"A Day Date In The City: Part One"

A New Year brings new dreams, new hopes, new aspirations, and a new determination that only ever lasts until the end of January for most people. This year, I was determined to join the ‘dating game’, I had give up on relationships at some point last year when I realised I was scared of commitment, but hey, who isn’t, even if just a little.

So, a few days ago, a friend of a friend, who was now my friend, we’ll call her Peyton Dylan, told me she had a thing for me. Peyton was a year younger than me, but looked older than me. She had black hair and a pale shade of white face. I took a chance and asked her out on a ‘day-date’. She said she’d ask her boyfriend if that was ok, I was shocked, as was Mischa when I told her. He said he didn’t mind and we arranged to go to an Art Gallery where Andy Warhol’s work was currently showing.

My spies told me she was having trouble with her current boyfriend who had already cheated on her four months into there, so far, seven month relationship.

Although we had arranged what we were doing, no final date was set until the day before when she rang me.

“Hi Noah? This is Peyton.”

“Oh hello. What’s up?”

“I just had a diary check,” she said giggling, “and I'm free tomorrow if you still want to go on that date.”

“Yeah sure.” I said.“I found out that the Andy Warhol exhibition at the Biscuit Factory is only until January 6th so we should go while it’s still on.”

“Yeah, yeah, that sounds cool.” I had butterflies in my stomach already.

“Okay, so if we meet at the bus stop at school at around 10.30?”

“In the morning?”

“No, at night silly,” she said sarcastically.

“Ah ok. See you then Peyton.”

“Yeah, see you then.”

I hung up and looked in the mirror. Was I a step closer to committing myself to someone? It was an interesting thought.

The night before the ‘day-date’ I stayed up until 3am reading through old journals. The nostalgia of everything and realising how much I had changed made me less nervous. I thought to myself: right about now I could use an alcoholic drink and a cigarette. It was strange as I only smoked and drank at social occasions. 9:45am, the next day, I woke up. My alarm hadn’t gone off. “Shit!” I said to myself. My hair was being a bastard that day, she even commented on it when we were in a shop, comparing it to the Beatles-style hair.

At 10:30am I left the house. I was late. I sent her a text.“I’ll be literally three minutes.” I said, hoping I would be.

10:35am and I approached the bus stop and spotted her.

“Three minutes my ass. You’ve been five. But it’s ok, I like talking to strange old women.” She said jokingly, with a smile.

I replied with: “Five minutes? Sorry. I woke up late and had to shower and then, well, that’s it.”

We only waited two minutes and the bus came. We got on and we discussed how tired I was, how tired she was, how an apple and cup of tea can wake you up on a morning and how if I fall asleep would she wake me up.

All day I was scared in case the conversation ran out. Conversation did run out three quarters of the way there. I thought, shit. I started making up possible conversations in my head.

“I think it’s so fun listening to old women’s conversations,” she said, indicating to the two old women on the next platform who were talking to loud they might as well have been broadcasting it over a speaker.

“Yeah, I haven’t exactly done that before.” I said, sounding naïve as we climbed on to the Metro.

“Oh you should Noah, you can learn a lot. Last week I heard Dave was in hospital with a bad liver, apparently he’s an alcoholic!”

“Who’s Dave?”

“I have no idea.”

“Oh, so what you really like doing is listening to other peoples lives and their problems?” I said, joking slightly, but really meaning it over all.

“No! Well, ok, yes, maybe.” She said laughing.Conversation ran out again so I asked her which station we should get off at.

“Um…whichever one you want to.” She replied.

“Ok…Monument because that’s the closest to a Starbucks and we can walk to ‘The Biscuit Factory’ from there. I need coffee. I can’t function until 2pm without it.”

“I'm not a big coffee drinker. Bad Starbucks experience.” She said.

Bad Starbucks experience? How can that be? Starbucks is my ecstasy, and I can feel myself falling towards the addiction.

I collected my ‘grande mocha to take away’ and she told me: “Make sure I don’t buy any Dorothy shoes, now that’s my addiction.”

“Dorothy shoes? What are they?” I asked.

“Like the ones Dorothy wears in the Wizard of Oz.” She replied.

We made small talk all the way there, most of which was me asking, “are you sure you know where you’re going?” “How much longer will we be?” and “Can I see the Gallery from here?”

‘The Biscuit Factory’ was a quite new art gallery which held modern art as well as a lot of older art.

“I like seeing the more modern art, brighter colours, better patterns. I just love the modern art more.” I told her.

“You see, I like both types of art, and if I had to choose between the both, I couldn’t. I have my eye on Andy Warhol’s ‘Marilyn Monroe’ piece, £50,000 plus V.A.T.” She sighed. I could tell by this she loved art much more than me. “But, I just don’t have £50,000 plus to give away. I love it so much too. Maybe Christmas?” She said, giggling slightly.

I thought to myself: maybe she wasn’t the girl I thought she was. I then thought: I still have the rest of the day to find out.