• “You’re ridiculous….” Alix Had muttered in my vague direction after a satisfied sounding sip of, what was becoming, room temperature coffee.
    “I’m well aware…” I admitted eventually, trying not to feel Alix’s smug and repressed smile on me. Her cheeks gave it away. The café was buzzing with a dozen other conversations and the smell of freshly poured coffee hung in the air pleasantly. I would have enjoyed it more if I didn’t have my face buried in my hands, which were propped up on the table by my elbows.

    I felt her looking at me more so than I had since she sat down in the seat across from me a few minutes ago, so I took a tentative peek from between my fingers to check. Yep, she’d lost the ability to look at me as if she didn’t care and now she was fully grinning at me. “So?” “So what?” I nearly barked at her, she was having way too much ******** fun with this. “So how was it of course!” The sound of my palm impacting my forehead, again, caught the attention of an elderly woman who got the coldest stare I could manage with what little motivation I could muster. She looked away swiftly. “It was fine…”
    “It was fine?! You go and sleep with her and the best you can manage telling me is ‘it was fine’?!” amusement clung to her voice like a bad smell. “What do you want to hear? That it was amazing? That she cried after? That I ******** cried after? That she made me take off the condom and-“
    “whoa! one: way to graphic Miles, and two…” she took a dramatic pause to sip her now perfectly room temperature coffee and find the perfect tone to purr out whatever she was going to say next. She definitely wasn’t looking for the right words, she’d had this whole conversation planned since I called her earlier this morning. “You did use protection right?” The speed at which I answered the question should not have been possible for a human “yes of course we did!” “But she might have poked holes in it beforehand!” She wanted me to hit her… yeah that would explain it… I’ll just reach across the table and- “She wouldn’t have had the time or the opening to do that”. I watched her for a moment as she made a show of considering the information while she was actually biting back either a crude comment about the fact I used the word ‘opening’ or what she would call a witty reply to something else I said. “You might not have given her an opening. But she definitely gave you one…!” This time she actually bit her lip and her eyes shone with the need to shed tears. I gave her far too much credit by considering she might actually be laughing at something other than a poorly constructed sex joke… none the less I had to laugh along with it. What can I say? I’m immature.

    “Okay okay, I’m sorry. I know it’s funny really, it’s just the whole thing was… Wrong”. I let out the breath I had apparently been holding and took a sip of my coffee, only to realise I hadn’t put sugar in it yet. Gross.
    We sat in silence for a minute or so letting the coming tone of the conversation catch up with us. The sound of traffic just after the morning rush hour washed in through the only window and the open double doors, along with a relaxing summer breeze that smelled of my child hood and happiness… and… what I suspected was the smell of a passing hobo… Alix was making a face like she’d notice it as well and we nodded our silent understanding without a word passed between us.

    “So are you going to start seeing her again?” “I very highly doubt it” “How was she when you left?” “She seemed, err…. Too happy with what happened…” I had to let the words out slowly, as if spitting them out would have made me taste them more then I actually did. “Does she think you’re getting back together?” knowing Charlotte, the ex in question, she was probably already picking out a God damn wedding dress. “I think that’s a possibility…” Alix stared at me for a moment, probing me with her eyes into giving her the rest of what I was thinking. She needs to get out of my head. “and the other possibility is that she’s found a wedding dress, bought it online super express delivery and she’s already sat in my apartment on the sofa wearing it while humming ‘Here comes the ******** bride’ with that creepy smile of hers!” I mused going from being amused, to utterly terrified that I might be closer to the truth then I thought. “You know you need to tell her soon, right? If you let it go on to long like last time, bad things will happen.” She said to me in her ‘I’ve been where you are’ tone of voice.
    “Yeah I know, It’s just-“
    “She took it so badly last time, you’re worried you’ll end up with more than that small scare behind your ear, right?” My fingers went to the scare and slowly brushed down the length of it. I never saw it very clearly from the picture Alix had taken at the time, but I believed it felt bigger than it actually was. “Yes very scared. Just imagine it from her point of view! ‘Oh Miles and I have finally gotten back together! It won’t be like last time either! Because if it were…’” I held and imaginary knife in my hand and thrust into my jugular vein, making a show of gaging on imaginary blood and rolling my eyes back into my head. The old women next to us was again watching with disturbed interest, so as I pulled the ghost blade from my neck I made a show of throwing droplets of theoretical blood in her direction.
    “I don’t think that nice lady there would be in your apartment when Charlotte kills you”
    “You think she’d kill me there? No way, she’d make me drive to the beach and then kill me, so she could cuddle my corpse and make it say things.” I said with a dismissive wave of my hand. “Ha! And you think she actually calls you Miles? Everyone knows she calls you by your first name…”
    She wouldn’t say it in public: too many people would see me brain her.
    “Lesley…” she muttered just before finishing her coffee.
    I wonder if she’s okay, I thought to myself. Surely she can’t be so depressed that she’d force me to kill her in public, could she? I decided to wait until later to take her throat away from her, for now I’d settle for a kick.
    “Oww!”
    “p***y.”
    “Where!” she nearly shouted, standing up with her tongue sticking out like a cartoonish, sexually frustrated wolf. I knew she wasn’t, she had a score of ‘outlets’ to choose from. She settled down once the waitress came over to collect our empty mugs.
    “You look like you could use another.”
    I looked up just in time to see that the waitress, the cute waitress, was actually talking to me. I felt like she fought to keep a ‘honey’ or a ‘sugar’ of the end of her sentence for some reason.
    “Yeah I think your right, it’s one of those days”. She put a fist on her hip and pouted, nodding in agreement only to bound gracefully away a second later.
    “MILES!” I jerked back in surprise, was I staring at the waitress?
    “Yes you were staring at the waitress! I’ve been talking for at least 5 minutes kid.” My surprised, half a sleep expression must have given me away. “Were here talking about what you’re going to do about your ex, and your already eyeing up the next psycho! What is wrong with you?” she said it with love… I think. She’d narrowed her eyes and pitched here eyebrows up when she said it, still fighting the laughter in her voice and off of her expression back. I smiled back before letting my head hit the table “I don’t even, oww, know anymore”
    “Did the pain only just register?”
    “Yah…”
    It’s good to have helpful friends. I’d get one, but I think I’m doing alright with the ones I have at the moment.