You walk down the street, hand in hand with Sam, giggling a little too much at everything he says, just in case. It was awkward to start with, the pretending, but the pair of you have got used to it now. You look pretty convincing if you both say so yourselves. It's taken a few weeks, but holding hands with your childhood best friend no longer makes you want to rip your skin off. Somehow, by some twisted turn of events, you actually quite enjoy it.
Not that you'd ever tell Sam that. The only reason you're doing this is so that the press doesn't hound him about his new girlfriend, or become aware of her existence. Sam's a private sort of person, even you barely know anything about her, despite being Sam's partner in crime since 1999. Sarah seems nice though, and she's definitely good for him. He doesn't drink himself to oblivion every night anymore or bray the shit out of people (and get the shit brayed out of himself) when he's pissed. He's grown up.
However, you've seen all of that. You saw him at his worst and you're still by his side now when he's at his best. You can still remember him turning up on your doorstep at 3 o'clock on a Saturday morning, covered in blood after getting chinned (and glassed) by a bloke he thought was his mate. It was this event that would later inspire the single Friday Fighting.
Your parents went ballistic when they discovered you'd run off in the middle of the night to go to hospital with him, to get the shards of glass removed from his face, but it was worth it. What are friends for at the end of the day?
Violence was part of growing up with Sam. All through school, he was bullied relentlessly, and rarely left without a burst nose. He never fought back, not once; Sam just wasn't like that. He's a lover, not a fighter. That was, until, he hit his late teens. Fuelled with rage and bitterness, nearly every night he got into a fight of some description; some serious ending with hospital visits, others just trivial brawls that were forgotten about days later.
Fragile. That's how your mam had always described him. Not fragile like a bomb, not anymore. More like pottery or glass. Sturdy for the most part, but shattered once knocked hard enough. As always, you'd be there to pick up the pieces and put him back together again.
He walks you to his house, a new flat he bought with the profits from his debut album, Hypersonic Missiles, and once inside you finally separate, trying your best to ignore the sinking feeling in your stomach when you do so.
Sam fills the kettle with water, grabbing two mugs from the cupboard. Seeing as you spend almost as much time here as Sam does, you have your own cup, one you "stole"' from him, as he puts it. The now-faded Newcastle United mug was once part of a set, the rest are long gone, mostly lost to Sam's angry years which were spent throwing crockery at walls. A fragment had hit you once, leaving a small scar on your cheek, one of the reasons why he's calmed down now. He never wanted to hurt you, or anyone really.
The kettle boils and Sam fills the mugs without saying a word. He knows how you take your tea, and you know how he takes his. Milk, no sugar.
Once it's brewed, he hands it to you, seeming more distant than ever before, even when he was struggling.
"There y'are," He says quietly.
You take it from him, "Cheers." This is the awkward part. Faking being in love is relatively easy, and it's getting progressively less difficult, but talking to him afterwards is when it gets tricky.
After a lull in conversation that you've both come to expect, Sam slumps down onto the sofa, the leather squeaking as he does so. "FIFA?" He suggests, a slight grin dancing across his lips as he picks up a controller. "Bagsy the toon."
You sit down next to him, taking the other PlayStation controller from the coffee table. Every time you play, Sam gets to be Newcastle, and every time he wins. It's a shame the actual team doesn't do so well.
