The Blueprint by Marcus Bryan Read Free Book Online Page B

again in the next couple of months.
    I spent eleven
minutes leaning against the bar, all in a panic, looking anywhere
except at the staff, searching for the rest of them. Again, to no
avail. It was starting to look increasingly likely that I’d been
ditched.
    ‘You’re never
going to get served if you keep acting like a meerkat,’ I heard the
person next to me say.
    ‘Sorry,’ I
muttered in reply. ‘Just looking for some people.’
    ‘Let me guess;
it’s turned out you’re stuck in a flat full of smokers as
well?’
    ‘ Smoking
area… ’ I whispered to myself. ‘ I hadn’t thought of
that… ’ I was just about to scarper off to follow this new lead
when I heard the voice in my ear again, closer this time.
    ‘Sorry, the
music’s quite loud; what did you say?’ When I turned to face her, I
suddenly decided against repeating my previous answer.
    ‘Er… yeah.
Yeah I am. You as well?’
    She
smiled.
    ‘Apparently
so. Fancy keeping me company until they show up again?’
    ‘I guess I
could do that,’ I replied, with a slightly unsure smile of my own.
‘Can I, er…can I get you anything to drink?’
    ‘I’d better
take charge of that part of the operation; if you’ve been at a
nearly empty bar for fifteen minutes and they still haven’t served
you, I think it’s about time you took the hint.’
    ‘Mine’s a
single vodka and lemonade, please. It was –ah – a good point, and
well made.’ I was glad the lights were low, because my face went
beetroot red as I said it, but fuck it - at least I said something.
After three days of being essentially mute, I was engaging a real,
breathing human being in conversation .
    ‘I hope you
realise you’re still the one that’s paying for them.’
    I quite
happily dug a tenner out of my wallet and handed it to her.
    As I’d
expected, one glance from her made the barman throw down the tea
towel he’d been using to wipe up spilt trebles and come rushing
over to take her order. She told him it, he poured them out, she
took them, he told her how much it was, she handed over the money,
he handed over the change, she turned to me, passed on the change,
and said:
    ‘One vodka and
lemonade. Want to find a seat?’ I nodded and we set off towards the
upstairs section, me following behind her. Where everyone else was
stumbling into one another, trying to dance and drink at the same
time and spilling sticky booze across the floor in the attempt, she
seemed to float effortlessly through the crowd. I was having a hard
time keeping up with her, but I was determined that I wasn’t going
to get left on my own again, even if it meant I got a
couple-hundred people’s drinks spilled over me in doing so.
    I can’t recall
anything we talked about that night, as we sat on the sofas tucked
away in the corner of the Union, but I can’t remember many awkward
pauses either. All of the questions, all of the jokes, all of the
stories which I’d been mentally writing over the previous week -
the previous summer, even - but hadn’t worked up the courage to say
suddenly found an outlet, and yet none of them had to force their
way into the conversation. Even when I’d burned through it all I
found myself with a whole raft of other things I wanted to ask her,
wanted to find out about her, and wanted to know her opinion about.
It only was after an hour, maybe even one and a half, that either
of us remembered our housemates.
    ‘Jesus, how
long does it take to give yourself cancer?’ she wondered out loud.
She didn’t seem overly concerned about going and finding them,
though.
    ‘I know; it
kind of makes me wish I was a smoker.’
    ‘Well thanks a
lot!’ she retorted.
    ‘Oh, fuck,
no-no-no-no, I didn’t mean it like that. I just mean that it’s
going to be a bit of a burden to find someone interesting like you
to hang out with every time they go for a fag.’
    ‘Not a bad
recovery. Bit saccharine, though, if I might venture a criticism.’
She smiled, thoughtfully, then