Chapter 19: Shiny and PinkThe young woman—more of a girl, really—a pretty little thing, sat alo a small indoor table in a secluded er of a fashionable boutique café. On this blisteringly hot and bright Sunday m, she sciously projected a look of youthful femininity: dainty, open-toed, high-heeled sandals sparkled at the arap; white stogs, patterned with flower blossoms, disappeared beh a short skirt in burnt e, high-waisted and tight, ched in by a row of heavy buttons. Her makeup was glossy, bright and youthful. Her top, bd sheer, form-fitting and butto the bad ruffled at the shoulders, hi the bra beh and emphasised her curves but left her slim arms bare, with a pair of delicate bangles glinting at the wrist. Twin, curved strips of silver twirled like DNA strands at her ears. Her lips, shiny and pink, glimmered in the subdued light of the café. A narrow, pink hairband decorated with tiny bows pinned back her long blonde hair.

  The girl sighed impatiently.

  She sat as far aossible from the rge windows at the front of the café. Her attention switched frequently between her phone oable and her image in one of the many small, round mirrors that decorated the café walls. Her refle seemed to her as delicately wrought and precisely painted as the mirror’s filigree frame of iwinial threads. She smiled, weakly, nervously tug an errant strand of blonde hair back behind her ear, and tried agaier, she seemed to think, giving a satisfied little nod.

  A small por cup of cooling green tea sat oable. A faint semi-circle, rose-tinted, staihe edge of the cup where she’d taken a sip. She turhe cup so the lipstick smudge faced towards the empty seat opposite. Squirming slightly, she crossed her legs at the knee, sitting straight, chest out, head turned slightly to one side to present what she hoped came across as a particurly feminine profile for anyone—a specifieone—walking through the door. Poised, but not prim; posed, and calm. But she couldn’t maintain the posture for long, and slouched, and flicked a g her phone and once again at the mirror and wondered, For fuck’s sake, Julia, where are you?

  The waiting was killing me. Hours! Hours I’d spent preparing for this, searg for just the right outfit, crafting the right look for this meeting with Julia. Hour spent online, brushing up on makeup and fashion tutorials, trying to decide just what the “right look” could possibly be for meeting an ex-girlfriend who’d discovered the man that dumped her a decade ago was now a young woman—more of a girl, really—a pretty little thing she’d found curled up and puking ioilet of a nightclub st Friday night.

  I hadn’t even noticed the text from her until te Saturday afternoon. I’d no memory of getting home. The st I remembered, clearly—far too clearly—was kissing Dan on the mouth. It retty sporadic after that, until waking up in bra and panties in my bed te Saturday m with a howling headache and a case of the shakes, my clothes in a pile on the floor. There’d beey of remorse in the early hungover hours of Saturday m, vivid and lurid fshes of indistinct memory as I huddled under bedsheets, hiding from the painfully bright daylight: the bright trast of painted nails against the sharp crisp whiteness of a man’s work shirt, my hand, his chest; the intense st of bamboo ah as he leaned close; our lips, meeting, parting; his tongue, and mine…

  But I was beyond feeling sick at the thought of kissing him. Too much drink, not enough food. And those pills. Mixing mediixing booze. Stress and exhaustion. Fuck it! It was in the past. I’d been enjoying myself until that point. Sort of. After weeks of social isotioing back out into the public had felt—necessary.

  Most of Saturday ent lurking in darkness in dy’s little apartment, hiding from sunshine and the world and nursing the worst hangover I could remember suffering in years. I’d thought myself more or less immuo hangovers, but maybe I’d pushed it a little too hard st night. It was at least noon before the shakes subsided and I could even sip water or pte nibbling at some leftovers surviving in the fridge.

  Eventually I thought to check my phone. And after scrolling and studiously ign a pair of texts from Dan, the message:

  Meet me at Café d’Eon. 11am Sunday. Let’s talk about D. Little Caesar.

  The words were without meaning when I first read them. Shrugging, I’d tossed the phone aside and lurched towards the shower, eager to wash away st night’s filth and the lingering phantom of Dan’s toubsp; And the moment the first cold spray spped my naked body I gasped as another memory from the night before came crashing back.

  The stall. Throwing up. Pu sting of vomit. A woman, helping – somehow familiar. Taking trol – fixing my makeup – putting me back together to get me home with some sembnce of dignity intabsp; And then a umbling from the distant recess of memory…

  Julia.

  She’d said my name: David.

  How the fuck had she reized me?

  And if her, who else?

  Author's Notes:

  This chapter was written following a sixteen-year hiatus. After leaving David passed out drunk at the feet of his ex-girlfriend, as expined in that chapter's notes, I rgely gave up writing. There were a number of real-world reasons, but irospect those were simply excuses. I began stant as practice towards trying my hand at writing and publishing something professionally. This was something I had long told myself I wanted—dreamed of, even—but clearly, I hadn't wa enough.

  I didn’t pletely abandon writing during this sixteen-year period. A few times I made a few half-hearted attempts at pig up stant again, but these went nowhere. I rewrote the start of book 2, and fleshed out the enter with Steele’s secretary, but that was all.

  Something ged in 2022. I ’t say precisely what it erhaps the pandemic pyed a part in this, though life was so excruciatingly busy during that period that I wasn’t one of those people who started baking sh bread, let alone wrote a here was a ge in work circumstances. My father died. These things had an impact. I really don’t know. I just know that one day, sitting at my desk after a long day at work, I booted up my personal ptop and started writing again.

  I wrote: “The young woman—more of a girl, really—a pretty little thing, sat alo a small indoor table in a secluded er of a fashionable boutique café,” and over the month or two, finished what was then chapter four.

  This chapter (or rather, these chapters since I've reahe structure of the novel) is in some ways unique. I started it in a state of ay: did I even know how to write anymore? Did I remember the story well enough to pick it up again? Would anyone want to read it after so long—or was this a moal waste of time?

  Banced against that: my inal goal—t a long piece of writing to clusion—still hovered over me; I really, really wao prove to myself I could do that. And pig the story up again, I found that I also still cared about it. It still seemed like a good story, and one worth finishing.

  Another unique element to this chapter is that it was written in solitude. What I mean by that is that it was written without the be of feedback or encement (as was the inal run of stant). After the chapter ublished, I tried my hand at Patreon. When I first started in 2007, moisation tools didn’t really exist in the same way. With it set up, there’s now always some encement, some feedbad criticism. (https:///fakeminsk, if you’re ied.)

  Pig up writing again was exg for me, and the respoo its posting encing, but these new writing habits weren’t really embedded, yet. I mao rewrite the end of chapter 3, plete (what was then) chapter 4 and 5, and start what I initially called the “interlude”—and floundered, once again. But more on that ter.