Glitter in the Air - Chapter 1
Every time Ness was out of the house with Edward, I found myself restless, wandering around, not completely sure what to do with myself. As a direct result of the strained relationship I had with Edward for pretty much my entire pregnancy and the first year of our daughter’s life, I was used to my life revolving around her, as there wasn’t really anyone to help. So being alone, being a fairly new development was strange and my mind couldn’t cope well without the constant distraction of a toddler. So, it wandered just like I did.
If you had asked me when I was eighteen if I wanted children, I would’ve said: “Not if I can help it.” I was not one of the girls who would’ve sat around planning her future boyfriends, a proposal or a wedding, let alone a family. You’d be more likely to find me hanging out with the guys, throwing darts in a pub or hidden away somewhere with a book, the latter being the most likely choice. So if my eighteen year old self would see me now, she’d probably think I must’ve gone insane at some point. She wouldn’t really be wrong either.
All my sanity seemed to have gone out the window when I met Edward, or at least as soon as we went on our first date. Yes, the first one, though it must be said that we knew each other for quite some time before that. And we also flirted heavily for some time before that date. Our co-workers were probably singing praises when we finally did something about all the sexual tension between us.
We’d both worked nights at the time and I ended up being one of the very few females in the place, but it didn’t stop me from making friends. I’ve heard rumours about Edward before I met him and not everything was necessarily good. He was known to be a loner and while he did go out occasionally with the other guys there, I was warned not to take it personally if he was grumpy or closed off. And they were kind of right, at least at the start. The first few months, he barely said hello to me when we met and I tried hard not to take it to heart. But then, eventually, I couldn’t even pinpoint when exactly, we started talking to each other. There was one particular night when he was busier than usual, so the manager sent me off to Edward’s closed off workspace to help out.
“You can actually handle my sense of humour,” Edward stated after an hour or so when for every sarcastic remark, I shot him back another one straight away.
“Well, you’re not too bad yourself,” I laughed, “maybe you’ll learn to keep up with me.”
“Keep up with you?” he raised his eyebrow and smirked at me.
After that night, we started throwing mildly camouflaged insult at each other, both of us laughing at our colleagues’ puzzled faces. But we also talked. I’ve learnt about his girlfriend, Tanya, who had decided to move to Alaska for a year, because she always wanted to go. He learnt about my boyfriend Seth who transferred to New York for a year, for experience or whatever. Edward was there when that fell apart, though I wasn’t too heartbroken. At about the same time, he and Tanya started feeling the separation and cracks were showing. And I was the one he talked to. Eventually, we tried to figure out how to meet outside of work, as there were only so many things we could talk about while there, with curious ears all around. We’d finally found a Sunday night we both had off, but we only ended up texting the whole time, as I caught a cold and didn’t make it out of the house.
“Did you find your way out then?” I asked him after a message about him not finding any of our colleagues.
“Nah, I had a compass and everything, too!”
“Pity, maybe we need to fix your sense of direction ;)”
“Or buy me a new map :P”
“So, how was your weekend otherwise?” I asked, since we hadn’t talked since the Friday before.
“Oh, great, I worked, I slept, I was broken up with.”
My eyes ran over the message three times before I actually believed what I was seeing. It turned out that Tanya had met someone and not being single was killing her buzz or something to that effect. So again we talked and talked about it, and then… well, the only way to describe what happened was that it felt like someone flipped a switch and our banter turned into full on flirting.
“I can’t flirt!” I defended myself after he accused me of teasing him.
“Well for someone who can’t, you’re not doing a bad job ;)” Edward’s message put me in my place.
Over the next few weeks we’d continued to tease each other and eventually we progressed to flat out sexual innuendos over text messages. Soon enough, everyone around us noticed the little bubble we were in and I am still convinced I heard one of the guys mumble something in the lines of “will you two just fuck each other so the tension goes away?” which was probably the most tame reaction to the situation.
I did this quite often, replayed how the two of us met and how everything came to be the way it was, since I was stuck trying to figure out what went wrong and how I would’ve been able to fix it. Usually there was nothing to actually call a conclusion by the time Edward brought Nessie back, whether they were away for an hour or a whole night.
To prevent myself from over-thinking everything again, I decided that I needed a change of scenery. So, in an attempt to save my sanity, I picked the one thing that would always allow me to escape to a different place than I was: movies. I’d have picked up a book, but that was not an option, as my brain was already on overdrive and no book would hold my attention for too long.
“Hi Mike,” I greeted my friend as he picked up the phone, “what are you doing?”
Mike was one of the first few people I got to know when I moved here and we’ve been good friends ever since. We’ve done a spell of being friends with the occasional, generally alcohol-induced, benefit thrown in, but that was a while back and neither of us considered going there in a long time. Or so I thought, since I didn’t look at him that way anymore.
“Nothing much, waiting for Jess to pick up some of her stuff from the apartment,” was the reply I got.
Oh right, I almost forgot, Mike was single again.
“Fancy a movie?” I asked, “I have an evening to myself for once.”
“Sure, what do you want to see?”
“Well, it’s early and it’s kind of our thing, so…” I rambled on about the latest kids movie that was in the cinemas.
We’d done this before, Mike was my partner in crime for crashing kiddie movie screenings, being a bit of a child himself and catering to my Disney obsession. Back when we met, we clicked and have been friends ever since, though lately I found we began drifting apart. This was most likely simply due to the fact that I haven’t taken part in the usual drinking outings since Ness was born. A child’s enough work when you’re sober, never mind with a hangover from hell. I wasn’t going to prove it to myself, though and happily took other people’s word for the theory.
“Sure, I’ll meet you at the cinema, will I?” Mike agreed quite easily, which did and didn’t surprise me.
It didn’t, because that was what he usually did when I suggested we do something like this and it did, because I got used to him dating Jessica, a mutual friend of ours, who at the start of their relationship couldn’t stand me. To be fair, I wasn’t too fond of her back then either, because before I got to know her, I thought Mike could do better. Also, I was fed up with girlfriends of my buddies pushing me away because they thought I was a threat, which in the case of Mike was ridiculous.
The movie passed and we walked through town for a while, neither of us too eager to go back to our respective very empty apartments.
“We should do this again soon,” I laughed when the conversation veered towards our previous cinema visits.
“Yeah, if I get a decent schedule at work,” Mike rolled his eyes.
“Wait, isn’t Edward the one putting it together these days?” my mind sorted through the latest information.
“He is,” Mike looked at me, a laugh bubbling onto the surface, “I’m sure that would go down well if I asked.”
“Oh come on, all you have to do is say ‘Boss, would you mind giving me the day off and also babysitting Ness so I can take Bella out?’”
Both of us burst out in laughter at the picture of Edward’s face when confronted with this question.
Yeah, that would completely work… not.
Mike and I parted ways and I walked home wondering about the idea of actually making something like that happen. I’d missed the carefree feeling that usually came with hanging out with Mike, no expectations raised and no strings attached.