Georgia turns to leave but Jimmy grabs her wrist.
“Georgie, wait, will ya? Talk to me.”
“No!” she spins back around as Jimmy stands, waving his hands at her in an attempt to calm her down, the other tables are looking. “What else is there to talk about, Jimmy? Nothing in your life has changed, has it? I got fat, had to push a baby with your massive fuckin’ head out of me and now I look after him whilst tryin’ to hold down a job. I couldn’t go to uni in England or Scotland or whatever I had in front of me. And all for one stupid one-time fling with you, which I don’t even fuckin’ remember, shows how good you were.”
Jimmy leads a hysteric Georgia out to the stairs for a slither of privacy, although her wails echo around the bar. At once, the other three girls have fished their drinks and migrated over.
“Squeeze up,” Steph brings a chair over from a vacant surrounding table to beside Chris, “that was a bit of a shit show, wasn’t it?”
The girls have clearly come over to divide the boys’ attention from the ongoing argument that can still be heard petering through from the stairs.
“Aye, you’re right,” Chris laughs, “wouldn’t wanna be Jimmy’s balls at the minute.”
The group decide to leave them to it and chat and laugh about old times. They had gone to different schools, but had met through mutual friends, house parties and nights out. They talk about the time Jase got so drunk he passed out and pissed himself on Abbie’s sofa, everyone laughing along apart from the two in question. They discuss their other friends, who’s riding who and who has gone where for uni or where they ended up working.
Out of their bigger friendship group, the only people to have stayed in Derry are the nine in this bar. Everyone else went to uni in Belfast or the mainland, Katie’s twin Decky even moved to Australia when he decided chemical engineering just wasn’t for him. Dave is just finishing a story about the time he caught Abbie getting down and dirty with his cousin Bobby when Chris recollects what night he’s talking about.
“That’s the first night I met Danielle,” he mutters, more to himself than to the table.
Steph turns her head in his direction, but if anyone else heard him they haven’t acknowledged it. As Dave bursts into laughter and points to Travis, about to delve into another embarrassing story, Steph whispers in his ear.
“Do you still think about her?”
Chris moves his mouth to the side, thinking how honest to be with his ex-girlfriend’s best friend.
“Everyday.”
Chapter Three:
2016
_____
Squinting against the light shining through her window, Danielle yawns. She forgot to close her blinds when she got home last night. She doesn’t remember a lot, but the curtains lying useless either side of her window tells her as much. She shifts around to get more comfortable and finds Chris lying beside her, topless and snoring. She has an urge to cuddle into him and try to drift back to sleep, but something stops her. A niggling feeling in her head. Did they have a fight? God knows they’ve been having plenty the past few months.
Deciding she won’t be able to get back to sleep just yet, what with the morning light, and the fact she needs to pee, she exhales frustratedly before stepping out of the bed and thrusting the curtains over the window. The sliding noise makes Chris snort and stir, so Danielle pads out of the room and down the hall towards the bathroom before he wakes. Sitting on the toilet, she rests her elbows on her knees and her pounding head in her hands, urging flashbacks of last night to both go away as well as reveal themselves. Is she in the wrong? Even if she isn’t, Chris sure as hell won’t admit it. Stubborn ballbag.
She remembers something about Katie’s living room. Bitching to Dave about how annoying Chris is, maybe? But, why would she go off into a rant like that? And to Chris’s best mate of all people? Not that Dave is a certified gossip, but that’s sure going to get back to Chris’s ears. Did he do something? Something about… Oh, shit. What happened? She flushes the toilet and falls over to the sink, giving herself a look of disgust once she sees her dishevelled hair and smudged makeup from hours of crying, no doubt. Stepping out of the bathroom, she closes the door behind her and that’s when the memory floods back.
She was standing in Katie’s kitchen. They all were. Pinning shots of Cactus Jacks and playing beer pong. Jase’s idea, as usual. Even if they’re heading out to town, Jase will still land to pre-drinks with 20 red cups and a packet of ping-pong balls from the pound shop around the corner from his work. The boy is too obsessed with American teen programmes and parties. Does he not know that at any other house party in Derry, you bring a carryout and stand in the kitchen talking. Maybe boke on the backdoor step and ride someone in the host’s little brother or sister’s bed. Hope you remember your underwear to hide the evidence. But no, Jase always has to make it into a party like those in Scream.
Anyway, Chris had just scored a shot against Katie, who was fuming that she had to sink a cup of frothy warm beer. He had kissed Danielle on the head and muttered something about having to piss, she had barely made out a word he said over the new Rihanna song blasting over the cheap speakers Jimmy had brought. She stared after him as Steph shouted ‘tune’ and grabbed her wrist, dragging her up onto the worktop to dance along with her.
Several songs later, and to derail herself from Steph and Travis’s looming argument about who changed what song over, she hopped down
