Living on Borrowed Time

Chapter Four

My heart was racing as I stared at myself in the mirror yet again, my palms were sweating, my breaths were laboured. I couldn’t do this, I just couldn’t. But at the same time I had to.

I was wearing the outfit I’d chosen previously, and I’d tied up my hair up into a simple chignon that I found a tutorial for online. I’d applied a little makeup—just enough to make me look human, without going over the top. All-in-all, I didn’t look too bad. I didn’t look great, but it was the best I could do. It was the most attractive I’d been in years at any rate—even if that wasn’t saying much!

It would have to be enough.

Tick, tick, tick.

Each second felt torturous, but under all of that, I could feel something else too...a little anticipation, adrenaline. Although deep down I was aware that this night was probably going to be awful, I was proud of myself for forcing myself out, for not sitting in, for not following the dead-end, boring routine that I’d been in for over a year. I was finally doing something different, something proactive, and for someone like me, that was something to be happy about.

I clicked on f*******: once more, hoping that Amy would’ve sent me another message to confirm the night’s details—just so I could be absolutely certain that the plan was still in place—but of course she hadn’t. Why would she have? Normally people didn’t need reassuring every few hours.

It was sixteen minutes to eight, and I could no longer wait inside—I was driving myself absolutely crazy! I decided to set off early, do the five minute walk slowly, allowing myself to get some air, to calm down, to appear normal. That way when Amy met me, I wouldn’t look like the insane mess that I really was. Anything to tone that down could only be a good thing!

The wind rushed painfully past my ears and I became acutely aware of how cold it was. I hugged my coat tighter around me, wanting to block the elements out. My cheeks felt pink with the iciness in the air, my eyes started to sting, and my throat began to ache as I raced along. Why did people ever want to socialise in this weather? Autumn should be a time for cuddling up indoors with a mind-numbing DVD playing. The way I normally spent my evenings.

Why was I doing this again?

As I reached the chip shop much quicker than I intended to, I was forced to stand awkwardly outside, people watching, praying the minutes away.

Tick, tick, tick.

Oh God, it felt like forever. Why wasn’t she here yet? I felt like people were looking at me strangely, and I was becoming increasingly self-conscious.

Tick, tick, tick.

Every second was even longer out here, than it had been at home. I tapped my foot in anticipation and annoyance, wanting the wait to be over more than anything in the world. Why didn’t I just remain indoors a little while longer? Why had I been so damn impatient?

Then, the deadline passed.

8.02pm, and still no one was there.

Go home, I told myself. But my feet remained frozen on the spot, waiting intently. This is ridiculous!

I decided that I must’ve misread the messages, or missed a last minute cancellation. I tried to distract my disappointment by reminding myself that I didn’t want to go out anyway. I imagined all of the people I would’ve been forced to talk to, to interact with. I thought about behaving like a normal human being for an unbearable extended period of time. I considered how much happier I would be at home.

This was a good thing. I experimented, and it failed, but that didn’t matter because at least I’d tried...

“Hi Lara!” Amy’s happy-sounding voice burst through my negative thought pattern, and I span around, giving her a weak smile. After all that, she was here. And now I was going to have to face the night with those horrible thoughts floating around in my brain.

“Hey.” I shoved my hands into my pockets awkwardly, not sure what I was supposed to do with them. Suddenly they felt like odd, unnecessary body parts and I was intensely aware of them.

I didn’t used to be this socially uncomfortable. I used to find it really easy to be around people, even those I didn’t know very well, but now that I didn’t know who I was exactly, I wasn’t sure how to behave. It was weird—I didn’t know how much of it had been brought on by myself, and how much of it was just me. I felt like I’d been out of the loop of ‘normal’ for such a long time, that I no longer had any idea how to just be.

“Shall we go?” Amy laughed, tugging on my sleeve, completely oblivious to my internal insanity.

“Aren’t you freezing?” I felt compelled to ask, looking at her fully exposed, very tanned limbs. I was shivering and I was relatively layered up. Amy was wearing a tiny dress and heels. That was literally it. How could she even move? I couldn’t understand it.

She just laughed my comment off, without a care in the world. “I’ll be drunk in a moment, then I won’t feel it.” She announced, as if this was common sense.

She pulled me towards a dingy-looking pub, reassuring me that it was much nicer inside than it looked. I was barely breathing, hardly coping, barely surviving anymore. I suddenly desperately didn’t want to do this, I wanted to go home, to go back to being the me that I’d become. I kept asking myself what I was doing, why I was there.

This is going to be a huge mistake, I thought, but it was far too late to turn back now.

As soon as we stepped through the doors, a hot blast of air hit my cheeks, instantly warming me up. As I thawed, I started to hear my heart pounding furiously against my rib cage. If I could hear it, did that mean everyone else could too? It felt like the entire pub should’ve been vibrating with the sheer velocity of it.

Shut up! I warned myself. Get it together.

Amy waved to a table containing three girls and two guys—all who appeared to be as young and fashionable as her. This was going to be so awkward; I was going to stand out like a sore thumb, which was the last thing I needed. Blending into the background, I could do well. Listening to the conversation, but not being included, was something I could handle. But this...

I looked down at my oddly put-together charity shop outfit, and thought about how little makeup I was wearing on my pale features, I remembered how happy I was, putting together my ridiculous hair style. All of that now made me feel like a complete and utter i***t. It was all pointless! Compared to this lot, I looked a total state.

“Sal, Kimberly, Benji, James and Kia.” Amy indicated to her friends in turn, and their names floated in and out of my brain in a heartbeat. How the hell was I going to get through this when I’d already forgotten what to call them? “This is Lara, from work.”

The disinterested wave that they all gave, suggested that Amy hadn’t actually told them anything about me, which I found weirdly reassuring. It meant they’d have no expectations of me, no preconceived notions. I wasn’t already ‘the boring girl’ or ‘the dying girl’. I could just be ‘Lara’ and I actually quite liked that. It felt a little like the fresh start I needed.

Now all I needed to do was not mess it up!

“What does everyone want to drink?” One of the guys—I had no idea which one—asked, looking around the table as he stood up.

Everyone replied almost at once:

“A white wine.”

“Sambuca and lemonade.”

“Jack Daniels and coke.”

“Wine too!”

I smiled to myself, wondering how the hell this guy was going to remember all of those drinks. I barely caught the names of them all, and I was listening quite intently.

Suddenly I noticed that he was staring expectantly at me. “I...” I started to stutter, my face going bright red. I almost started to shake with nerves. What did he want? Should I say something?

“Do you want a drink?” He finally asked, clarifying his intentions, while making the moment even more embarrassing.

“Erm...” I didn’t think he meant me too. He only met me one second ago! I wouldn’t even know what to order. “Er a coke...please, thank you.” I tried to smile, but my mouth felt a little stiff with anxiety.

“Coke!” Amy exclaimed in disbelief. “No, get her a wine. She needs to loosen up a bit.” She grinned wildly at me, as if she was actually doing me a favour.

“Erm, I...” I tried to protest, but it was too late. He was already gone.

Oh God. I hadn’t exactly planned for my first time drinking alcohol, to be with strangers. But I couldn’t exactly not drink the wine now. That would be weird and would draw unnecessary attention to myself. I would just have to drink this one. Then I could think of an excuse for next time. One wouldn’t affect me, I would be fine.

I would have to be.

The guy placed the drink down in front of me and I watched everyone else take a quick sip from their glasses, so I imitated the action, intending to take it really slowly and...

Oh my God. What the hell was this? It was horrible, all bitter tasting. How the hell did people drink this stuff? It tasted like poison! I thought wine was supposed to be a posh-person drink. Why would you put yourself through this torture if you didn’t absolutely have to? How was I going to finish this entire glass?

I felt my face screw up in disgust, and I had to literally force my features to rearrange before anyone saw me.

“...and then, he started to...”

“...why did you say...”

“...she didn’t even think about him...”

The conversation flowed easily around the table, but I was stuck in the mental combat with my glass of wine, only picking out snippets of it. I needed to get this drunk, get it gone. Everyone else had almost finished theirs and I was still struggling to work up the courage to take a second sip. This was awful, how could I blend into the background when I still had this mountain to overcome?

Here goes nothing...

I lifted the glass, tentatively pressing it up against my lips. I looked at the others in turn, barely listening to their words, just concentrating on how much attention they were paying to me—which thankfully was none. I tried not to breathe in, I didn’t want to smell it. I prepared myself, tipped it back slowly, feeling the bubbles touch my tongue.

Urgh. This is foul.

And yet...

Somehow as the warm liquid made its way down my throat, and my head became fuzzier, the taste suddenly didn’t bother me quite as much. In fact, maybe it wasn’t so bad after all. Maybe I was wrong before. I would have to try it again, just in case.

***

Three hours and endless wine later, it was safe to safe that I was wasted! But I really enjoyed the fuzzy warm feeling deep inside of me. It was making me happier, more sociable, more interesting. On top of that, it was making this whole night a lot easier to deal with. The other people in Amy’s group had actually started to warm to me, despite the odds being stacked against me. It felt like we might actually all be becoming friends—they’d added me on f*******: at any rate. Luckily, by the time that conversation came up, I was too tipsy to be embarrassed about my bare-minimal profile page to care.

“...why would he cheat on me with her?” Kai whined into her drink, as we all made sympathetic noises. She was definitely a weepy drunk, and it seemed that her she’d a bad breakup not that long ago, which certainly didn’t help things.

“Men are all bastards!” Amy screeched loudly, causing the rest of the girls to burst into giggles.

We were in some unbearably noisy nightclub and I was actually having a good time. This was the sort of place I’d always been sure that I would hate, but it seemed that I was wrong. At one point, I was even dancing! Me, on the dance floor—a place I never thought I’d find myself.

Sal and Benji were furiously snogging in the corner of the room, completely ignoring the rest of the group—a common occurrence, apparently—and James left with some random girl an hour or so ago, so it was just us four girls, laughing, joking and bitching about boys. The way people of our age group were supposed to. This was just a normal night out to them, but to me, this was the best thing that had happened to me in forever!

“Except Nick!” Amy teased in a singsong voice, causing Kimberly to laugh and smack her softly.

“Me and Nick aren’t a thing!” She replied happily. From her reaction, I could tell that there was a long-growing story there, somewhere. I would have to ask her about it at some point. I liked Kimberly a lot. She was a little older than the others too—she just didn’t look it, like I did—and there was just something loveable about her. I couldn’t help but really want her to like me. She was just the sort of person I’d have sought out to befriend before.

Not that I was thinking about before. Not now. I was having a good time, and I didn’t want any negativity or worry to ruin that.

“So, why don’t you tell us a bit more about you?” Amy turned to face me, and my heart jumped into my throat. I might’ve been drunk, but I wasn’t ready to discuss anything about my life. How could I get out of this? There had to be a way. “I’ve been working with you for ages and you’re always seriously quiet.”

“I...er...what do you want to know?” I stuttered, trying to buy myself some time.

“Well I’ve never seen you with a guy, or heard you talk about one, or even seen you text one, so I guess you’ve been single for all that time. But, you lived somewhere else before, right? What was your last boyfriend like? Ooh, was he horrid? Is that why you had to escape?” Amy got excited, as if she realised that she’d suddenly hit the nail on the head, as if she’d figured me all out.

“Um...I haven’t really...”

They all turned to face me, as the penny dropped one-by-one. I shrunk inside myself, almost physically recoiling. It was only the booze swilling around in my stomach—making me someone that I wasn’t—that stopped me from turning and running out the club right away.

No, no, no. I did not want this tonight!

“You’ve never...?” Kai asked.

“Erm...no, not really...I...” A cold shame washed over me under their scrutinising gaze.

“Never had a boyfriend?” Amy continued, her eyes widening at the thought.

“Well, I...” Redness didn’t just fill my cheeks, it consumed my whole body. I was so embarrassed, so stupid. Explaining this was almost worse than telling the story about my near-death.

“But you’ve...” She made a funny, nodding gesture.

Oh God, this can’t be happening. She can’t mean...

My mind freaked out at all of the horrors that were about to be unleashed. My insides twisted themselves up in knots, as the gazes upon me became too intense to handle.

I need an escape!

“Um...sort of, I...”

“Lara, are you a virgin?” Kimberly finally asked, breaking the awkwardness slightly with her straightforward nature. Her bluntness was welcome, yet utterly unbearable, all at the same time.

“Well I have...”

“Lara?” Her voice turned stern. She was willing me to just answer the question and get it over with. She was right, I decided, so I complied semi-willingly.

I hesitantly nodded.

The girls all squealed in unison, while I wanted the ground to swallow me up whole.

“Why?” Amy shrieked, seemingly loving this. I was the most exciting that I’d ever been to her. “Maybe we just need to get you laid. Maybe that’s why you’re so uptight.”

“I...um...it’s not...I don’t...”

Kimberly’s expression finally turned sombre. It was as if she suddenly noticed that there was really something to this, that my discomfort was way more than normal. To my relief, she rapidly changed the subject, distracting the others in the process. “I love this song! Let’s go dance.”

Luckily, because everyone was so drunk, the switch didn’t seem too weird, and we all followed behind, giggling like idiots.