IMPRACTICAL

The night out: Part 1

It had been two weeks since I had told Q how I felt, and he had yet to give me any kind of answer. Of course there were parts of me that knew he had feelings for me, but to say that things hadn't changed when I told him that Sal knew was an understatement. He pretty much fell off the face of the earth. I was questioning a lot of things. Was he feeling too much guilt? Why wasn't I feeling enough guilt? How am I doing this? And more importantly, why am I still thinking about him at this point when he had clearly made up his mind?

"What's wrong?" Sal asked as he walked into the living room.

"Nothing, I'm just so tired." I sighed, noticing that my ability to lie so easily would even astonish me most days.

"So you don't wanna come out tonight? Jay asked us to hang out, you remember him, right?"

"Yeah, I remember him." I replied. Jay was the producer of the show. "I'll come. Maybe having something to do will wake me up a little." I faked a yawn.

Two hours later we were on our way to the bar that Jay had told us to meet him at, and upon arrival, I realized that we were not the only ones to be invited. Murr, his girlfriend, and Q were some of the faces that I had already spotted amongst the small gathering of people, leading me to wonder if Sal had known that he was going to be here.

"Hey guys" Murr smiled and reached in to give me a hug as we greeted everyone at the bar, as Murray had his arms around me, looking over his shoulder I locked eyes with Q, who threw me a quick nod. Well, at least he was somewhat acknowledging me.

Sal was already off mingling with his friends while I stayed and chatted to Murr and his girlfriend. Every now and then I could feel Q's eyes burning into me, but he was keeping his distance, just as hard as I was pretending not to notice him looking. Ignoring him was hard. Even when things were cooled down between us, we still had great banter and a great friendship with each other more than anyone else in the room, so for us to not gravitate towards one another as much as we wanted to was almost painful.

As I was ordering another drink at the bar, I felt my phone vibrate. I pulled it out, seeing that I had a text from an unknown number. Only as I had loaded up the text, all of the previous texts exchanged had let me know that it was Q. But I had definitely not deleted his number at any point. Leading me instantly to the one guy that would go through my phone and delete his number.

'You look so good tonight.' The text read.

'Oh, so now you acknowledge me, huh?' I replied.

'Kinda hard to.'

I guess he was right. Not that I took his quiet spell all too personally, but some kind of acknowledgment would have been nice at least.

'I wanna fuck you so bad.' Another text came through. Talk about biting the bullet and going straight for it.

'That is a shame.'

'Don't play me like that. I have to see you'

I sat looking at his text for a few minutes, looking around the bar. Sal was extremely into his friends, Q on the other hand was sat alone head deep into his phone. It seemed like something that I could get away with. But if Sal were to look up for even a millisecond and not see at least one of us in the room, all hell would break loose.

'How about tomorrow?' I finally texted him back.

'Tomorrow is a long time away.'

'I'm sure you'll manage' I sat and watched him from across the room as he typed back.

'With these? sure' He attached pictures to the message, the bikini shots that I had accidentally sent to him instead of Sal in Mexico. I laughed to myself, feeling rather naive to believe that he wouldn't have actually kept them for all of this time.

'I believe that wouldn't be the first time' I picked up my own flirting.

'Trust me, it's not' He replied, causing me to smile.

"What are you smiling at?" Murr's girlfriend, Sarah giggled.

"I was just on instagram." A tiny white lie meant nothing on top of the other lies that I had told at this point.

"Say no more." she laughed.

"So how are things with you and Murr?" I asked.

"They're great. Really great. I am really nervous about them all going to the UK, though." she sighed.

"Why?"

"Two weeks is a long time. London is far away. Maybe I'm just being paranoid."

"I think so." I chuckled a little bit.

"What about you and Sal? Where is he anyways?"

"Who knows." I laughed once more. "Things are good. You know, when he actually wants to spend time with me and doesn't disappear into the night."

"I see." She laughed. "Well, they have to be somewhat good for something on instagram to actually make you smile. People usually make me feel quite the opposite on that site."

Just then, Sal finally returned on my radar, giving me a signal to go over to him.

"Sorry about him, Sarah. I'll talk to you later though?" I called out as I headed over to him.

"Hey gorgeous." he leaned in to kiss me quick, the smell of booze already taking over. He grabbed my hand, leading me over to the group sat down. Mostly guys, I definitely felt a little outnumbered.

"Yeah, that's my boy!" one of the guys yelled, causing everyone else to look in the direction that he was yelling it in. And of course it would be Q, talking to a girl. He flapped his hands, telling the guys to knock it off. "No, bring her over!" He yelled once more. Q looked at his girl as if he was asking her if she wanted to, and within seconds she was nodding, and they were both walking over.