Eternally North (Eternally North 1)

He groaned painfully, trying to reach back towards me. “Tash... wait… I–”

I swung open the door, not even acknowledging him, and shut it with force. As soon as the door was closed, he sped away in his stupid friggin’ Jeep and I heard him roar a loud, “Fuck my life!” as he pulled away from the curb where I stood like a lemon. But I ignored it, turned and stormed up the steps to the condo.

I slammed the front door and walked towards Tink’s room, in desperate need of my best friend. I could hear him through the walls giggling and moaning, obviously enjoying his time with Tate. Not wanting to interrupt, I fixed myself a large amaretto and Coke from the liquor cabinet, and went to my room to drown my sorrows. It may have only been early in the day, but hell, I figured it was evening somewhere in the world!

I walked straight to my iDock and turned it up to the highest volume, playing Taylor Swift’s ‘I Knew You Were Trouble’ on repeat, and sang at the top of my lungs, venting my anger and taking large gulps of my drink at every chorus, loving the burning sensation that was numbing my shattered emotions. I could totally relate to Ms. Swift – now there is a girl who knows about man trouble!

Feeling more-than-slightly buzzed, I sprawled out on my bed and smothered my mouth with my pillow which, to my vexation, smelled like the über-muscled wanker.

Fucking great!

I finally let myself remember every stabbing word he had said, and cracked from the impact of Tudor’s rejection. I let out a strangled, defeated moan and sobbed uncontrollably until sleep claimed me.

How was I so off the mark and, more importantly, how do I stop wanting him so bloody much?

Chapter 14

Drunk as a skunk

Tink was beyond livid.

After hearing a certain girly teen-angst song play for most of the afternoon through my supposedly well-insulated bedroom wall, he came to the correct conclusion that I was upset.

It was about eight in the evening when he retired from his all-day nookie session with Pookie – he’d exhausted himself, Tater-Tot and pretty much the entire workings of the Kama Sutra over the last twelve hours – and decided he should pop in to say hi while his thoroughly sexed lover recuperated in the comfort of his whopping waterbed.

Tink opened the bedroom door for a girly chat, but instead found me absolutely paralytic on the bed under a sea of papers. In my inebriated state I had decided to seek revenge on everybody’s favourite schizophrenic movie star, and had printed off several Google images of him in various paparazzi shots and movie promotional posters and scribbled over them in my thickest, brightest red pen.

Yep, you now know that I’m a psycho drunk, and, needless to say, this little episode scared Tink half to death.

“Wil! What the hell?” he shrieked as he picked up an A4 sheet of paper showcasing a half-dressed Tudor on the cover of ‘Men’s Health’ advertising his workout regime for the release of The Blade Reaper, his eyes gouged out and the words ‘We Are Nothing’ scrawled across his protruding chest.

I lifted my head from my current art project – drawing devil horns and blackened teeth on a head shot of Mr. North – and smiled drunkenly at Tink. “My fabulous fairy is here, finally, after screwing his boyfriend’s brains out all day! How nice of you to take a break from your back-door pummelling to witness the head-fuck that is my life!”

Tink opened his mouth in shock and began sifting through the mass of desecrated posters, his face expressing every freaked-out thought he was feeling.

“I’m going to let that bitchy comment go seeing as though you have clearly lost your marbles. So I’ll ask again: What. The. Heck. Happened?”

I fell back, and giggled at the room spinning. “What happened? Well, where do I begin? He who shalt be nameless took me ice-skating whilst you were bumping uglies, and once again I massively cocked up and fell on top of him. Yep, and I, Natasha Munro, gave him, Mr. Unemotional, a huge, stonking hard-on!” Hiccup. “… then he played that song on his phone and I couldn’t speak at first, but then I asked if he fancied me and I stupidly told him that I liked him. Stupid, stupid, stupid!” I hit myself in the head repeatedly.

Tink grabbed both hands to stop me.

I looked into the worried eyes of my best friend. “But why that song if he doesn't want me? I didn’t know what it all meant, and then he shouted at me and told me ‘we were nothing’ and that he never wanted to see me again, said I’m not his type,” hiccup, “… and, and then I came home and got this bottle –”

I reached for the now near-empty bottle of booze and put a hand on my head, “Hey! Where did all the amaretto go?”

I began looking under my bed to see where the pesky liquid had run off to.

Oops! I fell off the bed and onto the floor with a thud. “… Anyway, I came home and Mr. Amaretto and I made friends and had a little party for two.”

Tink stroked my hair and I pushed out my bottom lip in sorrow. “I tried to get away from thinking of him but he was all over the internet. If he was a normal person I could easily forget, but his first name got three million results alone, three million! So, I decided to erase him, scribble him out,” hiccup “... now he is nothing too. Just like me.”

Tink turned away, trying to quell his fury and the vein on his forehead began to protrude. “Tate!!!!” he screamed, sounding remarkably like a strangled cat. I just laughed until my stomach began to ache.

He faced me again. “Ham roll, I don’t understand what happened, what song? You’re talking nonsense. Did you tell Tudor you liked him?”