CASUAL AFFAIR; brendon urie

Chapter Fifty-Eight

I didn't even realise the date until later on in the day, when I got home from a perfectly normal day at work.

I couldn't understand how I could forget. I mean, I'd already had the pre-date pounding headaches and aching feeling in my chest, in the entire week leading up to today. I had, at random points, found myself with my hands clasped pressing firmly into my stomach before I jerked them away and kept them in tight fists away from the ugly hollowness in any way that I could. Jessa would sometimes catch me doing this and when she did she would loosen my fists with her hands and gently pull my arms down to my sides whilst her face let slip a sad look, before she managed to compose herself by shooting me a big grin and letting her mouth babble in an attempt to distract me from my thoughts.

And yet, I still forgot.

I guess I knew, I tried to tell myself, even if I hadn't forgotten, that I'd find myself at a bar, attempting to drown my sorrows. God, what a term. Drown my sorrows, my demons. Seems like the reason I couldn't was because mine knew how to swim.

The numbness I felt wasn't due to the alcohol, but the disgust I felt towards myself. You forgot, you forgot, you forgot was an ugly mantra inside my thoughts as they lurched from fuck-up to fuck-up that I'd made. And, boy, having time to reflect on it, I'd sure made some real big ones. Take Jessa, for example. I'd hurt her this year - I hadn't been the friend I should have been. In fact, I'd been a terrible, terrible excuse for a best friend. Jesus, I always said I was the mature one of the pair of us, but look who'd accepted my apology when she had every right not to. Breezy. She'd witnessed something, and despite every good bone in her, had promised to keep a sordid secret for me. She'd warned me, could have said 'I told you so', but didn't, and did her best to help scoop up the broken parts when what she'd warned had come true. Meagan. Who'd been asked to spy on me, by a close friend, who, bless her and her good heart, had refused, and subsequently lost that friend. Inadvertently all my fault. I mean, not that I wasn't glad that she'd come to me in my time of need, for lack of a better term, but it still didn't stop me feeling well, if it weren't for me... Dallon. What a shitty little sister - what kind of a sister sleeps with your best friend? For months? In secret?

And Brendon. Oh, god, Brendon. So many of the fuck-ups involved him, not that I'd blame him, even if I had warned him not to get involved with me. The biggest one of all was that I'd done the classic chick flick thing, and kidded myself that I hadn't. Because I fell for him. But it didn't matter.

I mean who was I kidding? Even if he did call back after the seven days were up, it was only right I tell him that Sarah had been wrong, I wasn't the girl for him, because I wasn't the girl for anybody, and wish him a nice life.

I finished the glass before me, and signalled for the bartender to come over again. "Refill?" he said, throwing a cloth he'd been rubbing a glass with over his shoulder. He had dark hair, mussed up but sort of military in its neatness. Stubble. Tan skin, and muscles. Yeah, he was attractive. Would I kiss him? No. Could I kiss him? Yes.

Instead, somehow not self-destructive enough to act on that stupid little thought, I leant my cheek on my knuckles and said "You wouldn't happen to have something in the way of a Forget-Me-Shot?"

He looked confused, frowning, obviously not understanding my reference. Not enough people watched The Simpsons these days.

I smiled, and waved my other hand, dismissing the joke. "Jack Daniels. Straight up."

"Still on tab?"

"Why not."

I was half finished, swirling the glass on its edge around and around, watching the tornados it made in the liquid - I never did ask Brendon if he made those tornados as a kid - when I felt the hand on my shoulder, and a familiar voice say "The things I stumble on."