Sapphic Voices General Fiction

A Town Big Enough For Both Of Us

Chapter 1

This Story is rated 'Adults Only'.

Three months previously, my girlfriend had left me. She was reasonably pretty, I suppose. When I’d found the note explaining her six-month relationship with her boss, I’d not be telling the truth if I said it was a total shock. It’d be an untruth to say I’d actually been that bothered. I’d found her intriguing but predictable. She had been the kind of person you could stay with for years without consciously realising how miserable your life had become. Note the word could; I didn’t manage complete blissful ignorance. Jane had done little other than add friction to the last two years. We’d spent less and less time together towards the end and I’d barely noticed. If anything, she’d saved me a job.

Despite this, I still found myself feeling a little shell-shocked when she upped and left. I rushed out to the pub with a perfect excuse to blow another load of wages. I ended up horribly drunk and not particularly sorry that the semi-literate Jane had rocketed (or, rather, sauntered) out of my life.

“She was a minger anyway,” Miles had said, in his most soothing voice.

“Look, it’s ok,” I replied. “She’s gone, I’ve got more room in bed. Now she’s not here, I can come and see you guys without the bitchy remarks. Save me the sensitive treatment, it’s really ok.”

Miles was one of my favourite people. Born three weeks after me, almost exactly, he naturally tried to assume the role of big brother and always as effectively as this. He thought it his duty to spout his wisdom. I sometimes wished that his ‘duty’, when I did need it, was a little more helpful.

“Well, that’s another task to tick off for the day. Oh, did she take all her stuff? May have to go scavenge some CDs,” he said.

I raised an eyebrow. “Are you joking? Why on earth would you want any of that junk? At least I could blame that kind of comment on the trauma of my position.”

“If only you could blame your face on that, too.”

Miles received the compulsory kick to the shin. He may be funny, but, as a good friend, I thought it best to teach him the right and wrong way to speak to women. For his own good.

“Ok, ok… So I take it she hasn’t found any taste yet? I told you, Alice, you have to get them while they’re young and impressionable. It’s the only way to guarantee they’ll grow into strong-minded individuals such as ourselves. Get ‘em young, give ‘em a bit of an education, let ‘em back into the wild.”

“Sadly, it seems I lack your enthusiasm for pre-adolescents.”

“Come on, they’re nearly always sixteen these days,” he said, with a mock-serious expression.

I remembered Miles’ policy on women. “I was just trying to follow your advice: ‘Practice makes perfect…’”

“’Just remember to bear that in mind the next morning when you actually see what they look like.’ Yes, I know, it’s all for a good cause… Still, I find you hilarious.” Miles interrupted.

“And I find you a moron.” I said with a cheerful smile, picking up my bag and heading for the door.

“… Love you too,” his voiced trailed after me.

---

I was nineteen at the time and sharing a fairly miniscule house in a fairly miniscule town with Miles and another friend, Craig. My mother, being the lovely but old-fashioned woman that she’d always been, had been a little wary of me moving in with two chaps but warmed to the idea once we let her decorate the sitting room for us (the need to have everything of mine the way she wanted it was one of her many cute-yet-irritating features). The boys were quietly amused by her obsessive colour-coordinating and only objected to the occasional decision she made without prior consultation. If anything, we were all glad that we ended up with a rather grand room at minimal expense to ourselves.

I had spent a few months working in a bar quite close to the house and earning just about enough to enjoy such enriching activities as boozing and smoking. We spent many happy hours propping up the bar in our local, The Sun. We had been drinking there since the ripe old age of fifteen as had most of the clientele (as is wont in many rural communities), and so had a pretty solid social group in place. Miles and I disliked most of them but had realised long ago that those harmless yet stupid and socially inept fellows could actually be quite fun at times when no one else was around.

I was in this very pub with these very people for Craig’s girlfriend’s birthday one Saturday night. Marie, his girlfriend, had arrived in a huge gaggle of giggling girlies. Miles and Sarah, my other gay buddy in the town, had both (covertly) rolled their eyes. I had done the same. Little did I know that one of them was Jane, the girl I was to become totally obsessed with.

She stood out from the rest for various reasons. She was a redhead, for starters, and while the others had dolled themselves up to the eyeballs, she wore a pair of cords and a t shirt. She was taller than me, which wasn’t particularly surprising.

We started talking in the bathroom, and had bought each other drinks almost competitively all evening. Craig and his girlfriend, Marie, had noticed, they later told me, but were still more than slightly shocked when we went home together: Jane was, as far as they knew, nothing other than straight. How wrong they were… Miles and Craig had left their music blaring all night in objection to the noisy activities taking place in my bedroom.

Jane had started coming round every night after work. We did all the things I’d always wanted to do in a Grown Up Relationship, such as going for meals and days out in various National Trust parks, thanks to the membership I’d bought but not really put to much use previously. Before long we were a fully-fledged couple and living in each other’s pockets. I’d had girlfriends beforehand but now that I had my own place and I was reasonably adult, it was totally different.

I chose to ignore the fact that she’d had boyfriends. Jane never hid the fact that she was into men and I blocked any comments she made about them totally from my mind. It transpired that I’d taken to doing this with most of her negative personality traits, as well. I wonder exactly who I must have thought she was because when I think about her now, that’s all I remember.

---

Jane had pissed me off more than I’d realised. It wasn’t that my feelings were hurt, I just hadn’t really liked her that much yet it had been she that had dumped me! It was one of those purely Classic Alice situations and I couldn’t help but be peeved about it. Sod this, I thought, and pulled my phone from my pocket.

“Sarah? Yep, I don’t care, drop it. We’re going out tonight.”

---

I didn’t need to tell her why I wanted to go out. She had a pretty good idea how annoyed I was feeling and did her best to keep me in a good mood while she drove us to the club. I had managed to shake the irritation off and was making jokes about it, but dammit if I wasn’t going to have fun tonight. For god’s sake, I’d been faithful for the duration and I was the one that had been made to look silly. If I didn’t have principles, life would be so much easier.

I wasn’t really in the mood to make an effort. Saying that, my idea of ‘effort’ was to have a shower an hour before leaving the house. I was wearing my usual mish-mash of non-designer items and hadn’t even checked to see how my hair was. My usual mop required hours to even shove back into a ponytail without exploding every which way. I just felt tired and in need of beer and maybe a little loving. It had been months since I’d been allowed out with Sarah, despite my moralistic approach to relationships. Jane had never put any faith in me and I, like an idiot, had stayed in. I suppose I hadn’t cared enough to argue.

Under-Sub was quite large for its location. It had two dance floors and four bars, dancers and the best looking bar staff around. I loved the place. The first time I’d walked in I’d felt like I’d come home, and it always held a place in my heart. I think there’s something special about the first gay club you visit that doesn’t quite leave you, no matter how much of a dive it may be.

As soon as we arrived, Sarah spotted Julia, a friend of ours, and was off like a shot. I headed straight for the bar and ordered a large G&T.

Friday nights were usually fairly packed, and tonight was no exception. Sarah carried on with her usual disappearing act, occasionally turning up to make sure I was still vertical. I bummed around and found various spots in which I could stand back and pretend I was cool. I was sure I was cool, anyway. Miles said I was, but if he stripped me naked, painted me green and told me I was the height of fashion, I’d believe him. And that was just the kind of thing he’d do. He’d once convinced me that a shirt I’d bought was meant to have the stitching visible and let me wear it inside out for a week.

There were various places in which I’d always find a way to converse with some girl or another, and after supping a few drinks, I made my way off to the loo. Of course, there was a queue and I smiled inwardly to see a neat-looking girl right at the end where I was due to join. She wore a red fitted shirt and a thin, loose pair of trousers. Her head was covered in blonde curls that toppled from her scalp and seemed to bounce off her shoulders, and she wore very little (or very well-applied) makeup, even by my standards. Time to turn on the charm.

“Jesus Christ, I think I’ll wet myself in a second,” I said, hopping stupidly from foot to foot. Her reply was to smile nervously and turn away. Alice, I thought, I know you haven’t done this in a while but you’ve got to do better than that.

Later I found myself at one of the bars, which was mostly empty. I bought a drink from the one barmaid tending it, and Sarah appeared next to me.

“Hey, how goes?” She asked, sipping her Coke and eyeing any nearby girls, obviously making the most of her impromptu night out.

I lit a cigarette. “Not bad, not bad. Just getting back into the swing of things. Been a fair few months, eh? Nice not to have my girlfriend glaring at whoever looks my way. Not that anyone is doing.”

“Yeah,” she said, “I’ll drink to that.” Sarah swigged the last of her Coke and slammed it down on the counter as if she’d just swallowed a particularly harsh shot. “Ooh, gotta run. I’m in the process of falling in love with that girl over there. Best go ask her name. Or just pester her. You know how it works.”

I smiled as she sped off and turned back to the bar. I caught the eye of the barmaid who, as I mentioned, was one of a fairly gorgeous work force. The bar was still empty, and so she made her way over.

“Pretty quiet up here.”

“You’re not wrong,” I said, taking a drag on my cigarette. I kicked myself for having run out when she took a pouch of tobacco from her back pocket and started to roll one. She was making a fairly awful job of it and so, thinking it wasn’t too late to involve myself in the situation, I swiped it off her and did it myself, telling her how terrible she was at it. She thanked me for my help and promptly returned to the other end of the bar, far away from the mad roll-up woman, to smoke her cigarette, looking a little perturbed.

I got drunker and drunker, and by 1 am I was having trouble keeping my brain together. Sarah had been doing her rounds for about an hour, during which I had only spotted her once or twice. She was driving and therefore totally sober, and so I was glad that she stayed away; her soberness only made my head spin that little bit more. I was a mad-thing on the dance floor and probably of the highest amusement to those around me. I was enjoying my newfound freedom, despite not having pulled. Plenty of time for that in the future.

Unfortunately, I did end up pulling. She was far from the dream-girl I pictured taking home, and thank god I didn’t. I gave her my number anyway, and Sarah did nothing less than laugh at me during the drive back.

“Jesus, Alice…” she had said. “First day of freedom and you go and do something like that! You’ve got a lot of catching up to do, I know, but if that’s the best you can do…!”

I flopped my head back against the seat. “Yeah, yeah… I just hope she doesn’t call. At least she’ll feel good about herself for the next few days.”

If you have enjoyed Megan Slater's "A Town Big Enough For Both Of Us - Chapter 1", then please be certain to  Contact The Writer  and thank her for posting this Story.

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