2 min read
PART ONE: PHONE BOX
I hadn’t been out of home long when I met Jenny. She stood out: five foot nothing in army boots, swilling cider out of a two litre plastic bottle in my friend’s living room. She was a writer for one of the street papers and it made her witty. Every time she said something, it came out just right, like a friendly jab, always a little joke or spin to it, just like one of her record reviews.
That first night, Jenny gave her number to my roommate, this pothead. He already had a girl, so he put the number on the fridge under a Batman magnet for safe keeping. Saw it there every day. After a couple of weeks, I was still thinking about her.
Then late one night, after a few drinks, I decided to go down to the phone box on the corner and explain myself and ask her out.
She said yes.
That was the start.
PART TWO: RESTAURANT
Jenny dumped me in a nice restaurant in Edinburgh a few years later. The waiter had just brought out bread rolls and I’d just mentioned how warm they were, when Jenny put her arm across the table and said, ‘Pete, I want to break up.’
She’d been working in London. She had new clothes and a gym membership.
I don’t know why but I said, ‘Are you going to move out?’
She looked angry, like she was about to say something mean. ‘Yes. Yes, I am.’
I got up and went to the bathroom and locked myself in one of the cubicles.
After a while she came in after me.
‘Pete?’
‘I think it’s better if that’s it,’ I said. ‘You just go. I’ll stay with my Dad till the end of the month, and then I’ll go back. I don’t think we should talk any more.’
‘But Pete…’
She knocked on the door and it rattled, loose on its hinges.
‘No,’ I said and she went back out.
I waited and waited.
That’s how it ended.
END
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— IAIN
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