‘Another Friday night alone,’ Alice sighed to herself. It wasn’t unusual. Ed was always dating, and Joseph had to work. Ed had invited Alice along on his night out with Carla—now his official girlfriend—but Alice didn’t want to feel like a third wheel.
It was pointless to go in and pester Joseph at work on a Friday too, he was always run off his feet. She would be left sitting at the bar like a sad, lonely singleton, waiting for some man to come and sweep her away. The only men that ever approached her were too old, too drunk or just too gross.
‘I have to have some standards,’ Alice thought. ‘Veeery basic standards.’
“A’ight?” Mike greeted the couple. He didn’t seem surprised to see Alice.It was weird, but Alice was starting to feel at home in Adam’s house. His family—the dog and the brother—both appeared to have accepted her.“What are you watching?” Adam asked him as he sat on the sofa and pulled Alice down to join him.“Some shit about revising sentences for violent offenders,” Mike explained. “This one guy, right, he used to be some proper gangster. Got nicked for stabbing someone to death and now he’s out and reformed.”
Alice woke up from a nightmare in the early hours of the morning. For a brief moment, she had zero recollection of her whereabouts and panicked as she looked about the strange, dimly lit room.Hearing a soft snore, she reached down to feel Adam, who mumbled something in his sleep and rolled over. Alice immediately felt better. The monster from her dream-world suddenly seemed a lot less scary with Adam by her side.It was always weird waking up to a foreign room, especially one so dark. The only light came from the streetlamp outside, filtering through a tiny gap beneath the blackout blind.Though she wouldn&rsqu
Alice jumped to the floor, doing a front flip with barrel roll before diving under the bed. She froze in position just as the door opened and the room filled with the sound of overlapping conversations. She could hear a female and male voice arguing—probably Zoe and Reece, as well as her brother giving a monologue about a guy called Zeke. Apparently, Zeke was overrated and not as ‘woke’ as he made out.“Maybe… you know… knock next time,” Adam scolded them. “I could have been doing anything in here.”“Oh, like what?” Reece joked. “Having another imaginary threesome with Freya and Andrea?”&nb
Alice stared out of the window, mesmerised by the raindrops that made their way down the glass. Two drops would veer into each other, become one giant blob before splashing to the floor.‘Sort of like people,’ Alice thought. Adam had been on her mind since the incident in his front yard. Seeing him fight—or rather—beat someone up had been eye-opening to say the least. She could tell herself it didn’t matter how he treated other people over and over, but somewhere deep inside herself, Alice knew it mattered.“Wake up,” Joseph said, poking her in the rips. “You need to get that beauty finished today, remember?”
Sitting in an English lesson, Alice pulled her art notes from her bag. She jotted away, pretending to be taking notes from the lecturer, hoping to finish at least the written portion of her art project by today—the deadline. Well… technically the deadline had been this morning.“Alice?” Miss Henbury interrupted Alice’s furious scribbling.“Yes?” Alice asked, hoping she wasn’t about to be scolded for working on her art project during an English lesson.“Mr Yates wants to see you,” Miss Henbury revealed. “He’s in room 23a.”
Alice sat at the bar, nursing her second pint. She tipped the glass, poured the last few sips of warm, flat beer down her throat and asked for another.“Are you sure?” Joseph frowned at her. “What’s up with you today?”“I feel like drowning my sorrows,” she said, giving him a weak smile.“Oh, babes, maybe it’s a good thing he found someone else. You said yourself he was violent—”“But he was nice to me,” Alice whined.
Joseph sped to Alice’s house as quickly as he could drive without drastically breaking the speed limit. After she never returned, he’d started to worry. Then one of Aleks buddies had mentioned her leaving with him.“Please be home,” Joseph muttered to himself. “I knew I shouldn’t have given you that third drink.”As Joseph got out of the car and half-ran, half-skipped up the path toward Alice’s front door, he caught a glimpse of something moving in the bushes. Stopping, he frowned and parted the shrubbery.“Erm… hello?” Joseph said.
Alice stared at her phone for what had to be a good twenty minutes before replying.She re-read the message from Adam:“Mine. Tonight. 9pm.”So cold. So uncaring.‘And why does he even want to see me?’Alice wondered.‘When he has a perfect new girlfriend to occupy his time?’Unsure how she should respond, or even if she s