breather | s.m

2

| 2 | T W O

I don't expect to see you again. I think about you as Olive and I walk through the hordes of mumbling strangers, cutting through the heavy knots of tourists and locals hanging with thick coats and down-turned faces as the weather takes a turn for a worse. Olive's arm is through mine and she leans over to me as we walk, her hot breath fanning across my cheeks stretched with the cold.

Maybe tonight wasn't the best night to go out, she tells me, and I shake my head.

Probably not, I say, but I feel like a drink. Come on. It'll warm us up.

Yeah, alright.

I point my finger over to a pub brimming with people, crowded around tables and benches, gripping jugs of beer and glasses of wine. I think there's a game on, I say, and Olive looks at me as if to say what? I tell her Leeds is playing Manchester, and she pulls a face.

Since when did you watch football?

I shrug, and it's hard with this coat heavy against my shoulders. I don't know, I say. Beth was telling me about it. She's a big Leeds fan. It could be interesting.

Alright, Olive says, as long as I can have another cigarette.

I grin and we shuffle through the Saturday night crowds, hands clasped, nudging our way into the pub where the heating's on and the windows are jammed closed to keep the warmth in. We shrug our jackets off and find our way to a table, resting them on the back, and I promise Olive a rum and ginger beer, or dark n' stormy as she told me with this kind of tongue-in-cheek smile and waved me off. So I stand at this bar, jammed between two older men yelling orders of beer and something else, a tenner gripped between my fingers. And eventually I get a bartender's attention, and I order my two rum and ginger beers and then I wait.

The man beside me is gone and a new body shuffles in, and they're a lot taller, their shoulder by my head. I glance over and it's you, with the big, wide stare, but you're not looking at me now. And I wonder if I should say anything to you. If I should make some shitty comment about the weather and hope to wring out the best I could from that terrible conversation starter. And I'm thinking this and just staring at you, scraping all avenues of possible conversation for something to say, and you must notice this so you glance down after you've ordered your drink and you stare back.

You break into a grin. You're the girl, with the cigarette, you say, and you seem so shocked that I'm here, within a foot of you. You smiled at me.

I did, I say. You were staring at me.

I think you may blush a little, but that could just be the lighting. Sorry, you say, giving me a nervous laugh. It's a bit hard not to stare.

Why? I say this and I'm baiting you, and I think I may be flirting but I've never been good at that so I just go along with whatever this is.

Well, you know, you say, and I give you this coquettish little smile and tell you I don't. I thought this was flirting but now I think I'm making you self-conscious. You seem embarrassed, like a schoolboy caught staring down his teacher's chest. You're sort of, I don't know, magnetic, you tell me, and you're not looking at me as you say this, maybe because you're not sure you can without going red again.

Well, thank you, I say, and you grin at me again before nodding your head over to the game on the television. I haven't been following it, and all I see are white and red shirts colliding and sprinting up the field. Who do you support?

No one, I say, and I'm looking at you and thinking you look very much like the type of person to follow a team, so I shrug and offer a more open-ended response. I'm not much of a soccer follower, I tell you. So I'm still new and impressionable. Which team should I be rooting for?

Leeds, for sure, you say, shaking your head. Manchester are rubbish.

Right, I say, and you're looking at me and I'm feeling this sort of strange, natural flirting again. I say, and that wouldn't be a biased opinion at all, would it?

Oh, of course not, you say, and you are grinning. I'm a very unbiased person. I wouldn't lead you on like that.

L-eed you on, I say, exaggerating the Leed. You stare at me and I say, Leed, as in Leeds, and I shake my head and tell you, I'm sorry, that was terrible. I should never make puns. It's honestly my worst habit.

And I'm thinking that I've ruined this. Whatever this was. I've put a big, gaping hole in it with my terrible pun choice but You just stare and me and then laugh, this big, wide, round laugh, and you tell me, that really was terrible.

I'm sorry.

No, no, it's good, you say, and your laugh settles into a smile, and I can still hear it. I like puns.

Even incredibly shitty ones about football teams?

Are you kidding? They're the best sort.

And this conversation has ended, we can both feel it, but we're both reluctant to let it end completely. I can feel us both searching for something else to say. Some way to string this conversation out longer.

I think you're about to ask me something when Olive is behind me, her face by my shoulder, enquiring. How's the rum and ginger beer coming along? She asks, and I point to the bench and she says oh, well let's go then. I don't think she's seen you, or seen that we're angled towards each other in a way that hints at a ghost of an interaction.

I smile at you apologetically. Sorry, I say. But I think she's getting lonely over there by herself.

S'okay, you say, returning the smile. Can I buy you a drink later?

Yeah, I tell you, I'd like that.

I'm turning away when you catch my arm, of only for a moment. I didn't get your name.

I tell you my name, drinking in your face for a moment. You seem to do the same to me - we stand there looking at each other for an eternal moment.

Simon, you say. I'll see you soon. And you say my name after 'soon', and even hearing you say my name makes my chest hum. I walk back to the table with Olive and we sit and drink our rum and ginger beer and watch the game, but I find myself staring at the back of your head, rolling your name around in my mouth. And I want to talk to you again. I'm searching for an excuse to wriggle into another conversation but I can't think of any, none that would work, so I sip at my drink and I wait for something to happen.