Bad Decisions - Alex Turner

5. Rain-check?

It wasn't until the following Saturday that I encountered Alex once more. His absence, seeming so long after visiting three nights in a row, grew on me. I felt like maybe our talk had helped him in someway and as accomplished as that sentiment made me feel, I'll admit that I did somewhat miss it — even though just before I was getting absolutely sick of him. His visit was an entire surprise in itself but I'll get into that later.

For the beginning of that Saturday I was cooped up behind the reception desk of the art gallery I worked at. I was taking someone's double that day. After destroying my car I needed the extra money. It wasn't a bad job, honestly I loved it, especially when we put on exhibitions and I'd get to meet local artists and all that. But the majority of my shifts simply consisted of sitting at the reception and answering any questions any customers had. And I had to sit in silence.

My coworker, Jackson and I were tossing balls of paper back and forth the entire day. He worked in the souvenir shop directly opposite of the reception desk. We'd both been working roughly the same amount of time. We were also the only ones under thirty five there. Everyone else was quite the old fart and would always tell us off for trying to make such boring shifts that little bit more interesting.

  Jackson was that one friend outside of my usual friend group meaning he was always perfect to talk to about things I couldn't tell anyone else. Only problem was, he had a bias against Christian. Whenever I would say something seemingly meaningless like, "oh yeah, no the dinner didn't really go to plan, he had to leave to take care of one of his building sites," Jackson would groan and tell me that Christian was a shit boyfriend and that I needed to stop letting him treat me like shit. But he did it in this very light hearted manner that never made me feel attacked. So you can guess that when I told him about Alex's little visits he got a bit excited.

  It first started with, "what the fuck? What a creep. I can't believe he fell in your bush."

  And then as the stories piled, heavily influenced by the night we spent chatting about his problems, Jackson changed to, "well is he your type? Why don't you dump Christian and get a lil mm-mm with the Alex guy?"

  To which I told him: "he's a literal stranger Jack. And I'm happy with Christian." He gave me an unconvinced look. I hated when people did that when I told them I loved my boyfriend. "I am Jackson. I love him to bits."

On my break I called Christian to see how he was, he told me he couldn't talk because he was busy but that he was going to come over after we were both finished at work and make it up to me.

  "He's coming over believe it or not," I said to Jackson as I locked up the gallery at the end of our shift.

  "I do," he said, fixing his clear rimmed glasses. His hair was all brown and curly, sitting on top of his head in a soft fluffy wave. "I think he's coming over so he can say he makes an effort."

  "Don't say that," I said, giving him a playful glare, tucking the building's keys in my pocket.

  He just shrugged and tucked his hands in his brown jacket pockets. "Okay, I'm sorry. But if he's an asshole tonight..."

  "Jack..." I warned him.

  He chuckled, "alright, alright. Just don't let him walk over you. Okay?"

  "He doesn't walk over me," I said, rolling my eyes, we'd been through this before. "He's just busy."

  "O, you take like fifty shifts a week, go to college, tutor kids and sculpt your own shit, if anyone's busy it's you," Jackson said as we walked to our cars. "Anyways, keep me updated on the Alex guy situation. See you on Monday!" he called as he jogged off to his car and I waited for my Uber.