All or Nothing

Chapter 18

With Megan gone, Hattie with Lauren and Aimee not speaking to him, John had nothing left to do but throw himself full throttle into preparation for Saturday's game. Megan had replied to his plea to come home saying she would be back at the weekend, part of him wondered if she had sussed out what was going on and it was now her, rather than him, delaying the inevitable.

John had made a conscious effort to stop taking out his woes on the people around him and by the time the team boarded the coach ahead of the match, Thursday's mood had been all but forgotten by most.

"Everything okay John?" Bernardo took the seat next to him as he was checking his phone for the 42nd time today in the hope that there had been some miracle and Aimee had got in touch.

John pursed his lips and got ready to lie and insist everything was fine, but then he remembered that bluffing his way through life hadn't exactly been working and he sighed, "Not great actually. Me and Megan are breaking up." He was way ahead of himself; he still hadn't pulled the trigger. This was a very strange attempt a manifestation.

Bernardo's face filled with sympathy, he liked Megan, he and Ines had spent a lot of time with her and John, "I'm sorry John. How are you?"

John thought about how he felt about the prospect of no longer being with Megan, there was no sadness, only relief. He had felt the same way when he had left Lauren. "It's fine," he assured Bernardo. "It's not been right for a while. I've met someone else actually."

Bernardo's face clouded with confusion, but John was oblivious. John unlocked his phone and scrolled through his gallery, he didn't have a picture of himself with Aimee and that bothered him. He settled on one of Aimee and Rosie, "This is her, her name's Aimee."

"She has a daughter?" Bernardo asks in surprise, there is no mistaking the resemblance between Aimee and Rosie.

"Yeah," John smiled, he was enjoying this moment of delusion; showing off his new girl, pretending that Megan was out of the picture and Aimee didn't currently hate him. "That's Rosie, she's in Hattie's class. That's how we met actually."

"Aimee has a nice smile," Bernardo remarked. It was the nicest thing he could say, John's admission that he and Megan were splitting, closely followed by the revelation that he had already met someone else, had Bernardo's head swimming with questions. He could already picture Ines' shocked face when he relayed this tale to her.

John flicked through his pictures once again, careful not to settle on anything inappropriate that Aimee had sent him, "Yeah she does." He smiled fondly, "Rosie has the same one, see? Look at their noses." He showed Bernardo another picture before launching into a spiel around Aimee and all the great things about her.

"You like this girl?" John was behaving like a lovesick teenager; Bernardo had never seen him like this.

"Just a bit," John shrugged sheepishly.

Kyle was in the seat behind John and had heard everything. When the bus stopped and everyone stood up to leave, Kyle leant over and placed a firm hand on John's shoulder, stopping him from going anywhere.

"You've got to actually tell Megan it's over, you know that right?! You can't just have her bags packed and waiting for her when she gets back and say, 'Oh sorry, I've told everyone else, I thought you knew.'.

"I'm gonna tell her!" With all the free time he had had since Thursday John had thought about little else, rehearsing over and over in his head what he was going to say. He'd decided to keep Aimee out of it, even though he knew Megan was already suspicious, he was going to tell her they had just grown apart and that would hopefully be enough.

*

It's a comfortable City win. At the final whistle, everyone is buzzing over another Manchester derby victory. It never gets old for the fans or the players. The early kick off means there's plenty of time to celebrate afterwards but John declines his teammates offers to go out in lieu of going to his parents' house for a pre-arranged dinner.