Love is a Laserquest - Alex Turner/Arctic Monkeys Fan Fiction

2007

I accept the maid's job at the Mannerly Hotel because I think it's going to be easy, and I'm bloody desperate for money. I swear up and down that it's temporary– a way to continue to live in London with Tess, a friend from King's College, a way to have nights to focus on my writing and finish a novel. It's mindless, I tell myself. I can spin entire plot lines while I make beds, right?

Wrong.

By the end of my first week at the Mannerly, I'm absolutely wrecked. I've spent each day going home to my flat and sleeping off hours of bathroom scrubbing, stain lifting, garbage hauling. I'm subsisting on cheap, leftover takeaways and cigarettes– and liquor, when I get desperate. I haven't written a single word, and I have to admit, I'm feeling depressed and hopeless– and seriously considering returning to Sheffield to live with Dad and pack it all in.

I'm changing out of my uniform in the locker room at the end of my first week, when my cleaning partner, Rosie, interrupts my thoughts.

"All right, love?"

I feel about ready to burst into tears– because what am I doing with my life? I dropped out of King's College– for what? To become a maid? Fail at something else?

All I can manage is a shake of the head for Rosie.

"Why don't you come 'round mine?" she asks, once I've started to slip my shoes on. "We can have a cuppa– or a beer– and do each ovva's nails or sumfin'."

I look up and meet Rosie's heavily lined, hazel eyes. I hadn't considered her seriously since starting at the Mannerly, though we've been cleaning together all week, and I feel like I'm seeing her for the first time. She's been so patient with me since I started, teaching me the ropes, cleaning up all of the things I miss without comment, talking and joking with me from the moment we met, making the time feel light and easy. And now she's inviting me to her place, trying to cheer me up, trying to befriend me.

I feel bad for having overlooked her– for having not seen the potential in her friendship– too blinded by the fact that she was a thirty-something maid from South London.

God, I'm a prat.

"All right, thanks," I agree, feeling lighter already.

As we leave the Mannerly for the tube, Rosie asks me where I'm from, and we talk about Sheffield, King's College, my hopes of getting into writing. She tells me about her long-time boyfriend, who she lives with in a flat in Whitechapel, her sister and niece who live in Hoxley, her time at the Mannerly. We laugh about our supervisor, and the guests whose rooms we clean, and by the time we've reached her flat I realize just how lonely I've been lately.

Alex and Matt have been touring, working, running around London like the rockstars they are, my university friends are busy with school– with a world I'm no longer a part of– and Dad is miles away in Sheffield. It's been weeks since I've had someone to talk and laugh with, and my muscles relax while Rosie sits me down in the tiny kitchen of her flat, swats away her enormous, ginger cat, and makes us a drink.

We agree on vodka soda– a mutual favorite– and she chatters away about Cheryl Tweedy while she acts as bartender.

My eyes wander her kitchen table, half-listening as I catch sight of a copy of the Daily Mail lying with her post.

It knocks the wind out of me when I see it.

"When Alex met Alexa: Arctic Monkeys singer hand-in-hand with Channel 4 star"

My mouth is dry and, to my horror, my heart has begun to pound. It's not the fact that Alex has a girlfriend– though that pain curdles in my stomach as well– it's that I had no idea. It's that I'm finding out about my best friend's love life from a magazine.