Bitter Sweet, Page 2

OK, deep breath and Jump straight in. Maybe it won't be too cold.

  'I need to talk to you,' I say. 'We need to talk.'

  She looks at me for a moment. Just the suggestion of a hesitation like she has an idea what's coming next and what it is "we" need to talk about and that in fact it will, for the most part, involve me saying things she won't much like.

  For a second her eyes look sad but then they render themselves from kind of liquid to kind of solid and her jaw stiffens just a touch.

  I struggle for the words because there is really no nice way to say what I'm about to say. There's never, in the whole history of boyfriends and girlfriends, been a nice simple, pain-free get out clause. And dumping is almost as nasty as being dumped as you sit there watching the person you loved - maybe even still love a little bit - emotionally shredded by your very words just right there in front of you, you being the single person on the face of the earth who is the cause of the hurt and the one person able to fix it through the one thing you are unwilling to do. You know, like not dump them.

  Wait a second. This might be a little bit misleading since I was about to tell you how I fucked things up with Sally. There's more to that particular tale. I'm not just steaming right in there with a story that goes '...and then I binned her,' and ends.

  No, no, no. What's happening here is that I actually have a girlfriend you see. No, you won't see. Context, that's the thing you need my friend.

  The Friday at work after meeting Sally passed relatively uneventfully. Burger and a pint at lunch, emailed a few mates about the weekend, wasted time on the internet. Friday.

  What I did not do was create a number of different scenarios in my head from the numbingly mundane to the nauseatingly romantic to the frankly disturbed. None of that. Certainly not. For a start I'm a professional and for second I have a girlfriend and for thirds, not that we need to go that far, for thirds I'm not given over to starry-eyed day dreaming and whimsy. That's right, I said whimsy. So you can stop thinking that I spent the point from hitting the snooze button on my alarm clock in the morning up until about, say, midnight when I crawled in from the pub, constructing mental scenarios, scenes, figments of the imagination, tableaux or flights of fancy. Idiot.

  I don't need to tell you why that definitely did not occupy my every waking thought throughout Friday because we both know what that means, you and I. We both know what that would signify and you're getting on my nerves to keep bringing it up to be honest so just drop it. I am not besotted. Already. After one conversation with her.

  I mean for God's sake. You must think I'm a cock.

  It does remain distinctly within the realm of possibility to suggest though - I will concede this point to you - that I might have been in denial for a bit. Just a whiff.

  Just in between the times I'm picturing her sweet smiling eyes eighteen bajillion times.

  It's enough to make you sick. Anyway, we've got that out the way then I guess; now we can move things along. I couldn't get the girl out of my head for a single blessed moment of peace no matter what I did, be it doing work, reading about Liverpool's abysmal performance in the League the other night, or drinking heavily until just after closing time when I became briefly but sharply aware that I was too drunk for the lock in I had managed to talk the landlord into and left abruptly, followed through the door with a hail of noisy, slurred abuse and at least one shot glass that whizzed just past my head. Or it may have hit my head. It certainly hurt a lot the following day.

  The highpoint of the day came and went with the fact that I neither called her nor texted her at all. This was something that I was most proud of having achieved. I don't count the astonishingly vivid fantasy I managed to conjure up behind my eyes just before I dozed off on the tube home in which Sally had somehow managed to get into my flat and lay there under my duvet, eagerly awaiting my return, insisting that she apologise very vigorously to me for having broken in there in the first place. That was in fact a low point; letting myself get carried away thinking bad thoughts like that. Baaad brain.

  So I wake up Saturday, accept the fact that at ten in the morning I have slept enough, should get up before the day is wasted completely and do something vaguely worthwhile, like watching some TV and that given I'm really quite dehydrated now, that my body is refusing to go back to sleep. I cannot drink water by the litre whilst asleep and my body knows this.

  I stare at the shower for a while, undecided, but it’s just me and the dressing gown for the next hour or so and I settle into the sofa with a cup of instant coffee and some Cheerios and work myself into a lather of self righteous tutting at the terrible, awful pop acts that are miming their way through an endless dirge of dreadfulness and rue the days of Tiswas and Saturday Superstore when it wasn't boybands and pouting that filled the Saturday morning schedules but a devastating combination of custard pies, Hong Kong Fooey and Five Star. Them were the fucking days.

  I make more coffee and I scramble some eggs and grill bacon. This is how to hangover. Stylish, me. Not so much with the runny egg stain down the front of my robe and the bed hair and all that but I was hoping we could ignore that for now. Eggs and bacon, coffee, TV and some generic brand ibuprofen. If it gets better than this on a Saturday morning, it can only be through the clever addition of breasts into the equation.

  As midday begins to creep up on me I dash into the shower and then throw on jeans and a sweatshirt and chuck some Fibre Putty hair styling whatsit in my hair and some Oil Control Moisturising thingy onto my face, carefully applying some Undereye stuff to reduce dark rings.

  What? Man needs to look after himself. If you must know I do use an Exfoliating Facial Scrub too but not every day, although I fail to see why that's any of your business.

  Shut up.

  The next step is to deny the siren call of the Playstation because that will wipe my afternoon off the map and I need some air and some natural light. And milk. I need milk too. Wallet and keys go in the pockets, shoes on and I grab the mobile where it’s been sitting all night charging up.

  Pleased that I remembered to plug it into the charger last night I then double check that the suit is hung up nice and neat too and the shirt is in my novelty R2D2 laundry basket in the corner and I walk out the door, marvelling at the ability of the drunken mind to remember sensible domestic tasks and the propensity of my suit to get really crinkled if not hung correctly.

  The mobile stays in my pocket for only a few paces out the door before I realise that I really ought to do the full audit of the night before and see if I did make any ill advised phone calls or send text messages that might have awkward consequences and am delighted to find that the sum total of my phone usage between the hours of six and twelve the previous evening involve this to an old colleague and drinking buddy: 'Be there at 6. Stopped for a pint over here 1st. Strap them on you slag, we're having it.' Yes, you're probably right there; I imagine he was charmed by that. I also sent one around midnight that read 'Fvkin pasty shpp at Kings X is shut. Nearl t cried' which if nothing else demonstrates that I did at least attempt to address the issue of not having eaten anything all night. Barring one or two lemon slices right off the back of some Cuervo Gold but I'm not even going to try and pretend that is an argument with any validity.

  The food has worked a magic spell in my stomach and the painkillers are fighting a valiant battle somewhere between my temples and mostly winning. What with the fact that I did not drink and dial and I have that sort of post-pissed euphoria kicking in I positively bounce my way down the hill to the shop where I grab some milk, pasta, eggs and some ham and then fail utterly in my attempt to walk past the bakery counter in the corner of the shop and NOT buy a cheese and bacon turnover. I swear to you those things are like Food of the Gods, but baked by Satan. I fail so utterly in my attempt to not buy this delicious evil that I walk out with two of the fuckers and scarf one of them down before I get halfway up the hill. The only reason I don't down the second one before I get to my front door is that I'm pick
ing a thousand pastry crumbs off my sweatshirt and, yes, from around my mouth. For shame. Please don't laugh if I admit that many of said crumbs actually went back into my mouth. Well not back; I couldn't manage to get them in there first time.

  Let's move on. I fear the picture I am painting you may be falling short of entirely flattering. Evidently I am no James Bond. Not even the George Lazenby one. Although many have argued that he was perfectly competent in the role to be fair to the chap. In fact, there was a cartoon one too I think, a Young James Bond or something and he was really shit. I'm not even him. He makes me look like a bit of a tit let's be honest.

  Anyway, I'll repair the damage to my image in your eyes in a bit.

  First things first. This, here, now, is the point, as I plonk stuff into the fridge and slip the other cheesy-bacon slice of hellish wonderfulness onto a plate, this is the point that my girlfriend rings me. This coincides almost exactly with the first point since the middle of the previous evening when I announced that I didn't want to talk about that tonight, that she has even crossed my mind.

  'Hello?' May I introduce Melanie ladies and gentlemen.

  I say hello back. Actually that isn't true. What I say is 'Heh-' before I am cut off with a stream of invective and noisy distortion on the phone as her rising ire exceeds the audio capabilities of both her own phone and mine. The upshot is that she hasn't heard from me in three days at all and even then it was only an email and nobody is that busy and was I even going to call her back today wherewasIlastnight? That wasn't precisely what she said but I've taken out all the swearing because you might think less of her and I don't want to influence your judgement so soon.

  Mental cow.

  Chapter 3