1

 

‘Wait, no -? Haven’t you heard?’ John asked. He spoke with an excited tone and an Essex accent, whilst his head swivelled rapidly in disbelief.

  ‘Heard -?’

  ‘The aliens are coming,’ he said and sat back with a self-satisfied smirk, letting his words hang in the air.

  ‘What?’ Charlie asked absentmindedly - he was only half listening.

  Abbie took a slightly awkward puff on the joint and handed it back to Charlie. He felt her slender, tanned fingers rest gently on his as she did so, and caught her muddy green eyes rolling at him. He slipped her a subtle, crooked smile in return.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ John nodded seriously. ‘They’re coming. It got announced today.’

  As if, Charlie thought to himself. He took a deep drag on his spliff and shook his head. He wasn’t in the mood for John and his usual conspiracies; he had other things on his mind, things he wanted to talk to Abbie about, alone.

  ‘Now, mind you, I don’t know if I believe it,’ John continued to prattle on. ‘With everything they’ve pulled the last few years, I mean, it’s surely all bollocks,’ he cackled and eyed the joint greedily.   

  ‘Hmm,’ Charlie nodded - subtly agreeing, it was all bollocks.

  ‘But they say they’ve received a message. From the stars I suppose.’

  In the background of the conversation, David Bowie could be heard playing. The room they were sat in was Charlie’s living room. It was filled with smoke, ashtrays and weed paraphernalia. Abbie was sitting next to Charlie on the sofa and John was sitting on the comfortable armchair opposite.

  ‘Who’s they?’ Abbie asked. Her general tone and demeanour were consistently and undeniably friendly - but there was a somewhat posh London drawl to the way that she spoke, which gave this particular question a condescending twinge. She was a striking girl of above-average height and had the comfortable confidence of a middle-class London woman in her mid-twenties. She and Charlie had known each other since primary school and, while they’d had their rocky periods, Charlie could comfortably say that she was one of his closest friends.

  ‘Them,’ John emphasised and looked at the joint again. This time Charlie noticed and tiredly handed it over to him.

  ‘Who’s them?’ Charlie poked jestfully but didn’t listen for the answer. His eyes were often clouded and he could come across as distracted to most people he met - which, truthfully, most of the time he was. Despite this, his face - usually clean-shaven and always framed with short brown hair - was soft and gentle. Whenever he smiled, he looked a little goofy - and was aware of it. He lived in hoodies, Carhartt’s and corduroy and his body was dotted with various colourful tattoos.

  ‘Who’s them -? Well, that’s a loaded question if I ever heard one.’ John cackled again and looked about the room somewhat nervously. He was a beefy-looking fellow, with short, thinning blonde hair and a forehead that seemed to permanently shimmer with traces of sweat. Charlie always found that he smelt distinctively musty, like a carpenter at the end of a hard day's work - which was odd as he worked in management at a call centre. ‘I could talk about that all day, but you guys don’t care about all that, do yah? Nah, what’s important is the aliens - it’s everywhere mate. Look at it, they’re all saying it: the government, the media - the whole machine. They’re all talking about it. Everyone’s talking about it. Where’ve you two been, ey?’

  Charlie drummed his fingers somewhat in time with Moonage Daydream and looked hazily out of the window. He had been at home all day, smoking weed, recovering from last night. His eyes focused in on the moon, it hung high and imposing in the darkening sky, the sun had not yet finished setting and it looked odd and unwelcome in the lingering daylight.

  ‘But, I mean, I always knew they’d announce their arrival eventually: they’ve been coming here for years already anyway. Like really, they’ve always been here - haven’t they? We’ve all heard the stories, like my uncle - he was abducted before, never been the same again since. Makes you wonder though, dunnit? What their plan really is. Why're they only just revealing themselves now? Nah - nah, it’s bad news I’m sure of it. It’s what all this bollocks the last few years, ever since twenty-twenty, has been leading up to. I’m sure of it. But the crazy thing is -’

  ‘He’s right,’ Abbie interrupted - seemingly not even aware that she was interrupting. She leaned in towards Charlie and showed him the article on her phone. He screwed up his eyes, trying to adjust to the brightness of her screen - the bold black words made no sense to him at first. He took the phone from her and scanned The Guardian article several times, the look of disbelief on his face deepening as he did so. ‘No,’ he finally murmured, slowly. ‘What is this -?’

  He looked up. Seeing Abbie shaking her head as John offered her the half-smoked joint, he quickly leaned forward and grabbed it back for himself.

  John opened his mouth to start talking again, when an early-2000s pop song began emanating from his pocket. He cursed, muttering loudly to himself and took the call. ‘The missus,’ he mouthed at the both of them - but neither was looking, they were staring at the phone again, reading another article together.

  A few minutes later, John had left - giving an unnecessary apology and explanation that "the wife" needed him at home as he went.

  ‘Do you really think it’s real?’ Abbie asked once they were alone.

  ‘Dunno,’ came Charlie’s simple answer and he let slip a dumbfounded grin. He was relieved that John had gone and already felt his mood improving. They’d now read a few different articles and all of them said the same thing: that aliens had supposedly reached out, simply to say that they were coming. There were no details about them or their intentions and no details about when or where they would arrive. It seemed it was a short message, direct and to the point.

  ‘What do you think they want?’ Abbie asked.

  ‘To say hello I guess.’

  She started laughing. Charlie joined in and they giggled at each other for a moment - until he coughed trying to take a toke on the joint.

  ‘Nah, it can’t be real though,’ he shook his head, still coughing slightly.

  ‘Yeah, but imagine if it is - wouldn’t that be cool?’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘How many of them do you think there are?’ she asked, not bothered by Charlie’s lack of enthusiasm.

  ‘I’d guess just a little ship, filled with ten little green men.'

  ‘Oh don’t be racist, we haven’t even met them yet.’

  ‘Oh - yes, I’m sorry. We wouldn’t want to be making assumptions already - would we?’ he drawled, mimicking her accent.

  ‘But isn’t this so cool?’ she ignored the dig.

  ‘Yeah - like I just said: I guess.’

  ‘Oh come on!’ Abbie elbowed him and turned in her seat to look him in the eyes. ‘We’ll be alive when the first aliens land on Earth! There’s nothing cooler than that.’

  Charlie nodded but he was already tired of the conversation; there was no way any aliens were coming. It would all turn out to be a hoax in a few days, or never reported on again, and in a couple of years' time no one would remember that for a brief moment in 2022, the world had expected alien visitors. 

  What he really cared about was last night, his mind was still stuck on his own novel encounter. The longer the day had lasted, the more his memories of it felt like a dream; he’d not slept well and the afternoon had taken on a hazy quality. He almost doubted himself and his memories as a trustworthy source. But it was real, he was sure of it; the kisses still played shamefully on his lips. So now he had to verbalise it to someone, so that it would become real again, so that he could prove it had actually happened and that it actually meant something - but what that something meant, he did not yet know.

  ‘Abbie,’ he began, swallowing nervously.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I met someone last night.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said slowly. The joy that had been spread across her face silently slipped away and she looked at him seriously. He wondered what that look meant and felt his nervousness increase. ‘Who?’ she asked.

  ‘A guy…’ he said slowly. He felt embarrassed and averted his gaze from her for a second - but the floor appeared grey and offered no solace, he quickly looked back at her - hoping to see kindness in her face.

  ‘Oh,’ she sounded a little surprised - perhaps even relieved. ‘What happened?’

  ‘We kissed.’

  ‘Right,’ she said, her face looked confused but was softening.

  ‘It was nice.’

  ‘How did you meet?’

  ‘Tinder.’

  ‘Old school,’ she laughed, livening up again somewhat. ‘I thought you were on Hinge these days?’

  ‘Yeah… seems a bit serious, I dunno, meeting a guy on there.’

  ‘Isn’t that what Grindr’s for?’

  ‘I tried that… I don’t know. That was too intense as well,’ Charlie felt a knot of discomfort ripple in his stomach. He remembered being on it last week and getting tapped by a blank profile only twelve metres away. The idea that an anonymous neighbour had seen him on a gay hookup app made him feel on edge. He’d quickly deleted his profile and then deleted the app, feeling a little paranoid the rest of the night.

  ‘Yeah?’ the word dropped out somewhat brusquely.

  ‘Yeah,’ he answered, monitoring her brusqueness - trying to figure out what it might mean.

  ‘But you’re still not telling people?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Charlie was a private person. Abbie was one of his oldest friends, but he had only just recently told her that he thought he was bi. It was something he had previously only confessed to his last girlfriend, Alice, and no one else. He still couldn’t even imagine the idea of voicing it to one of his male friends. ‘I guess I just want to be sure, first, you know?’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  Charlie nodded slowly, he felt uncomfortable - as he always did when discussing this subject. What if he was wrong? What if he wasn’t really bi? He scratched the corner of his left eye and for a moment wished that he wasn’t, that the result of this whole thing would be to simply prove his heterosexuality - so that he could finally move on.

  ‘Well, what’s he like?’ she asked, checking her phone as she asked.

  ‘He’s… cool,’ Charlie grinned sheepishly. ‘He’s a writer for Mockingbird.’

  ‘Oh that is cool -’ she looked back up.

  ‘Right?’ his grin grew a little more and he paused. She checked her phone again and he continued, afraid he was boring her. ‘He just had a good vibe about him, I dunno. I was kinda worked up before, like thinking it’d just be sex, I was just kinda nervous honestly, like - what if I didn’t like it? Or something, I don’t know. But it was chill, we didn’t even hook up - it was just... nice.’

  ‘Cool…’ she smiled gently. ‘Where’d you go?’

  ‘Just the pub, had a few drinks. I did think about inviting him back to mine afterwards, but I dunno.’

  ‘But you’ll see him again?’

  ‘Yeah, I think so.’ Charlie nodded and thought for a moment. He was remembering their goodbye. For the final thirty minutes of the date he’d been looking at Jacob’s lips, playing with the secret desire to make a move - but he’d been too shy. Finally, it seemed the moment had passed; he’d had a nice night, but he was going home. The whole dating men thing wasn’t meant to be for him. He probably wasn’t even bi: if he was, he would have felt something for some boy before now - but he hadn’t. He had hooked up with a guy once, a few years ago, but he’d been drunk and it had been kind of awkward. And while a desire for similar experiences had lingered, nothing had ever occurred again.

  But then Jacob had leant in and kissed him and Charlie had suddenly felt that desire leap up inside of him again. His hand had crept up Jacob’s side, who had in turn placed a hand on his cheek. He’d enjoyed the surprisingly soft feeling of the man’s fingers against his skin. Eyes closed, body leaning in, the moment had drifted on tantalisingly.

  They’d broken away and laughed, then kissed again - until, startled by a noise occurring down the road, Charlie had mumbled a goodbye and dipped away into the night. He could feel Jacob’s grin floating in the air behind him as he left.

  ‘What does he look like then?’ Abbie broke in through his thoughts, her phone was down and her face expressed curiosity.

  ‘Handsome,’ Charlie chuckled shyly - he was really not used to talking about guys like this. ‘Kinda hot to be honest. I was surprised, he looked good in his photos but definitely better in person.’

  ‘Let me see his profile?’

  ‘Okay.’ He picked up his phone and surreptitiously looked for the Tinder profile, not wanting her to see his matches and his conversations - feeling they were private and unseemly.

  ‘Let me see then,’ she leaned in.

  He felt embarrassed showing her, and almost didn’t give her the phone - but, before he could think about stopping her, she already had it in her hands.

  ‘Yeah he’s cute,' she said, to his relief. 'That’s a good photo,’ she nodded at one of him sat in the park with a big genuine smile.

  ‘Yeah, that one looks most like him too, I’d say.’

  ‘Have you messaged him yet today?’

  ‘No. I probably should, right?’

  ‘Up to you,’ Abbie shrugged and yawned. ‘I’m sorry -’ she said, covering her mouth. ‘I should go home, I really was just popping in to say hey cos I was passing. Dad said he’s making dinner tonight. I think Gabriel’s coming round later too.’

  ‘How’s everything going with him? You feeling better about it all again now?’ he asked. Gabriel was her boyfriend. They’d been together for years, and the last few times he’d seen her she’d complained about him pretty heavily. She did say that she still loved him, that she would probably have kids with him one day, but somehow he never really believed her; Gabriel was a nice guy but kind of boring. It seemed to Charlie that she was only still in the relationship due to inertia.

  ‘Yeah, I suppose,’ she answered with reticence. ‘Nothing’s changed really though.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No,’ she sighed and left it at that. ‘Anyway,’ she stood up. ‘I’m stoned. I didn’t mean for that to happen.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Charlie unconsciously apologised.

  ‘It’s all good… the aliens are coming, right? May as well get stoned.’

  ‘Right,’ Charlie laughed and took a final puff on the now-finished joint.

 

2

 

‘Abbie, are you high?’ Abbie’s mum peered at her from across the solid, expensive wooden dinner table. An aloof concern quivered in her eyes and on her lips. She held a knife and fork in her hands, which rested tensely over the china plate in front of her. A stern-looking, yet still undeniably beautiful woman in her early sixties, she had a fussy yet firm mien. Her face was framed by silver shoulder-length hair and her brown eyes shone with a perceptive intelligence.

  ‘A little,’ Abbie shrugged. She was fairly stoned: she wasn’t really used to smoking weed - and wasn’t sure why she had today. For some reason, she’d just been in the mood.

  The matriarch of the table made an exasperated noise and looked to her husband for support. He shrugged gently, keeping his eyes on the ceiling above. There was some unexpressed thought playing itself out on his lips; his mind was clearly elsewhere. 

  ‘Honestly Abbie, it’s a Wednesday. You’re twenty-five years old.’ The mother let the sentence hang like a threat, waiting for a response from her daughter. Finally, seeing she’d receive none, she pursed her lips and continued, ‘At your age… I’d be expecting more.’

  ‘Okay,’ Abbie tried not to roll her eyes. She felt like a teenager - and she could see that she was probably acting like one too.

  ‘The last few months… you’ve not been yourself Abbie. You were doing something at least - with your... protests. But now, I - we - really see nothing from you. The truly disappointing thing is, that by nature you are a hard worker - you always have been - and seeing you like this, so listless and…’ there was a pause as the woman restrained herself from delivering harsher words. Eventually, it appeared she could find nothing else suitable to say and so she repeated the word ‘listless’ again in conclusion.

  Abbie just sat there playing with her food and feeling empty. She had been feeling empty for a while now. She didn’t know why, she didn’t want to feel empty, but nothing was inspiring or exciting her anymore. She had pushed so hard through the first half of her twenties, and had really felt like she was doing something, making a change in the world - but this year all that had crumbled. The reality in which she currently found herself was that nothing she had ever done had ever really changed anything. For anyone. Least of all herself.

  She had reached 25 and her life seemed the same now as it had when she’d turned twenty. She was back living with her parents, after bailing on moving in with her boyfriend - who she'd been with since she was 19. She had a boring part-time job and was unsure of any real passions. She was undoubtedly intelligent, well-educated and had plenty of interests she filled her days with, but nothing to build her life around. She currently could not see a direction in which she could take her life where she could see herself making any real difference or experience any real meaning.

  ‘Are you listening?’ the question rapped harshly against her ears.

  ‘Yes,’ Abbie nodded glumly. She pushed food into her mouth to avoid having to say any more. It tasted good, but she didn’t feel hungry. The thing was, she knew her mum was right - and she wanted to change things, she wanted her life to be filled with meaning again. But things weren’t that simple - she couldn’t wave a magic wand and just believe in herself again. 

  ‘You are in such a fortunate position, you do know that - don’t you? Anything you want to do we can make it happen. The world truly is limitless, Abbie. Why don’t you think about going back into education? A course or something? Because you can, you realise that - no? Now you’ve been cleared of the charges, you could actually do that - you do know that, don’t you?’ 

  Abbie and her boyfriend Gabriel had been arrested - around two years ago - for defacing a statue. Up until recently, a pending police investigation had hung over them - but, just a few weeks ago, a letter had arrived in the post, acquitting them of everything.

  ‘And realistically, it could still be something environmental. Maybe you have finally matured past the point of these grass-action… scrummages - but it really does not mean that that passion you have felt has to die. You could move into a more realistic area, like… law, or journalism, or - I don’t know - politics? Whatever it might be, you just need to get started - and you will soon slip into it.’

  There was more silence. ‘Sure,’ Abbie eventually answered, trying to shift the increasingly burning gaze.

  ‘Because, honestly, I feel like we’ve been too lax with you,’ a sudden irate irritation was rising in her mother’s voice. ‘And I think this is allowing your… funk to continue longer than it should have done. Most people don’t have the privilege of having such supportive parents, but really at your age, there is only so much we can support. Sooner or later we’ll have to -’

  ‘You’ll have to what -?’ Abbie snapped, glaring at her mum. She knew that the words were coming from a place of support - and she even quite agreed with them herself - but at this particular moment, in this particular way, they were very aggravating.

  ‘Abbie -’ her dad finally spoke, shooting her a glance that she couldn’t quite read. It could have been support, disapproval, indifference - or all three wrapped up together. He then proceeded to say nothing further - and just left her name hanging in the air. This caused her guilt to grow, which in turn only made her feel more annoyed. 

  She missed the days when she had been so sure of herself, so sure that she was doing the right thing and that no one could tell her otherwise. But now those days felt so distant and far away, like they had belonged to another person. Someone who had just been keeping her shoes warm for a little while, until the real Abbie - the one so full of uncertainty and doubt - could take her place again.

  Her dad coughed, an excited gleam was in his eyes - a smile he could no longer suppress was growing across his face.

  ‘Scott?’ her mum blinked. ‘What are you grinning about?’

  ‘Oh come on,’ and he really was grinning now, his mouth hanging open. He was a man of distinctive features; his somewhat bigger-than-average nose and ears rested against his clean-cut and always clean-shaven (mostly because it took weeks for him to grow any shadow of facial hair) cheekbones and chin. His teeth were straight and white and his glasses rested, a little dislocated, on his straight, protruding nose. Abbie took much more after her mother - but she’d certainly inherited her father’s smile. ‘Isn’t it obvious?’ he pressed.

  ‘What?’ mother and daughter exasperated in unison, equally frustrated by the seemingly inexplicable boyish excitement.

  ‘Aliens!’ he almost shouted, which was rare for him.

  ‘Aliens?’ his wife repeated, momentarily confused. Then her brain visibly shifted gears and she waved her knife through the air, ‘Oh, that nonsense.’

  ‘Nonsense?’ he exclaimed through his unyielding smile.

  ‘He’s been banging on about this article he read online earlier - all day.’

  ‘Article? Article! It’s more than just one article - Janice, it’s all over the news.’

  Janice tutted. ‘It’s one thing after another these days, I’m telling you I don’t believe it for a second. It’s just tabloid rubbish. They’ve found some space rock somewhere, with the potential for life to form on it and some idiot journalists have taken it and run with it. A slow news day, that’s all this is.’

  ‘They didn’t just find some rock! They received a message.’

  ‘And I suppose this message just happened to be in English?’

  ‘Well, they weren’t explicit on that.’

  ‘Then please, tell me, how was it understood? It must have been in some language?’

  ‘I was wondering that as well, how did they tell us they were coming?’ Abbie chimed in, glad that the topic of conversation had shifted.

  ‘They didn’t really explain that bit,’ the smile had left his face now, deliberation had taken its place. ‘But they wouldn’t just announce something like this if it weren’t true.’

  ‘At this point, do you really still believe that? It’s one crisis after another these days.’

  ‘It does all seem a bit weird,’ Abbie agreed, subconsciously trying to get back on her mum's good side.

  ‘Oh you two disappoint me, have a little wonder! Come on,’ he pleaded, his smile returning. He was a somewhat goofy-looking man, and taking in his excitement-plastered face suddenly made Abbie laugh. ‘Why? What would ever possess them to make such a thing up?’ he pressed.

  ‘Oh Scott, don’t. These things have a way of spiralling, don’t they?’ she looked to Abbie warily for continued support. ‘One publication gets word of something, they run with it, then before you know it they’re all saying it. One after another. They know that the half-life for people’s memories on these sorts of things is so brief, that by next week everyone will have forgotten about it anyway. They wouldn’t want to be the only ones not reporting “the big story” so they run it too, just like everyone else.’ She sat back, satisfied with herself and placed some food cleanly into her mouth.

  Abbie’s dad sniffed, stuck for an argument. ‘That would make sense, I suppose.’

  ‘That’s just mum’s theory though,’ Abbie added, not enjoying seeing her dad’s excitement so visibly deflated. ‘The aliens may well still be coming.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he shot her a vaguely appreciative nod. ‘I think so.’

 

‘Hey,’ Abbie answered the phone and slumped into the armchair in the corner of her room. Still a bit hungry and bemused after dinner.

  ‘Did you hear the news!’ came the disbelieving hoot on the other end. It was Luna, one of her oldest and closest friends.

  ‘Of course,’ Abbie giggled. ‘It’s crazy!’

  ‘Oh it’s brilliant!’

  Luna was also high - which was not an uncommon occurrence for her - and they drove excitedly into an imaginative discourse over this novel prospect of visiting aliens. For a while they described fanciful details and stories about how they might look, and what their little alien lives might be like.

  Then clearly deciding enough had been discussed about the aliens, Luna jumped straight into the main reason for her call. ‘You’ll never guess what Robert did last night,’ she teased. Robert was an investment banker in his mid-thirties. She’d been seeing him casually for some six months. He was rich and handsome, he took her out to nice bars and drove a nice car - Abbie knew little else about him.

  ‘What?’ Abbie asked, already titillated by Luna’s tone.

  ‘He proposed,’ she laughed, Abbie could hear the cheeky look of smugness across the phone.

  ‘No?’ Abbie gasped in disbelief.

  ‘I saw it coming, I’m telling you,’ she said. ‘Well - not the proposal. But I knew he was looking for something more. What a shame though.’

  ‘You didn’t say yes?’ Abbie asked with a sarcastic shock. Luna was seeing at least two other men just as casually - and all were aware of the arrangement; she always made it very clear to her men that she never would commit, but it obviously didn’t stop the occasional one from falling in love with her here and there.

  ‘I know, I could have been a very rich woman,’ she laughed. ‘It is a shame though. Steve’s great in bed and Sean’s so fun to hang out with, but neither of them has a penny to their name.’

  ‘He didn’t take the rejection well then?’

  ‘No, not at all I’m afraid darling,’ Luna drawled sardonically. ‘He looked as if he might have actually cried. I did feel bad. He still drove me home as well, bless him.’

  ‘Where did he propose?’

  ‘On the London Eye,’ she said, unable to suppress a giggle.

  ‘The London Eye? Why didn’t you lead with that bit? That’s the important bit!’

  ‘Yes, well - it’s a bit embarrassing, isn’t it? He booked a private cabin. And you know - I had to look it up afterwards - but it’s nearly seven hundred pounds for such a thing.’

  ‘Wow. That’s basically how much I make in a month these days.’

  ‘I know darling.’ 

  ‘Oh dear,’ Abbie laughed.

  ‘Anyhoo, how’s things with Gabriel?’ Luna asked sympathetically.

  ‘He’s -’ Abbie began and then the door to her room opened. ‘Here?’ she finished. Gabriel, her boyfriend, walked in. ‘I’d better go.’ Abbie apologised, said goodbye and hung up. 

  He came in with a bustle of energy, his headphones on and some annoying song he was currently obsessed with was tinning out of them. He squeezed her a brief and empty half-smile as their eyes met, then continued to scuttle about - putting the bags he was carrying down around the bed.

  Hers was a decently sized room, but Gabriel always managed to make it feel somehow smaller. She had an armchair in one corner, a double bed in another. The windows were large and let in plenty of light. The walls, half-covered with various posters and postcards, were painted a light and very pale pink. There were plants, lots of plants in all different shapes and sizes, and an assortment of mood lamps and fairy lights dotted about. Care and attention had been taken in the decoration of the room, but there were always at least a few bits of clothing and random personal items strewn around the place. Abbie always lived on the border between messy chaos and a neat space.

  ‘Hey,’ she waved at Gabriel, he still hadn’t taken off his headphones.

  He took them off and dropped down onto her bed nonchalantly. ‘Hey,’ he answered, but his attention was already on his phone. She looked at the bags he’d discarded on the floor, there was a full-looking rucksack, a tote bag with clothes and another with groceries.

  ‘What’re these?’ she asked.

  ‘Huh?’ he barely looked up from his phone.

  ‘What are these? The bags?’

  ‘Ohh: Jack’s been really pissing me off - I was telling you that - I’m gonna stay here for a bit.’ Jack was Gabriel’s housemate - he was admittedly a bit of a prick, but Gabriel complained about him too much,

  ‘How long? You’ve got a lot of stuff.’

  ‘I dunno, probably just a week or something.’

  ‘Okay, but -’ she hesitated, her stomach tightening - attacked by an abrupt claustrophobia. A week was a long time these days - it was getting cold outside and she was spending an increasing amount of time at home.

  ‘That’s fine, right?’

  ‘...I should check with Mum and Dad,’ she frowned.

  ‘It’s never been a problem before.’ He frowned back, finally deigning to look at her: throughout the whole conversation he’d remained hidden behind his phone. ‘They love having me here.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she sighed. There was nothing more to say, she’d been beaten. Her phone was back in her hand and she was already scrolling Instagram.

  ‘Can I put some music on?’ he asked after a period of heavy silence.

  ‘Do you have to?’ she questioned, a little too bitterly.

  ‘No,’ he resigned. ‘Just thought it’d be nice.’

  A few minutes later she had some of her own music on, lilting out of her Bluetooth speaker. This seemed to annoy him, he turned away from her, still lying on the bed, still on his phone - now facing the wall.

  Time passed like this, if she hadn’t been still a little stoned she would have found it unbearably irritating. Things certainly hadn’t been exciting between them recently, but it wasn’t normally this dull.

  ‘Abbie,’ she suddenly heard his voice and looked up from her phone at him. He had turned back to face her and was sat up on the bed a little. ‘Are you okay? What’s up?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she shrugged her lips. Spacing out her eyes so she didn’t have to look at or away from him.

  ‘You seem a bit…’

  ‘You just came in kinda rudely, didn’t you?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Like you didn’t even take your headphones off and you just dumped your stuff everywhere - what are these groceries here -? If you’re staying, why aren’t they in the kitchen? It’s weird. And you didn’t even say hi, you just went on your phone. The whole time we were talking, you were just on your phone.’

  ‘I had to reply to Mo, I’m sorry - he’s got some shit going on with his uncle again.’ He paused, perhaps waiting for Abbie to ask what shit might have been going on with Mo and his uncle. But she wouldn’t bite. ‘And you seemed… like you wanted space, I dunno. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘Come on, I’m sorry let’s do something.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I dunno… it could be good to get some exercise. We haven’t been climbing in a while?’

  ‘Not tonight,’ she sighed. ‘I’m kinda tired, sorry, it’s been a long day.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Dunno, went for a walk, ended up at Charlie’s.’

  ‘Oh,’ he looked annoyed. This annoyed her.

  They were quiet for a moment.

  ‘Come here,’ he said, patting the bed next to him.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You know why,’ he had that look in his eye.

  ‘No,’ she shook her head.

  ‘Whatever,’ he sighed and went back to his phone. She too went back to hers. Discomfort, distance and unpacked groceries filled the room. 

 

3

 

Noah’s phone was ringing in his AirPods. He squeezed the stem, attempting to decline the call but his finger slipped and it was unintentionally answered instead.

 ‘Yo,’ Charlie’s voice sounded unmistakably in his ears. There were few voices more familiar to Noah than this one; they had been friends since primary school and, while not so close as they once had been, there was no one Noah trusted quite as much as he did Charlie.

  ‘Sup,’ Noah replied, distracted. While certainly frustrated that he’d answered the call at all, he was at least delicately relieved that it was Charlie calling over anyone else.

  ‘What you saying tonight?’

  ‘Got a date bro - just heading out now.’ He only needed to find his keys and get his shoes on, then he’d be ready to go.

  ‘Ah fairs.’

  ‘Why?’ Noah asked.

  ‘Who with?’ Charlie continued his own line of thought.

  ‘Some chick from Hinge.’

  ‘I was gonna suggest we go for a drink.’

  ‘I’m free on Saturday - I think,’ Noah offered.

  ‘Not Friday?’

  ‘Got work drinks.’

  ‘Fuck that man, let’s do something.’

  ‘You can come if you want.’

  ‘Fuck that man,’ Charlie repeated emphatically. ‘Which girl is this? Where you guys going?’

  ‘Uhh - one second.’ Noah had found his keys, pocketed them, and was now in the hallway, squeezing into his trainers. He grunted as he did so and had almost forgotten Charlie was on the phone; his thoughts were on the date tonight, and how little he actually wanted to go. She looked cute in her photos, but their chat had been kinda dry. He was only really going because it had been a couple of months since he’d last had sex.

  Shoes on, he stopped and looked himself up and down in the mirror. He was wearing a blue North Face puffer, cargo trousers and some similarly-blue Air Max. Like most of the rest of the things in his wardrobe, the clothes were clean and fairly new; he was a man who liked to put effort into his appearance.

  Happy enough with the fit, he checked that his teeth were clean and ran his hand over his short frizzy black hair several times - trying to shape it a little more. He was of slightly below average height and, not a stranger to the gym, had a handsome enough physique. He knew that he was nothing to write home about, but he also knew that this had never truly hindered him when it came to dating. Confidence was key in his books, and he was certainly confident - bordering on cocky.

  Charlie coughed in his ears, reminding him he was still there.

  ‘Sorry - what was the question again?’ he asked and, done checking himself out, shot himself a quick empty grin and slipped out the front door.

  ‘Hmm?’ Charlie sniffed.

  ‘What did you just ask? A moment ago?’

  ‘Oh - uhhhh… dunno. So we’re not going pub?’

  ‘Nah,’ Noah laughed. 

  ‘Fairs. Where you going?’

  ‘Some bar, her suggestion. Looks fancy.’

  ‘Of course. Bit heavy for a Wednesday though, init? Don’t you got work tomorrow?’

  ‘Working from home tomorrow,’ Noah justified. ‘You just said you wanted to go for a drink - Why are you giving me grief?’

  ‘I’m talking one pint at the pub bro, you talking at least fifty quid - and you probs won’t even get laid.’

  ‘We’ll see about that.’

  ‘Which girl even is this?’

  ‘I don’t know if I showed you her yet bro. She does something to do with law, I can’t remember.’

  ‘What she look like?’

  ‘Hot in her photos.’

  ‘So it's a first date?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘First date at a fancy bar that she suggested - she’s just rinsing you man.’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Charlie laughed. ‘Let me know how it goes.’

  ‘Will do baby.’

  ‘Maybe see you Saturday then?’

  ‘Sure,’ Noah answered. ‘I gotta go, the bus is here.’

  ‘No worries - in a bit.’

  ‘Catch you later.’ Noah tapped his phone against the card reader and hopped up to the top deck of the bus. He slumped into the front seat and looked out the window, there he saw an old couple doddering down along on the pavement below. Arm in arm, they looked like one creature - an inseparable grey, formless mass. Their feet moved in step with one another, their thin grey hair battled against the wind to stay rooted in their scalps, and their worn grey skin looked frozen in the October cold. He felt an odd sensation pass over him as the bus swung away from the stop; their image was stuck in his mind, there was a humdrum, commonplace nostalgia stuck in his throat. He felt like everything had already been done before and there was nothing new left for him - or anyone else - in this world anymore, they’d reached the end of the line.

  He took a deep breath and pulled his phone out from his pocket - Instagram was there and ready for him. He idly scrolled the Explore page and never remembered to think of that old couple again.

  

‘You just got back from Milan?’ she asked, taking a sip of her colourful cocktail. ‘That’s cool.’

  ‘Well, I went round Europe for a bit at the end - you know, Amsterdam, Madrid, Berlin. But yeah, I was in Milan for like six months - until the end of July. Then I got back here at the beginning of September. Which is like, wow, over a month ago already. Time really does fly, huh?’

  ‘Hmm,’ she mused placidly. ‘What were you doing out there?’

  ‘Ah, nothing too exciting, just helping set up a new office for my company. It was good though, fairly easy, well-paid,’ he smiled a faux-modest smile. ‘I really couldn’t have asked for a nicer location.’

  ‘Aw, I bet. I’ve never been to Italy. I’d love to go sometime though… Were you sad to leave?’

  He wasn’t sure what the answer to that question was. On some level, he had been: the weather was nicer, the wine was great, things were cheaper - his Airbnb had been lovely. But on another, deeper level, he had grown quite bored and a little lonely out there. In the end he went with the diplomatic, ‘Yeah, I definitely miss the summer weather. But I guess I always knew it was just gonna be a six-month placement. So I always kinda knew that I was gonna come back. I just planned it like that in my head, so it wasn’t sad in that sense.’ 

  ‘Hmm makes sense,’ she nodded. There was the tiniest pause before she tilted her head and said with a smile, ‘So, tell me about yourself Noah.’

  ‘Wow, a bit of a broad question that,’ he smirked - a stall for more thinking time.

  ‘Is it?’ she gave him a challenging look, raising an eyebrow but not losing her smile.

  ‘Yeah - I mean, where do I start? I’m a complex man.’

  ‘Riiiiight,’ she laughed, unconvinced.

  ‘What do you want to know?’ he asked. He couldn’t think of anything else to say, her question irritated him a bit - but he did nothing to let that on.

  She tutted at his cop-out answer, thought for a moment and then went with: ‘What are your parents like?’

  ‘My parents?’

  ‘Yes, your parents,’ she clasped her hands together and looked at him oddly. He already found her annoying.

  ‘My mum’s an angel, of course,’ he nodded seriously and looked around the bar in thought. It was new and gentrified, something that wouldn’t have existed in Hackney not too long ago. There was a nondescript nature to it. He used to like places like this - when he was younger and had first found himself with disposable income. Now he felt like they were just a somewhat soulless waste of money. 

  The walls surrounding him offered him no further descriptions of his mum. It was strange, but he couldn’t really think of her as much more than that - an angel: the woman who had raised him. He seemed to remember that when he was a child they had been very close, but now she was just a middle-aged woman he saw sometimes. ‘She’s great,’ he continued. ‘Always been there for me.’ He took a sip of his drink - it was overpriced but tasted undeniably good. A chilli-flavoured old-fashioned. ‘My dad - he’s a businessman.’

  ‘A businessman?’ she asked slowly, after it was clear he wasn’t going to say anything more.

  ‘Yep,’ he responded, aware that it was an odd choice of description for his father. He wasn’t normally a quiet person, but he didn’t like to talk about his parents - he was searching for a way out of this conversation.

  ‘Any siblings?’

  ‘Nope - only child.’

  ‘I can see that,’ she nodded, he could see boredom flash across her face.

  ‘And you, any siblings?’

  ‘Three older brothers.’

  ‘I’ll have to watch out then,’ he grinned at her.

  ‘Yeah - you’d better.’

  ‘What are your parents like then?’ he asked. She immediately and enthusiastically started listing off details about them, whilst he listened just enough to ask questions. She seemed happy with the arrangement and went on talking about them for quite some time. 

  He watched her carefully as she did so, scanning her - figuring her out. Physically, she was attractive - certainly his type. Her style was good - with her matching-beige puffer jacket and Air Maxes, undeniably similar to his - and her cleavage was ample and clearly visible. But there was a conceited air to her that he found unattractive. It was not that he found confidence unattractive, it was that he saw she had overestimated herself in a way that he found typical of girls of his generation. She walked and talked as if the world revolved around her, as if each word she said was novel and interesting.

  It was irritating, but it made things easier. He knew he just had to play into her ego - whilst simultaneously letting her know he was in charge. He couldn’t show any weakness, but also had to make her feel special. Flirty but distant, no hint of simping - that would be key.

  ‘What are you into then?’ she asked him, having finally run out of things to say about her family.

  ‘Guess,’ he challenged her.

  ‘Hmmm,’ she pursed her lips together in thought - she seemed to enjoy the challenge. ‘I bet you’re a movie boy. You definitely give me more movies than shows kinda a vibe.’

  ‘Yeah definitely - movies all the way. What kind?’

  ‘I am gonna say… horror, sci-fi - I’m guessing that kind of thing.’

  He laughed, she was actually spot on.

  ‘I knew it,’ she gloated, before admitting that she too had similar tastes. They carried on discussing movies for a while, before the talk of science fiction inevitably drew them into the topic of the aliens.

  She stated emphatically that she didn’t believe it for a second and Noah was pleasantly surprised that he could agree with her freely; he’d already been preparing himself to navigate the situation like a politician. But he too believed that it was all bullshit. They had more in common than he’d have perhaps cared to admit.

  ‘It’s like the minute there’s nothing for people to freak out about, they need to bring something else in,’ Noah said, unconsciously leaning forward.

  ‘Right, it seems way too convenient,’ she rolled her eyes. ‘Like, no one cares about COVID anymore - so what’s next? Aliens.’

  ‘They could have just pulled it from a hat honestly,’ he shook his head. The conversation - initially gingerly, but quickly with full-chested confidence - became centred around current politics and the occurrences which had occurred in the past two years. They - more or less - agreed on everything and there was little profound that came out of the conversation, but it passed the time. 

  Before long it was eleven, the bar was closing. He paid the bill to no objections from her - which, while he of course expected, irritated him a little. It set him back around fifty quid and he still wasn’t completely sure he’d closed the deal.

  They stepped out into the night. It was cold, they wrapped their puffer jackets tighter around themselves. They exchanged pleasantries and then stood for a moment, looking at each other. They were tipsy and had an attractive glow to their cheeks.

  ‘Want me to pay for an Uber back to yours?’ she asked, boldly breaking the silence. ‘For us,’ she clarified, in case he hadn’t understood the suggestion.

  ‘Nah don’t worry about it, I’ve got it,’ he declined with a sly grin. ‘I’ll order it now.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, rubbing her hands together. ‘It’s cold.’

  ‘Right?’ he shivered a little in sympathy. ‘Okay - done. It’ll be here in five.’

  ‘Nice one.’

  ‘Nice one,’ he mimicked her with a high-pitched voice.

  ‘Oh shut up.’

  He bumped against her shoulder gently. She bumped back. They looked at each other and kissed. Momentarily unified, they stood in the street. One and the same.

  The Uber home was laced with tension. At home in bed, the tension was let out.

 

In the middle of the night, Noah woke gently from a dream. He had been with her, not the girl asleep in his bed - but someone he had avoided thinking of for days. Emilia. 

  In the dream everything had been normal, they had still been talking. She had been there, in London, with him. He had felt happy, very happy - content. They had been on Primrose Hill, basking in the sun and looking out at the skyline. Though he could remember little more than that, he now felt sharply awake, haunted by the image of them, together. He was at a loss for where this dream had come from, and tried to rack his brain for what might have reminded him of her. Nothing came up.

  The half-naked stranger in his bed shifted next to him, and he suddenly felt painfully aware of her presence. He wished she wasn’t there. That he was alone. He wanted terribly to be alone.

  He decided to get up and have a smoke, clear his mind. He grabbed a pack of Marlboros and a lighter from his desk and wrapped himself in his dressing gown, then headed out to the balcony.

  Outside the cold bit at him, but it was refreshing. The skyline of the city sat glistening, distant yet close. He pulled out a cigarette and lit it, taking a deep inhale and watching the smoke as it left his lips.

  Why had he dreamt of Emilia? He didn’t want to think about it, but the feeling of the dream pervaded through him. He had felt a joy that hadn’t been present in his life since arriving back in London. It was a joy he had rarely felt in Milan too, but he had felt it - from time to time. 

  He realised he might have actually grown tired of casual sex - something that he’d felt so proud of his ability to find in his early twenties. Now it just seemed too easy, somehow stale. As much as he’d tried not to admit it at the time, Emilia had offered him something different from that. There had been something more there, something a little more interesting. He had never really figured her out, never really understood what made her tick. It frustrated him now that he could not put his finger on what it was. 

  He drew on his cigarette and watched as a car slowly drifted across the road below him. It was going somewhere that he wasn’t, he didn’t care where - but he wanted to join it. To climb into it and let it take him somewhere else.

  Why do I always feel so alone? the thought flashed across his mind. Why is it so hard to connect with anyone? He tried to push these thoughts down and ignore them. He tried to reason that he had loads of mates and that he could meet anyone anytime he wanted - which this same night had made abundantly clear. But he couldn’t shake the thought and when it really came down to it, the only person he really cared about was Charlie, maybe one or two other old school friends, and his mum. None of whom he felt actually very close to these days. Emilia had been different.

  But she hadn’t, he decided sharply; it was just the alcohol he’d drunk causing a late-night sentimentality in him. Everyone felt alone sometimes. Besides, he’d royally fucked things up with her - there was definitely no going back to that. Better not to think about any of it - wallowing in the past would get him nowhere. He knew better than to follow that occasional unhappy voice in his head: happiness, fulfilment, were all just states of mind. He could sit there and let himself worry that he might have done something wrong, that he could have done things differently - or he could tell himself to move on. He could look to the future, to the next thing.

  The present was good and the future was even better. He was doing well, very well. He was making money, much more than his parents ever had. Emilia had never been someone he could have imagined marrying - their worlds, their styles, their views and goals, were all too different. He’d meet someone soon, that ticked those boxes. He just had to trust in the process.

  This little pep talk made himself feel better, he decided. He looked out into the night sky and smiled gently to himself. Everything would be okay, everything was okay.

  Feeling relieved, he took a final drag - and then another - and then stubbed out the Marlboro in an ashtray. The ashtray was from Milan, it said so in big red letters partially obscured by the few stale butts that his fresh one had just joined. He stared at the letters in silence for a moment, as if confused by some alien language. Then, seized by the sudden impulse, he picked it up and hurled it out into the street. It made a satisfying crash as it hit the pavement. He looked out at it, the smashed ceramic, and felt a weird emotion he would not have been able to put a name to. Perhaps some mix between regret and melancholy undercut with a silent, long-awaited rage. He wanted another cigarette but he felt a chill developing uncomfortably inside of him.

  Time for bed. He passed back through the living room, into his bedroom. With each step exhaustion caught up with him more and more. He stripped himself of his dressing gown, chucked the Marlboros and lighter back onto the desk and dropped back into the bed.

  The girl stirred. ‘Ugh, you stink,’ she complained, seemingly in her sleep, before turning away from him.

  ‘Hmm,’ he murmured. Prickly thoughts still nestled somewhere in his consciousness, but sleep began to reclaim him the instant his head hit the pillow. The two strangers lay in the bed, as far away from each other as could be, dead to the world.

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