"The Return of Nush - Fate?"

A self-obsessed, new generation teenager, that I’ll call Jennifer, threw a party, uncharacteristically on a Monday night. It was a celebration that we’d completed our final ‘Winter Term’, in our final year of school. It was also to make sure our ‘Secret Santa’s’ didn’t get away without giving out their presents to their chosen friends. I luckily pulled Skye out of the hat. I bought her the debut Gwen Stefani record. She seemed please, not that I was too bothered. I received the Green Day record, ‘American Idiot’, from Tanya; I was there when she bought it so there was no surprise to be surprised with.

The party was dull, Aidan and I walked to the convenience store over the road, I bought Pepsi. I wasn’t in the mood for alcohol. We wandered back to Jennifer’s house and it was decided we would all play ‘spin the bottle’. It was boring and we soon moved on to an even more boring game of ‘truth or dare?’ By this point I thought I was going to fall asleep, and by 10pm, I’d made plans to jump into Skye and Aidan’s taxi.

The following morning Jason waked me at 11am. He wouldn’t stop phoning so eventually I had to answer.
“What?”

“Hi… are you alright?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. You woke me though.”

“Oh sorry,” I knew he didn’t mean it, “Anyway, I was wondering whether you, Madeline and Skye fancied doing something, um, not today, not tomorrow, not Wednesday or Thursday but Friday?”

“Um, I will, but I don’t think Skye can, Aidan and his family are taking her to a church to give presents to the homeless. Hey! Don’t laugh, I’m being serious.”

“Oh. I thought you were joking. What about Madeline? Do you think she will?”

“I’m not sure, maybe.”

“Okay, you phone Skye, just to check, and I’ll phone Madeline.”

“Right. Goodbye.” I hung up.

I told Madeline most of the details of the party, and Jason’s phone call, the next morning over the phone. She sounded glad that she wasn’t invited to these events and I was also informed Jason hadn’t phoned her. She told me she’d made a ‘mistake’ with Joe, once last night, and once this morning. She blamed it on the alcohol last night, thought she never made an excuse for this morning, not that I was expecting one. We made plans to do something and at 5pm, she knocked on my door and we stood at the bus stop. Like all the other times, a bus ride and metro ride later, we were standing in the line at Starbucks waiting for my ‘grande mocha’ and Madeline’s ‘tall mocha’. We stayed in Starbucks until closing time, which is a pretty early 6:30pm. While in Starbucks, Madeline told me about her dates with ‘Adam’ and Joe’s breakdown. Because of Joe’s breakdown, Madeline stopped dating ‘Adam’ because the guilt was too much for her to take.

“I phoned him last night,” she told me while sipping on her ‘tall mocha’ and looking around for any signs that indicate that she can’t smoke, “he pretended to be someone else. I suppose I deserve it for ignoring him for three weeks, but I needed to sort my own shit out.”

“What did he say?” I inquired.“He pretended to be someone called Alan from London. He’s from London anyway so he didn’t need to change his accent, but I knew it was him.”

I had a thought: was the only way to break up with someone pretending to be someone else until you get the hint?

She was pissed about it, although I would be too. A good job, a healthy wage, a “glamorous lifestyle”, as Madeline put it, and a BMW would be gone. “It’s more than what I had with Joe”

At 6:31pm we walked up to “The Gate”, an exclusive hot spot in the city, surrounded by clubs and bars, which is only three or four streets away from Starbucks. “The Gate” itself was made up of bars, restaurants and on the third, and final, floor, a cinema and “sky terrace”. Madeline and I made our way to the cinema and purchased our tickets for the 7:40pm showing of the movie, “Christmas with the Kranks”.

We waited, we waited even more and eventually, at 7:12pm, we got into the cinema. I bought Peanut M&M’s and we made our way through them.

After the movie, we made our way down to Central Station. I had to use the toilet under the bridge there and I’m sure the guy who came out before me was using drugs in there. I pissed. Thank God I’m a man so I didn’t have to sit down.

“Doesn’t the trip back always seem shorter compared to the trip there?” I said to Madeline.

“Yeah,” she replied.

“Wouldn’t it be so much better if this wasn’t the Metro, but it was in fact the Subway, in New York, and, we weren’t on our way home, we were on our way to our Manhattan studio apartments?”

She nodded, and smiled, I could tell it was forced but I didn’t care. I was too caught up in the fantasy of being on the Subway, in New York City, and going to my Manhattan studio apartment.

Picture this:One night later, I was lying in bed watching a rerun of “Sex and The City”. My phone signalled to me that I had a new text message. Nush. I wondered if my life was bound down to these text messages from her.

“Hi. Long time no speak. How are you? What have you been up to? Text me back, Nush x”

I had a thought: what if this was the girl I was meant to fall in love with?I decided to reply to her message.

“Yeah, long time no speak,” what she doesn’t know was I had been writing about her two nights before, “I’ve been up to nothing, how about you? Noah x”

Nine text messages, nine chances to ask her out on a date, and nine songs later on my iPod, Nush said she was going to bed. I told her to have sweet dreams.