“I don’t have any chips. Bugger off you beady eyed bastard.”
The one skill every Brightonian must learn is how to speak the language of the huge, aggressive seagulls here.
I swallow roughly, getting up from the bench and walking across the crunchy pebble beach towards the rough chop of waves, crashing and retreating against the shore.
The fucking seagull follows me.
It’s just as well as the rest of the beach is quiet this fine Monday morning, because other than a man in speedos warming up for a swim I’m alone and on the verge of tears.
I’m tired of fighting my emotions. Something about knowing he’s thought about me since yesterday has me welling up, my cheeks becoming damp. I use my long sleeves to dry them, but it just gets worse.
Ok, this is fine.
It’s ok.
I can cry about him a little. I’m probably in shock and feeling overwhelmed by the sudden goodbye and also the potential implication of this money in my account. Is this it, then? Is this some sort of payment for my company? Does it not mean anything more to him than that?
No.
Of course not.
In the end, it was my decision not to pursue this. And he never hid his plan to pay me back in an obscene way.
Besides, it’s the right decision. I could never make it work with a popstar. Honestly at this point, I’m wondering if I could make it work with anyone. I throw my head back and stare at the sky, the sun bright in the middle of the day.
I made the right decision.
I did.
Time will prove that to me. I’ll never forget what we had, but I’ll move on. And if not, I’ll just keep telling myself that until I believe it.
Thirty-Three
What I never considered, as the weeks fly past, is that Gus would be hard to escape.
I guess, before, I barely knew of Just4Summer. Sure, I heard them on the radio. It just didn’t register like it does now. I didn’t become weak at the knees, have sudden breathlessness, and experience heated visions replaying in my mind.
Now, I see himeverywhere.
My social media algorithm is bombarding me with J4S clips and slow, horny edits of the man I’m still having to fight out of my dreams.
It’s cruel.
The world is a cruel place.
But it’s not just that. Whenever something popular comes to an end, unfortunately often a celebrity death but this time the breakup of the band, the world wants to consume that thing in bulk. So everywhere I go now, whether the shopping centre, the supermarket, even at work, I hear his music, pretending I’m not hyper focussing on his solos. I know all the bloody lyrics to their popular hits at this point.
I’m basically a super fan. I’ve been recruited.
I mustneverlet my sisters find out.
He’s even on TV. The usual news cycles ignore actual worldwide catastrophes and issues, to instead air J4S’s breakup conference, where they’ve forced the three remaining boyband members into a room with microphones. It hardly seems worth it either. They clearly have nothing to say to each other, the spark in their eyes extinguished. They answer the questions with short and quippy responses without any emotion behind them.
I pause on a closeup of Gus.
It was just a fling, right?
Those moments we shared. The way fate forced us together. It was just a fluke.
