This Is Yr Life

Chapter Ten

It was a Friday.

It was the Friday.

As the week had progressed, Kyle had gone back and forth, forth and back, over whether or not he really wanted to meet Chloe’s friends. The night before he had taken a walk to the venue but not gone inside. Instead, he peered in through the window but it was too dark, there was a party being held and all he could see was strobe lights and the silhouettes of people dancing.

And so, he carried on walking. He thought he may go and see Chloe but the gate to the cemetery was locked. He considered climbing over but as he grabbed the bars a police car drove past. It whirred, an indication that he had been noticed, and so he put his hands in his pockets and walked home.

Before leaving, he logged onto his social page and opened his conversation with Chloe.

                                                                                                                                                               Kyle Edwards just now

                                                                             Hey, I’m hanging out with your friends tonight. Wish me luck. X

***

He walked alone to the bar. Charlotte’s message had said things would start at half-past six. Some had said they were arriving later but the majority had agreed to be there for the announced time. Kyle had watched messages pop up on his screen as they made plans about what else they were doing, suggestions on where to go after if they ended up anywhere else.

He knew all possibilities.

It was dark. Cars without drivers drifted past silently with their headlights shining brightly ahead. It was raining. Kyle looked up at the streetlamps, hazy in the drizzle. Raindrops splashed into puddles as he walked down the street. He walked past houses where men and women in suits were unlocking their doors after a long week. They pulled their hoods from their heads, wiped their feet and shook the water from their jackets. They stepped into their homes met by their families, their pets, the smell of a home-cooked dinner or even takeaway ordered and delivered and brought to the kitchen where plates were already laid out with drinks and eager mouths salivating and lingering around the canvas bags that replaced plastic a long time ago.

Kyle smelt this food. He remembered the same family tradition every Friday night for all his years while living at home. His parents would go to the chippy or the Chinese or the Indian or Thai. Tastes of the world available at the tap of a screen.

Kyle tried to replicate this tradition when he moved out and into his first flat. Here, he lived with a couple who broke up soon after he moved in and subsequently asked him to leave because they needed the privacy, which is how he ended up living with Lewis and Finn.

But the tradition never stuck. The roommates were vegetarian, or vegan. They didn’t spend a lot of money. They didn’t believe in eating out. They liked making their own food, so they could be sure what they were putting in their bodies.

Finn and Lewis, though, were more inclined at first. But over time the tradition moved from something Kyle had introduced to something that they indulged in with their friends. Kyle was left to eat by himself in his room, browsing.

He didn’t mind this much, though.

He arrived at the bar. He had been here before. But the place he remembered was not like the scene he saw before him. He used to come here frequently with Jake and Buzz and Mike and Hammy and their girlfriends and friends and friends of friends on the weekend. Kyle looked for their usual booth, just inside the door but it was gone.

Before, the bar had alabaster walls where the paint had been chipped away over time. It was an old bar, a pub, really. It had stood in the city as long as the castle and battlements. Some people said it was the oldest building in the city and before its renovation there had been campaigns to qualify it as a heritage site, a historical monument of before.

But as with many things in the city and across the country, this too was dragged into the present day.

When Kyle used to frequent here back in his youth, his youth comparative to the now, anyway, the bar had been against the far wall. Tables and chairs were arranged around the floor space and on alternating Fridays these were cleared for live music from local and sometimes even national bands and punters fell about over their pints and wrapping their arms around those next to them to either fight or to announce how much they loved them, screaming into their ears over the screech of guitars and ringing of keyboards and thumping of drums.

The place he saw before him was not as he recalled.

He remembered a place where the carpets were flattened down and stained with footfall and beer and, from a long time ago, he thought maybe pre-millennium, cigarette ash. Blemishes of greys and blacks powered around the bar and tables.

But now the place was tiled and it was only the jukebox that boasted any indication of a past world. The booths had been removed and replaced with long colourful cushions lining the outside and towards the back. There was a photograph projected on the screens that stretched around the room.

And the bar, now, was an island in the centre of the room. The wooden counter and veneer had been discarded and replaced with mirrors, reflections of yourself wherever you looked. In the corner, there was the jukebox that didn’t have any records in but was connected wirelessly. The music was quiet and there was a university student, Kyle could tell from his shoes and half-beard spotted over his cheeks, flicking through the song options on the screen.

Kyle walked towards the bar and took a seat. The blonde and pretty barmaid who he hoped would serve him removed her apron and picked her bag up from a shelf under the bar. As she was wiping down one side another employee arrived, already aproned-up. They spoke to each other for a minute or two and she kissed him on the cheek.

‘Don’t let it be a late one,’ she said, smiling, joking, Kyle guessed. He thought about their relationship. She would wait for him back at home, she might have drunk half a bottle of wine and watched TV, or she might just climb into bed and wait for him and fall to sleep without even realising, only to be woken up as the key turns in the door and the smell of quick and convenient takeaway food wafts through the hallway.

‘What can I get you, pal?’

Kyle didn’t know. He could not remember the drinks he had with Finn and Lewis the other week. He shrugged.

‘What’s good?’

The barman poured him a pint of white amber beer, placing it in front of Kyle on a beermat, one made of card and decorated with a brewery logo. Kyle remembered flipping these from before. He took a sip and then another one.

It was time. A group of people who Kyle had never met but nonetheless knew walked through the door. Some were taller than he had imagined and others were shorter. They found a table together, pulling chairs and empty tables from nearby and sitting around them. Two of them pointed at each person around the table, asking what they wanted to drink and they came to the bar. It was Summer and Shaun. The bar was still relatively empty. There was only Kyle, sat looking towards them but still out of sight, and then a few of the university students sitting behind him discussing political theory, downing pints, and laughing.

Shaun kissed Summer on the cheek as they waited. They held hands on the bar top as the barman poured their pints and mixed vodka and rum and coke and orange juice in separate glasses. He glanced at Kyle.

‘You alright for another, mate?’

‘Fine,’ Kyle said. He was on his second drink already, halfway down and hoping not to get too drunk. His phone was next to him, silent. He kept checking it every now and again even though he knew there would be no messages.

Summer and Shaun balanced a tray to take back to their table and there they sat.

Kyle remained in his seat. He drank more and then, when he had finished that drink, he ordered another. He spent the night engaging in intermittent small talk with the barman until the place got too crowded, too full of people drinking before heading deep into town to the clubs and bars. All the while Summer and both Rebeccas and Charlotte, and Hamish and Shaun took it in turns ordering drinks and taking them back to their table. After his fourth or maybe fifth drink, he went to stand up, to go and introduce himself but he felt uneven and had to grip the side of the bar to steady himself. He pushed himself back onto his barstool and stayed there.

The pub emptied near midnight and that’s when Chloe’s friend’s climbed from their table together and their arms were around one another and they laughed and mumbled, drunk, about where to go next. Kyle’s leg twitched like it decided it was time to move, but he stayed on his stool. He watched them walk out of the door but heard Shaun, he thought, say that everyone could come back to his and Summer’s house.

The barman was wiping down the bar, he didn’t say anything to Kyle, but he looked at him, Kyle could tell, looking at Chloe’s friends. He asked if Kyle wanted another and he shook his head and asked how much his tab was.

He took a taxi home and tapped his card on the pad that allowed him to pay and unlock the door at the same time. He staggered out of the car. It had been a long time since he had felt this drunk. Already, he worried about how he would feel tomorrow. Finn and Lewis often complained of their hangovers. They lamented that there was a medicine for everything nowadays so why not something to relieve a hangover.

They also joked that the hangover was the price for enjoying themselves.

Kyle knew to drink water when he got back, but he was hungry, too. He scanned his thumbprint and the doors slid apart without a noise. His shoes squeaked as he walked, made wet from the damp city streets.

In the lift, he steadied himself, leaning to the side. He was surrounded by himself. Mirrored walls on all sides, he stared at his reflection. His hair hung over his eyes and he had trouble focusing. There was a stain of something, he couldn’t remember what but it was more than likely from his fourth beer, down the front of his shirt.

On his floor, the doors opened and he walked towards his apartment. There was no noise coming from the inside. He wondered if Finn and Lewis had their party and already left. He fumbled his key from his pocket, thinking he had lost it at first, and opened the door. It was dark and silent inside. Kyle walked to the fridge, turned the tap on and ran his face under the stream. It made the haze around him lift, but only momentarily.

The food in the fridge was not his but he took a box of something, he wasn’t sure what, anyway, and went to his room and lay down on his bed, still wearing his shoes and clothes and with the mystery meal in hand.

‘Search: Jessica Barnes,’ he said and even though he knew it didn’t sound right, the assistant recognised the command.

Her profile loaded and Kyle tapped on the icon, two sexless people smiling, to send her a connect request. On the right-hand side of the screen were little circles, small profile pictures of supposed connections they had in common. Kyle hovered lightly tapped each one in tandem. They were people he knew. People he had forgotten he knew. People who had connected with him or the other way around, back when they saw each other every day or just after leaving school and believing that they, for some reason, will still have things to say each other. Or even like they felt it was some kind of peacemaking move or, probably more likely, out of guilt, charity.

There were more. More than first showed on Jessica’s page. There was Finn and Lewis and even some people from his office.

And underneath these images were suggested connections and the pictures and the names looked even more familiar than those he was already connected with.

Summer, Shaun, Rebecca, Charlotte.

Chloe.