Overlap

Van

🌨️December 2019🌟

The evening had a winter chill to it. The kind of winter chill only my home town could offer.

Beyond the confines of the beer garden and the warm firelit glow of our local it was raining. Not the kind of rain that hammers on the rooftops and doesn't let you sleep, but the kind of quiet rain which drizzles and soaks you to the bone before you've had a chance to get your coat.

I sat between Larry and the wall, collar turned up against the night, hair freshly cut, strangely uncomfortable. With a ciggarett between my lips I toyed with the lighter, listening to Bondy and Bob talking shit, never once moving to lift the light to the tip of my smoke.

I unlocked and locked my phone again watching the screen for a change of scene, not really sur what i was expecting but certain of what I was hoping for.

It had been a week since Nina had phoned me out of the blue and we'd been texting more on than off than we used to. Stupid texts instead of obligatory texts and the last one she had sent me had put a smile on my lips that the others had missed.

Tell me brother mams never forgiving him for abandoning us on Christmas Eve Eve Eve.

I'd chewed my cheek over the kind of response to give her, whether to laugh along or to tell her that I knew she was lying.

Leave your mam out of it sweetheart we both know it's you thats sulking.

And now I was waiting for another message. Only half listening to my mates who were taking the piss out of Bondy for swapping toon for Llandudno. I was waiting to see whether she would admit it, or whether she would try to pretend that she was fine.

Because I knew she wasn't.

I'd been able to hear it in her voice the afternoon she had called. A type of melancholy I'd not heard in her before. A new emotion I'd rarely stumbled across in my life, one that I couldn't say Id experienced myself.

She'd sounded strangely hollow. Like a realisation had dawned on her and taken the oxygen from the air around her. Left her struggling for breath momentarily. Left her slightly shocked and tight chested. But only for a moment.

She'd shrugged me off over the phone, she'd told me she was alright and I'd let her get away with it. I'd let her distract me with the humour of her road rage. I'd let her distract me with the flex of her accent and her potty mouth.

She'd told me she was going for drinks with Laura and Ed but I knew Nina well enough to know that she wasn't the kind of lass to drive to drinks.
She wasn't the kind of girl to turn up the designated driver.

"What's so interesting about that phone ey? Who're you talking to?" Larry leant across the table trying to snatch my phone from my hands, grinning when he saw the name which lit up the screen.

"Who made you the secret police sit down ya dickhead," i grinned swatting him away and pocketing my phone, resisting the urge to open her message straight away. Struggling to fight back the blush on my cheeks when they all started guessing what or who it was stealing my attention away from them.

"Bet you anythin it's a certain brunette," Benji flashed me a grin, earning an eye roll off me which felt oh so slightly disingenuous because he was right. Of course he was right. They all knew me too well and it was beginning to get embarassing how easy to read i was. How they could all work me out so easily.

I'd always been like that though. I wore my heart on my sleeve and everyone knew about it when I fell for someone.

Though this time it had taken them awhile to work it out. Years in fact.