Page 14 of Forever After Never

Chapter 17

Autumn

Me: So, after you left, guess who showed up at the diner?

Alice: Fuck off.

Alice: Are you kidding me? What happened?

Me: Quite a lot, considering that I only spoke to him for five minutes.

Alice: DUCKING HELL, why do I always miss the good stuff?

Alice: DUCK

Alice: DUCK

Alice: FUCK! When will predictive text finally learn that in the history of ever, nobody has ever meant DUCK when they’ve typed FUCK!

Me: He gave me his number.

Alice: OMG, finally!

Me: Then I deleted it.

Alice: You are a dick!

I round the corner as fast as I can without looking back. Jed is trotting along beside me.

What the hell was that encounter about?

I really felt as though we might have been getting somewhere, and he immediately returned to being a dick again. He can’t seem to help himself.

Why am I even giving him the time of day?

As I take my phone out of my pocket, I hit delete on his number.

I hover over the‘Are you sure you wish to delete this contact?’information on the screen and hit confirm because fuck that, and fuck him.

Chapter 18

Autumn

Iam so glad that Alice agreed to come out drinking with me. The last few weeks have been so bizarre. I desperately need to blow off some steam. Also – it doesn’t take much to convince Alice to go drinking.You can take the girls out of England, but you can’t take England out of the girls.

We are getting ready at my place with pre-drinks—dark rum for me, and Rosé wine for Alice. Alice is on her first –large– glass of wine. Condensation runs down the side of the glass. I prefer my drinks to burn my soul as they enter my body. I knock back my second rum of the evening and feel the burn at the back of my throat. It warms my insides from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. Luckily for me, I can handle my alcohol, as I don’t plan much on slowing down this evening.

Alice is fresh from the shower. Emerging from the ensuite, the door bangs open, and the steam in the bathroom billows after her through the door and into the bedroom. Ali immediatelypicks up her wine and almost drops it from the mix of her wet hands and the condensation on the glass.

“Hey! Watch my carpet! I’ll make you clean it up with a straw.” I laugh at her.

“Do you honestly think I would waste good wine on your carpet? Not a chance.”

She walks around the bedroom in her towel, a glass of wine in one hand, hair straighteners in the other. I love getting ready with Alice. It’s always so much fun and feels like the warmup before a marathon. We don’t get enough credit as women for how we are able to be wrapped in a towel, doing three things at once, and not exposing our tits to the world. It is a skill that most of us master.

Alice decides to wear a shorter-than-short black t-shirt dress and black ankle boots to match, showing off her perfect legs. Neither of us cares for wearing heels, one because we are tall, and two becausefuck that.

“Well,someoneis on the pull tonight!” I say, fanning my face. “You look hot, Ali.”

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