9 posts tagged “theo”

While Elle (who was quite pissed about the me-and-Theo thing... and the fact that her gorgy boyfriend just CAME OUT) and Bert (who was being quite nice about the whole me-being-preggers things... and the it-might-be-Tom's-or-Bert's thing) waited in the kitchen, I squatted awkwardly with the pregnancy test between my legs, yet again. This time, my bladder was full, as I'd just downed two litres of orange juice.

Never thought orange juice would be so awful to drink without vodka in it...

I leaned against the bathroom wall while the plastic, pee-covered stick did whatever it is that pregnancy tests do. I was reminded of that American movie with the teenage girl who got pregnant after having sex just once.

Poor thing. Can't believe she didn't win the Oscar for that movie.

After two and a half minutes, I slowly approached the counter and looked down at the stick. One blue stripe stared back at me, mocking me. I immediately burst into tears.

Elle peered in. "So?!"

"I'VE GOT A BLUE STRRI-I-IIIIPE!!!" I wailed. I sunk down to the floor and sobbed into the top of my knees. "This can't be happening!! I'm not ready to be a mum! I've got my whole life ahead of me!! What am I going to do?!?"

Bert pushed the door open and saw me on the floor. He frowned. "What if we got married?"

I stared at him, my vision blurry from the tears. "Wot?"

"Elle said that Tom wouldn't be..." He hesitated. "...the good dad. And who knows, it's quite possible that it's mine, you know." He shrugged. "I mean, we did shag..." He swallowed, a shadow of fear passing quickly over his face. "What if... I married... you?"

I almost considered it. Good GOD, I almost considered it.

Elle plucked the pregger-ancy test from the garbage and read the back. "Two blue stripes means you're pregnant. One stripe means you're not." She looked down at me. "Stop crying. No need to marry Bert this time."

I have never been so relieved over anything in my life. I just looked at Bert and smiled. "Let's not shag again, alright?"

Bert grinned. I think he was more relieved than I was. "Agreed."

I celebrated that evening by getting pissed at the pub with Elle, Bert, Manny, Fran and Bernard. Elle, fresh from her recent break-up, was back to being uncomfortably chummy with Bernard. I was happy to see Manny flirting with the waitress (who seemed quite uninterested and repulsed by his drunken advances). I've been told a few times that it can be quite hard to get over me, but I was glad to see that he was on his way.

Bert was still feeling a little awkward about what had happened earlier and he made an early exit. He said something about going to some comedy thing later and meeting some friends.

As for Fran, she was pissed before we even got to the pub. She ended up snoring away, her head down on the table for most of the evening.

I called Tom from the pub. I told him about my pregnancy scare and told him that there was no baby in sight. He picked me up in his car and we had a celebratory shag in the back seat.

Life without a bun in the oven is quite nice, really.  

What a right mess.

Before Bert shared his doubts about their…romp…, I hadn’t even considered the information he had just presented.

“The baby’s not Tom’s, is it?!” I asked, slightly astounded.  Elise gave me a distressed look, before she pushed Bert out of her way and ran up the street.  “Elise!” I ran to the door and out onto the street, shouting after her.  It was useless.  There wasn’t even any point in running after her.  She was probably half-way to Russell Square already; she didn’t win every track meet she’d ever been to for nothing. 

I heard a strange gurgling sound behind before I remembered that Bert was there.  I whirled around to face him…well his chest anyways.  I looked up at his face and pointed an accusing finger at him.

“This is all your doing, you…you promiscuous tranny!” I blamed him.  I stomped away from him, but stopped myself.   I turned back around to say something, but Bert’s face was completely blank.  I waited for a few seconds before I tried to get his attention.

“Bert?” I ventured, stepping slowly towards him.

“Is she really pregnant?” he asked me suddenly.  He sounded concerned.

“I dunno,” I replied, sighing.  “She hasn’t taken the test thing yet.”

“Oh,” he replied softly.  Seconds later he asked, “So we don’t know for sure if it’s…it’s mine…or…?”

“No,” I replied, trying to understand what Bert was thinking.

“Even if it’s…his…,” Bert started.

“If there even is an ‘it’,” I pointed out.

“Yes, if there is…a baby…he wouldn’t stay round, would he?”

“He’d probably be on the first ship to Amsterdam,” I replied.  Bert nodded.  He rubbed the back of his head in thought.

“I’m…I’m gonna go see if I can find her,” he said quietly.  I nodded, unable to think of anything else to say.  Just as he headed out the door, I thought of something.

“Bert!” I called.  He stepped back inside. I ran for her coat and handed to him.  “Could you tell her…tell her I’m not mad or anything?  I’m just…you know…worried about her?”  He nodded, taking the coat and holding to his chest.  “I just wanna be there for her, that’s all.”  Bert left quietly and I was left with the empty, cold and dark shop.

Then it was “later” and Theo came round.

“Hey Elle,” he called, coming into the shop, just as I was clearing up the remnants of this afternoon.  I hid the Clear Blue boxes as quickly as I could, without him noticing.

“Look Theo, I’m not really in the mood for going out tonight…” I started.

“Ah…that’s alright,” he replied, hunching his shoulders.  “I wanted to talk to you about…something, anyways.”  The hesitation in his voice caught me off-guard. 

I sighed. 

The end was coming soon.

“Yes?” I prompted.

“Maybe you should stay away from the cutlery…,” he chuckled nervously.  My stomach felt sour, knowing what was coming and my throat felt thick.  I just looked at him, feeling the blood draining from my face.  “I…ah…don’t really know how to say this…but…and I feel really terrible about it…” he babbled, words streaming out of his mouth in disorderly confusion.

“But what?” I managed to say.

“Well…you were right about me,” he sighed heavily.  I blinked. 

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

“Are you sure?” I asked, realizing milliseconds too late how stupid I sounded.

“Sort of?” he replied, shrugging.

“Sort of?  How can you be “sort of” sure that you’re gay?” I demanded, trying to keep my voice level.

“I…I dunno.  Simon and Julian told me to make sure that I was absolutely positive about being gay…so…so they prompted me to get a girlfriend,” he explained, staring at the ground.

“And so you led me to believe that you were straight as an arrow and lied to me point-blanc when I asked you if you were?!”  I couldn’t believe it.  I could not bloody well believe it.

“I didn’t know how you’d take it…”

“I was ready to except it if you had of said yes!  But then you lied to me!  And I even had sex with you!!” I exclaimed, throwing my arms in the air.  I tried to calm myself down.  Pinching the bridge of my nose, with my eyes closed, I said quietly to him, “Maybe you should leave.”

“Yeah,” he shuffled to the doorway.  Before he left, he turned around.  “I’m sorry,” he said quietly, before slipping out the door.

“And so is the fucking Pope for being Catholic!” I yelled at the closing door. 

I screamed some more, before grabbing my coat and heading to the door.  Maybe I could jump off a bridge.  No, no.  Too drastic.  That’s it!  I’m giving up men and sex!  I’ve had it!  I fumed as I slammed the shop door shut.  I began marching up the street not noticing that someone was approaching me.  It was Bernard.

“Where you goin’?” he asked, staring at the sidewalk as he walked next to me.

“Pub,” I grunted.

“Can I come?”

“I don’t care.”

What a horrible, wretched day.

After I walked in on Bert and Elise in their couch of love (which I’m never, ever sitting on again), I started screaming.  It must have been a reflex.  At least I didn’t throw up. 

Bert and Elise seemed to be quite beside themselves.  Elise pushed Bert off the couch, while she was screaming.  He fell, completely starkers, onto the floor.  He tried to be quite casual about it.  I guess I kind of guess stared.   But then two days of drinking caught up with me.

I bolted upstairs and hurtled into the loo.

Two hours later, I was surprised I wasn’t dead.

I felt like I had thrown up most of my vital organs. 

I struggled to get up from the floor, using the toilet to boost myself up.  Then I wobbled downstairs to get the awful taste out of my mouth.

I was having a long, cold drink of water, when I turned away from the counter, to see Auntie Madge’s couch, with the blankets still strewn everywhere, making me remember what I had seen this morning and I gagged on my water.

I wobbled out into the shop, shielding my eyes from what little amount of sunlight shone through the windows.  Elise and Bert were no where to be seen and I could feel a headache building.

Like sodding hell I was opening the shop today. 

I went to pull my sunglasses out of the desk drawer, but they weren’t there.  Just a mouldy sandwich, half-eaten chocolate bar and…a full package of rubber johnny’s.  My stomach began churning again as I slammed the drawer closed.

Maybe Elise has them, I thought, getting up.  I stumbled back into the kitchen and nearly did a face plant into her door when I stopped short.  She was talking on the phone to someone.  I’m not completely sure what I was thinking when I did it, but I grabbed a cup off the table and stuck it against the door, and my ear against it.

“Tom,” she was saying, “we have to talk…”  She’s breaking up with him?!  ‘Bout bleeding time.  “I think I might be pregnant.”

I dropped the cup on my foot in surprise.  My stomach began heaving again, but there was nothing to come up.

I was surprised.  But…at the same time I was surprised that I was surprised.  I mean it is Elise, after all.  The way she spends her free time was bound to have this kind of outcome.

I threw Elise’s door open.

“You’re WOT?” I exclaimed.  She turned around on her bed, still holding the phone, to glare at me.  She muttered something into the phone and slammed it down.

“Extremely pretty?” she prompted.  I stumbled down the stairs to reach the foot of her bed.

“Are you?” I asked.

“Of course I am,” she said, frowning.

“No, you know…pregnant?”

“Well, no…I dunno, it’s a possibility,” she replied carelessly.

“You just told Tom…”

“I tell Tom a lot of things,” she said pointedly.

“Yes, but…c’mon,” I said, dragging her off the bed and into the shop.

 A quarter hour and 50 complaints later, we headed back to the shop with at least 10 Clear Blue pee sticks and five bottles of iced tea and Fanta.  When we got back in I had to force Elise to start drinking at least half of one bottle.

Then the phone rang.

It was Theo.

“Hey luv…can we get together later?  I wanna talk to you about something.”

“Ah, yeh, sure…,” I replied, watching Elise expertly down an entire bottle of Fanta as soon as I moved away from her.

“Say seven?”

“Yeah, sounds gear.  I gotta go, Theo.”

“Right.  Later then?”

“Yes!” 

Elise was pulling the thing out of the box when I hung up.  She made a face.

“It looks like a thermometer,” she commented, holding it at different angles.  I pushed her towards the stairs.

“Just go piss on it, Mother Duck!”

Erlack.

Valentine’s Day.

The one day I generally try to hide away from.  Blokes scrambling to buy presents and cards and chocolates and go out their way to do a whole bunch of useless “romantic” things that involve fancy food and flowers.  Rubbish the whole thing, I say.

But of course, that was before I had a Valentine’s Day with Theo. 

He was unbelievably quite good about the entire thing. 

When he came to pick me up, Elise and I were nursing the worst hangovers known to man.  He brought me a rose.  And my wall of anti-Valentine’s crumbled and exploded at the same time.  This was the first time Elise had met Theo and she was all over him (well not really, but I could tell she wanted to be) and was green with envy.

Anyroad, Theo and I were going back to his place to cook something “together” (meaning he gets me to get things and he cooks).  He really is quite bonkers for cooking.  I suppose it could have something to do with the fact that he is attending a culinary college.  We were having a grand old time.

And then he pulled out the cooking sherry.  I had already had a glass (or two) of some really vintage (and expensive) wine.  Needless to say, I began drinking the sherry too.  Soon enough, we had turned our “romantic” evening into a Julia Childs cooking show; we had got pretty pissed on sherry and wine.  And then the onslaught of sloppy drunken kisses came on.

And more wine.  And more kisses. 

And then I don’t remember much afterwards. 

But I could pretty well guess after I woke up next to him in his bed, with two gays standing at the end of the bed, going “ooooooer” and holding trays of food.

I wish somebody had of told me that gays were pervs, too.

After being extremely embarrassed and having brekkie in bed (in the nuddy pants) with Theo, I left as soon as I had the chance.  And by that, I mean after we had a post-breakfast… shag.  Good God, I sound like Elise. 

At least until Theo realized he had to go to work.  He kissed me on the cheek before dashing off, hopping into his trousers.  So his roomies (Simon and Julian, respectively) took me home in the “Homobile” (as they have dubbed it).  They promised to have Theo call me when he got home and also apologized for this morning.  I accepted their apology.  How could you possibly stay mad at those two for long?  They’re regular couple of jokers (and not dating, strictly friends).

Anyways, after waving them off, I found that the front door of the shop was left unlocked, but the sidewalk sign wasn’t out and lights weren’t on.  I opened the door to find the shop to be a minefield of wine bottles and clothing.  I tip-toed carefully over everything, trying not to fall on my face into a puddle of wine or knickers, to reach the kitchen.  When I got to the doorway, I was quite surprised to see what I did.  It wasn’t at all what I had expected.

Elise and Bert were lying under a blanket on Auntie Madge’s couch.  Naked.

My breakfast didn’t stay down long.

Well, this day started off fabulously. I woke up with the worst hangover I've ever had- thanks for that Elle. And then I realized that it was sodding Valentine's Day. It's lovely when you've got someone but it's shit when you don't.

Last year, Mark and I went on the London Eye and had dinner at a romantic restaurant and got champagne and shagged about thirty thousand times.

I called Tom, just to see if he wanted to get together, but he says he's got a date with some trollop he met online. I bet she's fat. Fat and ugly. And I hope she's rubbish in bed. Or, better yet, I hope Tom suddenly becomes "unable" and she laughs at him.

Ah, yes. That would be fab.

Well, sod it. Sod this whole day.

Elle is off with Theo tonight. God, he really is quite cool. And pleasant. And polite. And charming. And sodding gorgeous. I still have yet to figure out what he sees in her... and not in me.

I found Bert in the kitchen, slowly sipping at a bottle of cheap wine. I ruffled his hair.

"I thought you had some gig tonight," I said. "Some anti-Valentine's Day poetry thing."

Bert glanced at me and scowled. "It got cancelled. The MC got a date at the last minute." He bleched. "The fucking nob."

I sat down across from him and held his hand. "Oh, Bert. I'm sorry. I know you were really looking forward to it." I smiled weakly. "You were going to borrow my nicest outfit and everything for it."

Bert sighed loudly, his shoulders dropped. "Plus, you know... Elle's out with Theo tonight." He looked at me. "He's such a prat, i'n't he?"

I nodded. "Yes." No, not really. "He certainly is."

Bert finished off that bottle and pulled another one out of a paper bag. "Here. Drink up. If I'm going to have a shit Valentine's, I might as well be pissed."

So, Bert and I drank several bottles of wine, laughed, watched a little telly... and then ran out of wine. So, naturally, we stumbled out of the shop, hunting for more wine.

"That'll be twenty pounds please," said the liquor store clerk with a raised eyebrow.

I laughed and looked at Bert. "Fuck. I don't have any money."

Bert waved a hand at me and slapped twenty quid on the counter. "Keep d'change, eh? You're a good man s'ya can keep d'change!"

"Er, thanks."

So, we stumbled back to the shop, which we had accidently left unlocked- oh well. We drank a couple more bottles of wine and fell onto the floor in front of Elle's desk after dancing around to music on the radio.

"I could be a singa!" I exclaimed, bottle in hand. "See? Watch." I sang into the wine bottle like a microphone. "So, if you're lonely, you know I'll be here wai'in for you! I'm just a crosshair! I'm just a shot away from you!"

"You know," Bert said, interrupting my jam session. "You're actually quite pretty! And sometimes I feel so bad, Elle treats you like rubbish sometimes and you don't deserve it."

"I know I won't be leaving here... wiiiiiith yoooooou!!"

Bert stumbled over to me. "I'm gon' kiss you, zat alright?"

And then he did. And it was actually kind of nice... well, nice for being a drunken kiss. Not too sloppy or dribbly.

Everything after that is a bit of a blur, unfortunately. I do remember that there was some removal of clothing... and I sang some more, but I was in my knickers... and then there something about looking for something and then giving up.

Oh, my God. I know what we were looking for before we just said "to tell with it". Oh, my God.

We were looking for a condom.

Oh, shit. 

Elise has quite the imagination.

 After being all huffy-like with me for calling her “Shagapatra,” she started telling the most unbelievable lies.

“You’ll never guess who was at that meeting!” she exclaimed, breaking our peaceable silence.

“Who?” I asked, amusing her.

“Jude Law!  He was there going on and on about his children’s nanny.  He’s like some kind of perverted Nanny-nymphomaniac,” she rambled. 

“Elise, if you kept telling porkies like that, we’ll be able to roast them on spits and live off them for the rest of our lives,” I replied.  And who the sodding hell is Jude Law?  But she wasn’t paying attention to me.  Again.

“And…and there was a dirty old vicar there!  I told you, didn’t I?!”

When we got back, the shop was locked and Bert was nowhere to be seen.  Once again, we were forced to break and enter our own shop.

“We really should think about getting a spare set of keys,” said Elise as she opened the door, after climbing in the window.  I pushed past her and, because Karma is a cold, hard bitch, I tripped over a box of books.  But not just any books, it was that Blue Sands book that I asked Bert to put out earlier today.

“Bleeding tranny,” I muttered, picking up a few of the books.  “What’s the point?  Bert’ll lose them and you give them away at some swinger key party.”  Elise looked thoughtful.

“Do they still have those?” she asked.

“You don’t, you’re on the road to recovery.”  She rolled her eyes at me as she picked something off the table.

“Oh look, Bert left us a note.”

“And what’s it say?” I asked, throwing the books into the shop from the kitchen.

“It reads, Dear Elle, I love you.  Let Elise shag your boyfriend and run away to join the circus with me – watch it!”  I threw one of the sodding books at her. 

“What does it really say?”

“It says he’s over at Bernard’s with Manny.”

“Wot?!”   

We ran across the street to make sure Bert hadn’t crossed over to the dark side.  But he hadn’t.  Manny and Bert both looked quite excited to see both of us.

“You have to hear this, it’s brilliant!” Bert exclaimed, as he pushed us into the couch.  Manny was sitting at Fran’s piano smiling like a child.  I was about ask something but forgot completely when Manny began playing.  It was… well, it was quite brilliant.  The kind of thing you hear in concert halls.

The next day, I went round to Theo’s to tell him all about it.  He was quite interested in it, but then he started asking about Bernard again.  Bert had said something about Theo and these questions the other day.  Bert decided that Theo could possibly be another Ben.

“Why are you always on about Bernard?” The words exploded from my mouth.  Theo looked up from where he was chopping vegetables.  He looked surprised actually.  Then he started smiling.  “Wot?  What is it?” I demanded.

“You,” he chuckled.  I didn’t think I was being funny.  “You’re actually forming full sentences.”

“Wot?!”

“And you think I’m gay.”  I was a little surprised that he worked it out that fast.

“Wot?  No I don’t,” I said, trying to pretend not to know what he was talking about.  “Well, why do you keep asking about him?”

“Because you keep talking about him; and it doesn’t help to know the enemy, he replied, tossing things into a pot.

“Enemy?  Wot on earth are you talking about?” I exclaimed.  Theo went on to explain that if I talked about Bernard so much, he could possibly be competition.  As if.  When I got home later on, I ran into Bernard and that tart from the café.  And Bert and Manny as they were headed off to the pub.  They’ve been quite chummy lately.

So I spent the night playing drinking games with Lady Shagalot.

“Oh, oh, you’ll never guess who I ran into outside,” I said, as Elise downed her 20^th shot of tequila.

“The mole people, coming up from the sewers,” she replied.

“No, no…I saw them outside of the Tesco,” I said before downing two shots of rum because I mentioned a supermarche.  “I saw Bernard’s new girlfriend.”  Elise became suddenly interested.

“And wot’s she like?”

“Oh, oh you know the type.  The clingy wet kind, and they’re all “Oh, hello, hi” and hanging off of some bloke’s arm being wet and drippy.”

“Mmmhmm.”

“Whatever, s’not like I actually care.”

“Mmmhmm.”

“Stop that.”

“Mmmhmm.”

“Who’s that person you said was at your meeting…oh that bloke who was in that Michael Caine remake…?”

“Jude Law.”

“And that’s five shots of whiskey for you,” I said, ending the endless string of mmmhmm’s and making Elise look sick. She hates whiskey. That’ll teach her.

It’s quite terrible when you play a drinking game with rules that change constantly.  Gran and her mad old friends taught us how to play, which, in a way, really isn’t playing at all.

Bernard is living in Jealous City!

I don't know why he's got his knickers all in a knot.  It's my life, so I'll do what I please.

And Theo quite pleases me, hahaHA!

The world seems to have gone topsy-turvy:  Nifty Gifty is bankrupt, Manny's keeping his distance, Fran has loads of money, Bert's cheering up a bit, Bernard's being more ridiculous than usual and all Elise does is complain and smoke a lot lately.  And I have a boyfriend!  Who cooks!  Instead of going to over-priced, funny smelling restaurants, he cooks for me at his flat! (His flatmates are interesting...I'm pretty sure even Bert would call them poofs).

Speaking of Bert, he keeps promising to tell us what his *big* secret is.  Bloody hell, I hope he's not pregnant.  And I wish Elise would get about and do something, instead of scowling all the time.  Just because I made her go to one little SAA meeting.  "But'll be run by some dirty old vicar or something, you'll see!" she kept yelling at me.

As if.

Theo says he had to take one his mates to one of those meetings and that it really helped him.  Theo so...grand.  And fabulous.  And everything else that's mushy and goopy and wonderful.  I knew if I waited long enough the right bloke would come round for me.

He's a little strange though.  Everytime I mention the shop, he asks me something about Bernard.  It's like he has a crush on him or something, ahahaha...wait.  Nah.  It's not possible.

Bernard's raving mad anyways.  And so is Fran.  Why on earth would someone buy a grand piano, stow it in the dingiest bookshop in all of London and pay some crazy old, blind Russian to teach you to play just because they think they should have talent because they like music and have lots of CD's.  Tell me the logic behind that, would you? 

I took Elise to her first SAA meeting the other afternoon.  I had to walk her there to make sure she actually went and didn't bugger off somewhere and come home pretending she had gone, like the first seven times I tried.  Anyroad, after making sure she actually went in the building, I sauntered over to the cafe across the road to wait.  And guess who was there.  Bernard Black the Green One, and his sidekick, Chewbacca.

"Are you following me?" he yelled at me.

"Why would I want to do that?"

"I t'ink you are!"

"I think you're daft, but regardless of the situation, I think that anyway."  I sat down as far away from the raving Irish and Ming the Merciless as I could.  Bernard glared at me for at least a quarter hour.  And then he started hitting on (if you could call it that at all) some bookworm tart sitting in the corner, practically waiting for him to say something.  He did after tripping over himself with stupidity.  I got tired of the entire scene and left to go see if Elise was out yet.  But she wasn't.  I didn't feel much like going back into the cafe and the shops around didn't particularily interest me, so I watched the pigeons for a while. 

Pigeons are really bothersome.  And stupid.  So I chased them around the square, managing to kick a few in the process.  It was fairly productive. Haha.  Stupid, stupid pigeons.  Soon after Elise caming running down the stairs, full tilt into a prison break. 

"Alright there Shagapatra?"

I'm home! Home, at last!

...That reminds me. Why the bugger did I come home? Nobody 'round here thinks I'm fabulous 'er anythin'. 'Cept for Manny, of course. But from what Bert has told me, Elle took care of that mess quite rightly.

Right now, she's off with some Theo guy. Knowing her, she made the bloke up. Elle doesn't bloody go on dates. She sits with Bert, drinks, says mean things and reads... all the whole pretending she doesn't have a ting for Bernard Black. Oh, I know she does. She's practically the female version of that Irish coot. What could she possibly see in him- besides herself? Now, I'm sure there is some Froydian explaination for her attraction- but I'm too lazy to look it up.

Anyway, Machester was fab. When I wasn't drinking and dancing in all the gay clubs in the city, I was busy grooving with some fab footie players. I am not ashamed to say that I didn't shag the same person twice.

Ah, Manchester. Where a person's dreams can really come true.

Oh, and another thing: I couldn't help but notice that all my clothes are a little stretched out. I knew I should have taken everything with me. It's bad enough Bert uses my makeup all the time. Now my skirts don't even fit me!

Elle is in a rather funny mood. Apparently this Theo chap is quite attractive. But her mood turned sour as soon as I brought up the whole Manny thing.

"You are going back to SAA meetings!" she exclaimed, pointing her finger in my face.

"But I-I-I-I'm fine! Really! I can control myself!" I snapped. "I don't have an addiction anymore!"

"That's a lie," Elle stated, matter-of-factly. "Name the last 3 guys you shagged in Manchester."

"Fine," I said. "The last guy was named Mike Watt. He's an arms expert and is trying to join the army."

"That's one." Elle crossed her arms over her chest. "Two more."

"And the guy before Mike was... er... uh..."

"Right," Elle snapped. "Monday afternoon. You. SAA meeting- or I'll tell Manny what you had me do."

I narrowed my eyes at her. "You wouldn't."

"Oh, sister," she said, flatly. "I would." 

Tom came by, a few minutes after Elle left on her "date" and Bert left for... something. I'm not even sure where he went. Tom explained to me that he had accidently grabbed Elle's ass the other day, thinking it was me. He still doesn't seem to understand that I'm very annoyed with him.

To make my point as clear as possible, I didn't even kiss him as we shagged on top of Elle's desk.

Ahahahaha.

My life is uber-fab.  Fabbity fab.

I was just getting mad at Bert for dashing out, when the shop bell jingled. 

I stomped into the shop to kick whoever it was out.

“What do you wann…?” I stopped short.  There, standing in front of me had to have been the most gorgey bloke I have ever seen (in real life, not on the telly).  I was dazed, swaying back and forth when he spoke to me.

“Ah, hallo.  I was just wondering if you had any…are you okay?” he asked.  I must have looked like a drooling buffoon to him.

“We have lots of self-help books,” I said, without thinking.

He laughed.  At least he thought I was joking.  He has a nice laugh.

“No, I- are you really okay?” I nodded dumbly.  “Alright…I just popped into see if you had any Dickinson, before I had to ready myself to sally forth into the shop across the way.”  I laughed.  Not one of those phoney-girly laughs; I hope.  I showed him where they were after he asked me three more times.

He was thumbing through a rather old volume, when he asked me, “I suppose you don’t get much competition from him do you?”  I realized he was talking about Bernard.

“Ah, well, no…” I answered.

“He’s got a nasty streak, I’ve found.”

“So you’ve been over there before?”

“Several times, actually,” he replied smiling.  “I don’t know why I haven’t bothered coming over here before though.”  He smiled.  I felt all jelloid on the inside, with my head getting a little fuzzy.

“Okay,” I answered.

“How much for these?” he asked, thumping the palm of his hand on the stack of poetry books I managed to find him.  Or rather, he managed to find with me drooling all over the place.

“Free,” I murmured.  He looked at me funny.

“Are you sure?” he asked, uncertainly.

“Mmmmyeah.”

“How's about I give you twenty pounds and my number for the lot?” he asked, smiling. 

I smiled and replied, “Okay.”

“Maybe I’ll get your number instead.”

“Okay.”

We talked for a bit, while he wrote down his number on my hand and I tried to remember mine.  At least I found out his name before he left this time. 

His name is Theo. 

Hahaha.

Theo.

Oh, and Elise came home, too. 

Hahaha.