the new year

twenty-six

T W E N T Y - S I X :

"Do you like working for Mattia then?" Oak asked the blonde who was to the left of her, with his drink of choice, a pint of Strongbow. Miles looked at the blue-haired girl and pondered his options, he didn't hate it, he'd only been there for just shy of two months, but he didn't like it that much.

"Mattia's lovely but it's just the job I'm not sure about, like I don't think I'm any good," Miles answered as honestly as he could. He helped in the kitchen with the chef, Andrea, who was nice but pretty scary; Miles always felt as though he was treading on eggshells around him because of how prestige his food was.

Miles had always had a large interest in food and making meals for his family so he wanted to be a chef of some sort and that's what Andrea was teaching him to do, he was too under-qualified to take the lead but he was learning pretty fast.

"I'm sure you're brilliant, I've not heard any negatives about you," Oak complimented with a smile. It was true, whenever Andrea and Mattia spoke about what was going on in the silver kitchen, she'd never heard one ounce of annoyance leave Andrea's mouth.

"Well, that's a relief I thought I was shit," Miles chuckled, Oak just smiled. She liked this guy, he was laid-back and kind, their conversations flowed well, Miles found that Oak was such an easy person to talk to despite her awkwardness.

"I'm pretty sure Andrea loves you," Oak joked making Miles shake his head with a small smile.

"How's the band going anyway?" Miles asked the girl, changing the conversation so that they weren't just talking about him, that and he was genuinely interested, he hadn't really given The Blue a listen, he'd heard them on a social media clip but that was it. He followed them on social media, of course, he did they shared school together and he found that cool, he wanted to show his support.

"Yeah, it's going pretty well, it's still hard to release music though," Oak expressed, the four of them wanted to or hoped to release an album at some point because most musicians want to do that, it was just pretty hard to do so.

"What's your personal favourite you've released so far?" Miles asked and wanted to take the note on board so he could have a listen to it. He'd be lying if he said his small crush for her had subsided despite his newfound love for the waiter Adam at work. Miles had always found something intriguing about the girl, he didn't like her that much he just liked her personality.

"Erm. . .Ohh, eh, I'd probably say 'filth' but that's just because it's kind of punky," Oak said shyly, she didn't really like talking about herself, not that she minded but she'd rather talk about the other person or a specific topic.

The bar was a cute little place in the centre of town, it had a nice homely feel to it with fairy lights on the beams that connected the building together and the staff were lovely. Miles and Oak have been discussing a lot of things, like the government, which probably wasn't the best topic to bring up with Oak considering how passionate she was about it but she reigned in her mind.

The blonde completely agreed with her political standing and beliefs considering he had only in the last year realised that he was pansexual; he found it a difficult conversation to bring up in front of people because some people just didn't get it and he feared that someone would judge him too heavily. He mentioned it to Oak and she was so sweet about it, she told him that it was amazing and that if he ever needed someone to talk to if things ever bothered him or if people ever bothered him, she'd be there. He found her reaction adorable how her face lit up—she felt privileged to have him share something like that with her, she understood the difficulties different sexualises faced and how unfair society treated them and how personal that information was.