Overlap

Eponine

🌼August 2018☁️

Someone was throwing a party down by the pool. I could hear their music in watery echoes through the doors which lead out onto our balcony.

I'd been lying awake beside Andy for hours now whilst he stared vacantly at his phone, the reflections of an infinite instagram timeline the only light in his eyes. I'd asked him a couple of questions, tried to have a conversation, anything to distract me from the growing guilt in my mind but tonight he was only grunts and nods and "yeah love alright..."s. He was bored and distracted and Id have killed to be bored and distracted.

"Would you wipe that bloody sulk of your lips love christ I take you all the way to the south of france and even that won't fix that sour face," he smirked at me, a little harsher than perhaps he had meant to.

I bit my lip, rolled my eyes.

"Leave it out And," i sighed, "it's Johnnys birthday..."

"Oh come on, not this again love, thought we'd settled this... You're away with me not him..." he flashed me a grin but it didn't light up his eyes the way I'd have liked, the way that it should have done. It lit them up like the glint along the knifes edge. Even if Andy wasn't all that sharp a blade.

"That's probably his party..." I said, not expecting his laugh to cut me up the way it did.

"Obviously it fuckin is," he chuckled, giggling to himself and shaking his head. Barely even looked up when I pushed myself up and took myself out to the balcony for a cigarette. A little self sympathy, a little moment alone to wallow as I took my phone out and began mindlessly refreshing my insta feed.

Id agreed to go with Andy as a means of escape, to escape from Niall. We were more on than off these days.
Now however, trapped in a hotel room, listening to the lads outside down by the pool, shouting across the water at one another, making eachother laugh, I didnt feel like I'd really escaped at all. It certainly wasnt the sanctuary I had convinced myself it could be when Niall had suggested I accompany his friend on his work trip.

See Andy was in Nice on some sales training conference. I was in Nice to make him look good, or at least that's what had been implied.

Niall had said, "you'll stop him lookin like some clapped up loner," and when he'd said it he'd shot Andy a wink and they'd laughed the line off together. After two evenings of mingling with his work colleagues, finding myself lost for words when he slipped his hand into mine and lead everyone to believe that I was his girlfriend, I was beginning to think that there had been a lot more truth in their joke than they had first let on. That when Niall had said they'd come to an arrangement, he'd really meant it.

"Obviously," I mumbled to myself, a little drunk from another evening in the bar with Andy and Co, constantly checking over my shoulder self consciously. Sort of terrified of bumping into my brother or any of his friends, doing my best to avoid them simultaneously secretly hoping one of them would see me, sweep in and rescue me.

It had been bad enough seeing Sarah in the lobby, ducking behind a pillar watching her spin on the spot slow motion, tiptoes and searching the room for me brother. Id watched from my hiding place when he'd found her, when she'd called out his name and he'd offered her an awkward salute and a stupid grin from somewhere not so far away from me.
It had hurt my heart to see them kiss, as if they'd kissed a million times before, so familiar with one another, and realise that though I'd always assumed they'd wind up together like that, I hadn't known because I hadn't been there for him for months. Every conversation we'd had had been a lie and every text I'd sent his friend had been a fabrication.

And now every text I'd sent his friend replayed in my head, because I'd seen that friend hanging around this hotel too and he'd taken me by surprise.

The rest of the band weren't here, at least if they were they were keeping a lower profile than the rest of my brothers friends. But Van was. Van seemed to be waiting around every corner I had turned and I'd lost count of the number of times I'd had to duck behind a stranger or swiftly turn my head away to avoid his gaze, avoid his recognition of me, but it was exhausting and it left an ache in my chest.