Mr Barlow

Chapter Forty-Nine

"What the fuck?" I whined before leaning back against the cold brick wall. "Why did he have to go and ruin a perfectly good night?" I whispered to myself before turning around and basically punching the wall but not enough to actually hurt myself.

"Katie, are you okay?" I turned round and saw it was Mark who had followed me out and I couldn't help but feel a tear slowly roll down my cheek.

"Yeah, I'm fine." I quickly wiped the tear away and looked to the ground.

"Oh come on, you ran out there quickly than Usain Bolt, now what's going on?" He asked walking closer to me.

"Nothing, honestly I'm good." I tried to convince him without looking him directly in the eyes.

"You're a shit liar. Now you can either tell me or I will get Lauren to come out here and you can tell her, who by the way I literally had to fight to stop from chasing after you." He laughed clearly trying to lighten the mood.

"I- I don't know what to say, I don't want to say it." I stuttered not wanting to think about it.

"You have probably about 5 minutes to tell me what's going on before either Lauren or Gary come out here." He said sitting on one of the wooden tables that were out here and gestured for me to sit down on the opposite side. "Also, it's very cold out here and I will freeze." He laughed.

"I don't want to say it because then it becomes real." I sighed.

"Katie, seriously what are you talking about? You're actually starting to worry me."

"Okay." I took a deep breath. "He kissed me." I said just above a whisper.

"Wait, who did?" He asked and for the first time I looked up and saw him staring at me.

"Michael."

"Michael, as in your boss Michael?" He looked at me surprised.

"Yeah, but I promise you I didn't want him to do it, it all just happened so quickly, like one minute we were talking then the next he was leaning closer to me and then he kissed me." I looked at him again not knowing what his reaction would be.

"And what did you do?" Was the question he asked. It was a question I wasn't expecting though.

"I pushed him off straight away of course." I said as if it was the most obvious thing in the whole world.

"Well, then what happened?"

"Erm, I asked him what he was doing and he basically said that he didn't think mine and Gary's relationship was real and he kept asking me if I loved Gary, which obviously I refused to answer because it's none of his business and then he was like one day you'll realise I'm the one you should be with and all this crap, and that's when I came back to you lot." I explained way to quickly than was probably needed.

"Why did you refuse to answer his question?" He asked me as I just stared at him confused as to why that was the part he'd chosen to pay the most attention to.

"Because it's got nothing to do with him."

"Well do you?" Mark asked me.

"Do I what?" I said clearly missing his question.

"Love Gary." I looked at me as if it was obvious.

"I don't know." I complained half because of his question half because I was about to freeze to death. "Look it's complicated, this isn't just any normal relationship, we didn't have to do the whole getting to know each other part of it because we already knew a lot. I'm not someone who falls in love easy and so I'm so confused as to how I managed to fall so hard so quick for someone, it just doesn't happen for me, so I don't if it's love or not. We've only been together literally just over a month and it can't be love." I scoffed knowing I sounded like an idiot even thinking any of this let alone saying it out loud.