Dating a Tortured Artist│18+ ⚠️

3. nostalgic for garbage, desperate for time.

I wipe at my face over the memory, my hands instantly become wet. Sniffling, I bit my lower lip and pulled my legs up to meet my chest, feeling even worse than I had before. I wanted this hollow ache in my chest to just go away, to disappear, to just...not exist.

I missed him something awful.

I was fresh out of university with a major in English and a minor in Communications, ignited by the dream of aiding authors – novelists and poets – to my heart's content. My family thought I was mental for pursuing the majors that I did. Fuck, some of my friends did, too... I had ended up regretting it when 2 months out of NYU, I couldn't land a decent job anywhere in New York, or any state for that matter.

There was buzz that the UK had far more lucrative opportunities where literature and publishing were concerned. Humoring myself, I'd taken a look at the job market in my field overseas, coming to find it was abundant. The deeper I looked, the further I started selling myself on the aspect of relocating to a country where I knew no one, had no one.

Quite spontaneously, I bought a one-way ticket to London, not sure when I would be coming back, or even what I was going to do exactly, but I told myself it would be for 6 months tops. I applied to every posting relevant to my field, then nearly cancelled the trip when I hadn't gotten anywhere a week before departure.

But eventually – miraculously even – my first choice, Lockwood Press and Inc., a major publishing house in central London, finally called to schedule a video interview, which lead to being offered the position of junior editorial assistant.

After confirming everything with the publishing house, I had told my family I'd be back sometime in the next year, and shocked as they were, they didn't try and stop me. Not that they could really do anything but stand aside and watch as their 20-year-old, recently graduated daughter/sister packed up her life into a couple suitcases and flew to another continent just to see what life could offer.

I met him a month and a half into my new jobs. The second was at a coffee shop my roommate, Kiera, worked at when I found out the salary at Lockwood wasn't going to be nearly enough to afford living in the city. And London was incredibly, unforgivingly expensive. Imagine my shock...

I'd been so unprepared; I was constantly drinking at the pub near my place.

Dan had flirted with me, rather drunkenly, and I found him endearing, but not so much so that I had even entertained the thought of sleeping with him. After he'd sobered up the slightest, and we'd got to talking about literature and how similar our jobs were, I'd become a little more receptive to the idea of going home with him. When we eventually did, he was like an animal behind closed doors; his demeanor did a 180 from shy, drunk, and cute to authoritative and domineering. Whatever inhibitions I'd had on sleeping with him went out the window.

I wanted him to fuck me. Two complete strangers.

Had his mother not come over that fateful night to drop off his birthday cake for the party they were throwing him, I don't think our relationship would have ever made it past the one-night stand it was intended to have been. She had soured the situation, making it exceedingly awkward, and he'd ended up apologizing to me, instead of pinning me down on his bed again, saying he usually never got drunk much, and rarely did he ever bring girls home (the way his mother had delightfully "screened" me after she saw him and I in a rather compromised position, later asking if I was his girlfriend, confirmed just as much). From there he sort of rambled on.

Until finally I told him it was fine, that it was a little weird for me as well since I'd only been in Britain for a little over a month at that time and didn't really know anyone, leave alone had slept with anyone in that time. After which, somehow, we ended up talking all night about ourselves to each other.