"A Little Older, A Little Wiser?"

My return from Barcelona brought some unwelcome questions that I hadn’t prepared answers for: What’s happening with you and Lyndsey? What’s happening with you and Jaime? What’s happening for your birthday?

My birthday was here and although I was a year older, I felt none the wiser when it came to women. Whilst sitting with Danny at breakfast one morning, I had a thought: what had I really learned about girls? That maybe I should turn gay. Well, maybe guys wouldn’t treat me as bad. Then again, although they treat me bad, and are confusing, I just can’t help but love the women.

“What have I really learnt in the past year about women?” I asked him.

He looked up from his bacon, eggs and baked beans, took a sip from his O.J. and said, “That you go for the cunts who treat you bad.” A woman with a child on the next table looked at him. “Fucking children.” He scowled at me.

“Well, I could have told you that. I honest to God think I'm no wiser than I was a year ago.”

A serious relationship, and several failed attempts at starting two serious relationships later; I was still getting burned by the girls I tried so hard not to get burned by. I had to think: was there any joy?

I looked at several of my friends. Samantha and Mark. Brooke and Brady. They had all managed to get into relationships, and find joy, and even love from them. How had they got it so right?

“Looking back,” I told Skye as I drove home from dinner with her, “every girl I’ve ever been with has been quite a bad experience.” Then I thought: maybe I had conditioned myself to not put myself out there fully and embrace the love that could be. “Ella was just a whole negative experience in itself. She was everything I wasn’t, and that just didn’t work for me. Jaime, well, she played me, and now she fucking wants me to go to lunch with her, just as ‘friends…or whatever.’ And Lyndsey, well, she blanked me on holiday.”

“Yeah, I can see where you’re coming from. But you can’t just give up. There’s someone out there Noah.” Ah, good old faithful Kayla: The eternal optimist. She’d found love at an early age, well, fifteen, and has been with him for the next four years. Her optimist was contagious.

“I guess so. But Jesus Christ why the stress?” I arrived at her house and told her I’d see her tomorrow. I was planning to be her guest, using her gym membership in a bid to lose weight and get fit for my move to Leeds. Maybe a toned, muscular Noah would attract new girls.

9am the next morning. “Hey. Lying on the beach getting a tan. Mwahaha. What the weather like there? Raining? What you up to? X” – It was Jaime. Didn’t she get I didn’t really want to talk to her? Maybe she didn’t get it because I actually did want to talk to her. I still liked her, but the Miguel situation still played on my mind.

Logging onto Facebook, which is pretty much the new MySpace, I saw Lyndsey’s status. Her summer was apparently over and she wasn’t happy about it.

“It’s probably because she missed out on your Summer Lovin’ Noah.” Danny texted me.

“Shut up! That’s just corny!” I closed my phone. The sun shone in my garden as I stood out there drinking a mug of coffee. I had a thought: maybe that’s all Lyndsey was – a summer romance that never was. But I had wanted so much for it to be, and it wasn’t. I knew I hadn’t tried hard enough.

So, the only thing I could figure out was that, although a little older, I certainly wasn’t a little wiser. Unanswered questions don’t bode well for a ‘wise Noah’.