Juggling
The next Saturday night (23 December lol), the girls and I were back at Friday’s for another night of Tha Boyz. I was again sober, still not in the mood to be drinking. In the car on the way from Miss Teacher’s place to Friday’s (it was just the two of us, we were meeting the others there), I said to her that I had to make sure to stay away from Olly, it just wouldn’t work and was only going to lead to frustration.
We had a ball dancing away as usual, and early in the night, Cutie came running through with a girlfriend of his, completely drunk. He’d gotten off work early and his cousins and brother had invited him out with them - they’d buy him drinks - so he came. He was giving them their money’s worth too lol. He went running back out to the smoking section and the girls and I kept dancing. Then as usual, we went for a wander that took us into the smoking section. Djembo Man and his crew weren’t there yet - I thought. Cutie came and grabbed me and started introducing me to all the guys he was out with - I finally got to meet one of his brothers awoo lol - and he kept introducing me as his “hot wife - isn’t she just so hot?! My wife is so hot and you guys are all just so jealous, she’s so hot!” And I kept telling him to shut up lol. His friends started hitting on me as Cutie stood with his arm around me, and all of a sudden I was quite claustrophobic standing in the middle of that little group lol. Cutie was having trouble standing up and I was a bit worried he was going to fall down the step he kept insisting to stand on. I had to hold his hand to accompany him to the toilet door and when he came back out he looked around in a panic to find me even though I was standing with the group in plain vision lol - I just wasn’t hovering outside the toilet door.
Miss Teacher came up to me and and said, “Oh by the way, I just saw Olly and he’s standing behind you and I told him that you don’t want to see him”. I was in shock. Why the hell would she say something like that?! Ok yes, she was drunk and I had said that I needed to stay away from him, but what she said to him was a bit different to that. Ugh. So I turned around to find Olly standing right behind me, with a strange look on his face - he looked hurt. Damn Miss Teacher! I smiled broadly and said “Hi!” He looked a little relieved that I didn’t walk away. We exchanged pleasantries, and then he got serious and said very quietly, “Are you ok?” I smiled again, nodded and said, “Yep! Are you ok?” He looked confused again and said “Yep”. Then Cutie came stumbling over - helping stay upright, I introduced him to Olly. I took Cutie a second to click who Olly was and then he said to me “Is that the Olly?” (thank goodness Olly was distracted by something else going on). I said yes and Cutie nodded with a smile and wandered off again. Olly and I looked at each other and we both said, “I think we need to have a little chat”. We sat on a couple of stools nearby and after he established that he was drunk and I was sober, we both agreed that we needed to probably not take whatever we’ve got any further, it just wouldn’t work. So he agreed, then hugged me. Then he tried to kiss me. I stopped him and said, “See, that wouldn’t be part of the stopping” lol. I said that maybe we needed to have that convo when we were both sober, but he insisted he was ok. And actually, when he’s drunk, he’s not too bad, he doesn’t go really wild. He kept saying that he thought I was a brilliant friend, a good friend, even though I kept saying that he hardly even knew me. We acknowledged that there’s a spark, but I said that maybe it was best if we just kept it as friends. I didn’t say anything about Environmentalist, but if I didn’t nip it in the bud then, it might have been mighty awkward when Environmentalist came up over New Year’s and we went to Friday’s (Environmentalist booked his flight to QLD straight after we had our conversation on the Wednesday night. It was an odd night that one).
He agreed, and hugged me again, ruffling my hair … again. A mate of his came over and said, “Nah mate, stay away from this guy, he’s bad news. And he’s gay.” Olly tried to shush him and get him to go away but old mate stayed. I took it as my cue to leave, I had to go find Miss Teacher, she’d smsd me. And I had to make sure Cutie was ok. As I stood up, old mate was still saying something about Olly being a great guy, but stay away (funny, Dreadlocks Jnr keeps telling me the same thing lol) and it prompted Olly to herd Old Mate away, and I overheard him saying, “Shut up man, we just had a chat”. Lol.
It was quite late in the night when I wandered back to the smoking section, saying goodbye to a very drunk Cutie. Olly was sitting on his own (which was strange because I’d seen him try to work his magic on a couple of other girls as I’d been wandering around that night) and he seemed very sombre. His friends were sitting at the table right next to him, but he wasn’t interacting with them at all. I was a bit worried about him, I’d never seen him look so despondent (you know, in all the weeks I’d known him :P) so at a certain point I broke away from the group and went over to say hi. I got him to muster up a smile, but it wasn’t very convincing, so I asked if he wanted me to leave him alone. He nodded, so I said “Ok”, patted him on the knee as I stood from my crouch and I walked away. A few minutes later I went looking for him again because I was ready to go home, and I thought I’d check if he needed or wanted a lift - he didn’t seem like he wanted to really be at Friday’s - but he was gone. He must have walked back to Djembo Man’s on his own. I felt bad, but I had no idea what was wrong, it wasn’t really my place to ask, we’re not that good friends! Miss Vegan said later that he had been very drunk, which I had realised, but I’d seen him very drunk before - this was definitely a mood shift. Out of my hands.