The Million Mile Hallway

Chapter 20 - Jason

I totally messed up.

I took on the overtime at work not only to try and distract myself from Louise, but to avoid all of her family in the apartment block. But of course, I'd bump into her on the exact day that I thought I'd be sure to avoid her. I guess that's what I get for going to the same place she'd introduced me to in the first place. What an idiot.

But that was only the start of it. Why did I invite her to sit with me? Why did I sit at all? I should have just walked back to the job and had my takeaway coffee there. But I couldn't resist the chance to hang out with her. I didn't want to admit it, but I missed her. Was that sad? That someone like me, my age, wanted to hang out with someone so young? Was Lyn right that I should be hanging out with people my own age?

For a start it didn't seem to matter. My conversation with Louise was going ok, like they had done before things got complicated. But then I had to open my big fucking mouth. Would she have tried to change my mind if I hadn't brought it up? Or was it wishful thinking to presume things would go back to the way they were?

In the end I finally took the advice of my brother and my friends. I didn't want to hurt her, but I had to. That was it now. No going back.

In the days that followed I didn't see her in person but she was all over my Facebook feed. Posting status after status that didn't mention me by name but was pretty obviously directed at me. Or at least about me. Loads of song lyrics, music videos and another which was pretty upsetting to read.

I guess this proves how pathetic I really am.

I hated seeing her like this, and hated that this was what she seemingly thought of herself. But in a weird kind of way, it showed me even more that she and I were probably not meant to be together. That age really did matter when the gap was this big. Don't get me wrong, I remember doing that myself, years and years ago. When something pissed me off I would head straight onto Facebook or MySpace as it was in my day and just rant about everything that was on my mind. But getting older, you realise that you can't do that. That's not how you fix things, and really it just makes everything that much worse.

It's a maturity thing. And I knew that if I told her that, she'd just bite my head off again. Sometimes I just see myself as a big kid, and don't see how anyone could take me seriously. But compared to how Louise was reacting, I realised how much I really had grown up. Of course, that didn't stop me doing some pretty stupid things.

I told my friends how low I was feeling but I don't think they took it too seriously for a start. It was only when I was back at the extension, working with Kevin that he realised the truly severe nature of my problems. I was voluntarily working with Bradley. My thinking was that if I had to spend most of my time babysitting his useless ass then I wouldn't have time to worry about Louise. Unfortunately, this wasn't the case.

I watched him attempt to screw a light bulb in the wrong way and had to remind myself that this clown was actually two years older than Louise. I didn't doubt for a second that she was far smarter than he was but he was quite possibly more mature and that scared me. His last Facebook post was about how his friend scored some weed for crying out loud.

Ok, that's a bad example.

"We need to fix this, stat!" Kevin told me.

The boys took me out that night and I tried my best to enjoy it, I really did. I drank so much that the room started spinning and I ended up dancing to some random songs that I didn't know. Then I drank some more and got completely hammered. I remember Ray ended up scoring with this girl, and apparently her friend, Ashley, was really into me. I spoke to her for a bit and she seemed nice enough but she just wasn't the same. She wasn't my sarcastic, deadpan, popularity-hating neighbour. She wasn't Louise.