I’d always thought that the idea of falling in love at fifteen and staying that way for your entire life would be one of the most depressing things ever. Sure, the idea was romantic, but it left no time for making mistakes and sometimes mistakes were the most interesting part of life.
At least love was one thing I was happy to have failed at, especially when I look back at the saddening array of boys I’ve attempted to love in the past. I don’t know if it’s because I’m too picky or if I’m simply never destined for the music-swelling, grand-gesture kind of love that Richard Curtis had fooled me into believing existed. Maybe life is different for you if you look like Keira Knightley, but I’d never had someone turn up on my doorstep with placards, declaring their undying love for me.
I turned away from the lovers and headed towards the high street; the sound of thumping incessant grime music from a passing car masking the calming sounds of the indie-folk playlist that I had stuffed into my ears.
Now, I hope you don’t think I was one of those insufferable children who were told that they could be anything, do anything, that the world was theirs for the taking. I mean I was, but I never have and never will have any grandiose ideas about who I am or what I’m capable of. In all seriousness, if I get through a day without severely injuring someone, breaking something or accidentally insulting someone, then I take that day as a win. I have found, from years of personal experience, that once you accept that you are a loser, a failure, a flop, a piece of white dog turd adhered to the side of a shoe, you will be altogether more prepared for what your loser life throws at you.
Not every person is meant to change the world, despite what everyone told us as we grew up. If we were, then the world would be in an even greater mess than it already is. Maybe being a failure was a blessing in disguise. Maybe my inability to change the world in any way was my gift to humanity.
Being a failure wouldn’t even be so hard, had I managed to perfect the art of giving zero shits about anything. But the point was that I gave far too many shits, and therein lay my downfall. I gave a shit about my mother and the way she ate with a cacophony of smacks and slurps. I gave a shit about my ‘friend’ Kate and her fancy-schmancy job and her penthouse apartment (that I had never set foot in, purely on principle). And I gave a shit about my own shittiness, which was reflected and magnified by the shits that no one else seemed to give. I didn’t know how they did it, breezing through life like it was a path already laid out for them and all they had to do was walk forward and the path would find their feet. I had never seen my path. It was hidden beneath the failures that lay at my feet like long-dead leaves.
There was something about seeing the café that made me feel like a dog being dragged to the vets to be neutered. I could see Kate inside through the window, playing with a silky strand of her hair as the sun fell over her face. My stomach tightened with regret before I’d even stepped through the fingerprint-smeared glass door. I moved inside, the aggressive heat from the overhead fan hitting me square in the face. I’d never been in this café before, mostly because it intimidated me with its repurposed furniture and copious choice of coffee beans.
I saw Kate up ahead, sitting at what looked like two lidded school desks that had been pushed together to form a table. She sat casually with her long dark hair pulled up into an effortlessly neat high ponytail and her nose inches away from the screen of her phone. She sipped glutinously at the foam of her cappuccino, her face glowing blue in the light that emanated from the screen.
So, here’s what you need to know about Kate.
We’d been best friends since we were four years old. When we met, we were both weird and otherwise friendless, so we latched on to each other and it suited us both well for a while. But as time wore on Kate began to acclimatise to the rest of the world, finding a best friend in the most popular girl in school, Eloise ‘Fucking’ Kempshore (not her given middle name, obviously, but it was what I’d called her since the day in year seven when the teacher had left the room and she’d stood up in class and picked on me about my red hair).
To be fair, Kate hadn’t climbed the social ladder without trying to carry me along with her, but I had proven to be a less than willing passenger and after struggling for a year or so, Kate all but cut the line and dropped me back into the social abyss that I should have never left in the first place. Kate had always known the right clothes to wear and the right way to do her hair. She never clammed up in conversation or thought of the most inappropriate thing to say and then accidentally said it instead of keeping it to herself.
Eloise had stolen Kate away about eleven years ago now and since then we had started to feel obligated to remain in contact, just so long as I remained separate from her other friends, her other life. We became
