City Of Need

37 ❤️‍🔥 Flight

London

All seven of us watch as Roxy walks out of the club. My girl is fucking epic and I love to watch her walk away. All of life is Roxy's show. With her short short skirts and high high heels, her huge red curls and her beautiful mouth. All she needed was a warrior heart to be the next Joan-of-fucking-Arc. Leading her troops into battle, burning for her cause. Looks like she's got that too now.

'Your girl is amazing,' Hennessy tells me.

'Yeah she is.'

'You just gonna let her leave though?'

'Am I fuck,' I grin. 'I just like to watch her walk away.' With that I jog for the exit. Wherever Roxy Wilde is going, I'm going too. Sod my career. I can be whatever I want. And for her I can be a criminal - if that's what it takes.

Swinging open the club door I expect to see her there - waiting for me - our big moment - A Gone With The Wind style kiss - A declaration - A love story.

She's not here. What the fuck? I jog up to the main road expecting to see her sitting on the wall out of sight of the others. Waiting for me.

She's not there. She's not anywhere. Damn, that means she was serious. She's going to Edinburgh. She's leaving London, leaving me.

I pace the pavement. There's an indescribable emptiness carving at my stomach. This cannot be the end of us. She can't mean it. Not really. Can she?

I light a cigarette, my hand shaking the flame, my eyes stinging. This is not happening. I will not let this happen. I inhale my cigarette so fiercely that I start to choke on the nicotine. She's gone. How can she go? Doesn't she feel the way I do? Her speech was epic but I didn't think she'd do it. At least not without me. How can she leave me? No-one has ever left me. I'm the one that does the leaving. I'm the brat tamer. She's just the brat. That's the way I operate. I tame them.

Admittedly, once I've tamed them I get bored. Start to distance myself. Eventually cut it off. Sometimes they cry. Sometimes they try and track me down. But I'm a gentleman. I let them down nicely, make them think it's their idea to leave. That they're too good, too gorgeous, too intellectual for me. I take the sting out of the endings that way. And if that doesn't work I put them in a song of loss and yearning. I pay the price one way or another. But I don't lose them - they lose me.

No. Nope. This is not happening. I'm London Ramona, she's Roxy Wilde. She belongs to me. Jesus, this hurts. Is this how the girls I leave behind feel? This is terrible. I will never do this to anyone again. I stamp on my cigarette. Light another one. Stare up at the sky. And for the first time I know how it feels to belong to someone. It's bloody awful. She is not walking away with my heart. I refuse to become a hollow man.

Think. Think...

There are three ways to get to Edinburgh. Car, train and plane. Roxy is not patient enough for the first two. I hail a passing black cab and dive into the back.

'City Airport please mate, and if you can get me there double quick there's a twenty pound tip in it for you.'

The cabbie snorts, 'Twenty quid. You're kidding me mate, that's the basic tip for getting you there at all.' He keeps the cab idling at the curb.

'Ok, ok. An extra ton then. C'mon mate, put your foot down, it's a love story.'

'A love story is it?' He still hasn't moved the car away from the curb. 'Well if it's a love story...' he takes an endless pause eyeing me in his rearview mirror and for a moment I think he's going to waive the fair all together. Then he clears his throat and says, 'Surely a love story is worth a couple of ton.'