3650 Days//New Hope Club.

Enough for Now.

Haha hi remember me? No, me neither.

To be very honest with you, these three books have WAY too much plot and I'm kind of lost inside all of the plot but I'm gonna try and find some sort of way out of said plot without leaving too many loose ends rip. The plot starts to get super bad from the second book, I'm wondering if after I've finished this one I should take it down and simplify it a bit... idk. Too many characters, too many loose ends, too little motivation.

~

Belisha were on another date. Well, 'date'. It wasn't really much of a date, and more like 'we're on a date but we've spent the whole time sitting at opposite sides of the room'.

The two had settled for a low-key date at a bar, both wanting to just relax with some pub grub and light chatter, too tired to deal with fancy restaurants and high expectations. Their plan was to just talk and talk and talk like in the early days of their relationship, pull themselves closer to reduce the gap which had somehow appeared between them, a gap that both should have been worried about but neither had really payed attention to. It was unhealthy, but what in Blake's life wasn't unhealthy at that point? His band was falling apart, he had a hate-hate relationship with his ex-love and ex-best friend who he used to think he would end up marrying, and his fiancée had spent the previous evening ignoring him for an app game that was really, totally, 10,000% addictive, Blakey-baby.

So the two had dressed themselves in casual clothing and trudged down to the pub, where they slid into a booth and proceeded to ignore each other on their phones after fighting over whether they get chips, or cheesy fries, or curly fries, or all three, or none of them and settle for onion rings, or whether they should just stop sharing if they were always going to disagree. Blake had hoped Elisha would do her usual 'whatever you want, Blakey-baby!' thing but unfortunately, she seemed to be more... well, resilient. He'd flashed his puppy-dog eyes towards her and everything, but she hadn't looked, instead choosing to focus on the people playing darts across the room.

Elisha watched them and Blake watched Elisha watching them, and then the food arrived. They ate in silence, one scrolling Instagram and the other replying to Facebook messages, greasy fingers leaving little fingerprints on the glass screen, until the food was eaten and all that remained were glasses of alcohol, which were promptly replaced with full ones, for lack of anything better to do. Elisha's attention trailed back to the group of people playing darts and eventually she was up there, too, laughing along with her new friends whilst Blake downed his drink and then got started on her's.

So overall, date night wasn't going very well, considering he'd been ditched by his fiancée as if they were high-school kids on their very first date at a house party. Was this how his marriage would turn out? Sitting at the table and knocking back the drinks whilst his wife went off to interact with people she found to be more entertaining than him? Aish. Blake, what are you doing?

... what was he doing? Such thoughts were toxic to a man who was engaged to be married. Why was he suddenly so pessimistic? Why had their relationship reached some sort of lull that wasn't there just the other week? Why was Evie in Blake's mind right now?
Because it's her fault, Blake told himself, she's making you grumpy and not nice to be around and that's driven your fiancée away. Maybe you should file for a restraining order, or move to the Maldives, or do what any normal boyfriend in your position would do and walk over to Elisha and actually spend time with her.

Blake knocked back the rest of Elisha's drink.

Or drink. Drinking's fun. Blake thought as he got up and made his way to the bar, abandoning the booth and plopping himself into one of the bar stalls. The bartender eyed Blake, then Elisha, and then gave him a pitying smile and plopped a couple of shots in front of him, muttering 'on the house, mate' as he did. Blake gave him a nod and raised one of the shot glasses to him, before quickly throwing it back, satisfied with the burn in his throat.