”
♠ ♠ ♠
xx