Alexa's Story Chapter 2

Chapter Two

I finally reached The Station, my local pub, at a quarter past nine. I saw Laura waiting in our usual corner with a pint in front of her and an untouched vodka and orange, which I knew would be for me. I made my way over to her and smiled apologetically for being a quarter of an hour late and offered her a cigarette to say sorry.
“Damn supermarket”, I said.
“Is that why you’re late?” she asked.
“Yeah, I got out of work at a decent time but I had to stop at Tesco’s to pick up some food and the queues were horrendous. Full of parents trying to buy up the entire organic section and kids trying to sneak crisps and chocolates into the trolley without the parents noticing.”
“Sounds like fun”, she commented dryly.
After our initial hellos we got down to the real nitty gritty of our weekly catch up sessions.
“Do you remember Katy from Uni? She worked in Graffiti with us for a while.” Graffiti was the bar we had worked in together.
“Wasn’t she that little one who always bounced around like she was on speed and thought she was the best?” I asked.
“Yep, that’s the one”, Laura said.
“What about her?”
“Well…” she waited for a moment to keep me in suspense, took a deep breath and continued, “I heard the other day that she’s moved to Birmingham and moved in with her partner!”
“What’s wrong with that?” I said, confused. Plenty of our friends had moved in with their other half, or had moved house.
“Well, her partner’s 56 and female.”
“What!” I screamed, practically choking on the sip of vodka I had just taken, “But wasn’t Katy going out with one of the professors at one point? And I’m sure that there was some sort of mini-saga involving her and one of the blokes that lived next door to us in third year!”
“Yes, that’s the same Katy”, Laura explained patiently, “but it seems it was all a front to cover up her true feelings. Apparently she’s been seeing this older woman in secret for quite a while, and she came out to her parents before moving in with her in Birmingham!”
“Crikey! Who would ever have thought it?”

Then, just as I was about to tell Laura what I had heard about another friend of ours, I heard someone shout my name.
“Alexa! Alexa!”
I turned round to see who so desperately wanted my attention and as my glance swept over the crowd my eyes got interrupted by a very good looking man with corn rowed hair, amazing brown eyes and chocolate coloured skin. I forced myself to continue looking around the bar to find out who was calling me. I realised it was Liz, one of the few friends that hadn’t moved out of the area and who I usually bumped into on a Friday night.

She made her way over to our table and squeezed herself onto the seat squashed up next to the wall and promptly announced that she hated men. Before she actually went into any detail as to why she never wanted to even talk to a man again I went to the bar and got another round in, to keep us going through Liz’s tale of woe.

As it turned out nothing major had happened, just that one of the many men that is always after her had actually not rung her when he said he would. The conversation quickly turned back to gossiping about others and Laura began talking about John, our old supervisor from Graffiti who she had bumped into a few weeks ago in London. He’d recently become manager of one of the hippest bars in the city and I for one was totally jealous of him for doing something I always wished I had done. Of course I was really pleased that he had done so well for himself, but in my head I dreamt of being in his shoes.

I began to moan about my boring job to Laura and Liz, who had heard every single whinge and complaint that I had ever made about Global Group Ltd (lack of biscuits in the tea room, grey clock, no lift), and Laura cut me off before I could even start on the fact that the horrible grey walls didn’t even match the horrible grey clock. She held up her hand, “Stop right there hun, we’ve heard this too many times. If you really hate your job so much why don’t you quit? And do something that you really want to do. Get out there and enjoy yourself a bit.” That’s my straight talking best friend for you.
“Enjoy myself? At work?” I rolled my eyes, “Don’t be silly, it’s not meant to be enjoyable.”
The girls looked at me as if I was mad. I had just said something I thought to be true and I reckon that most of the population would agree with me. But it was beginning to dawn on me that it was possible that not everyone saw work the way I did.

I’ll give you an example. Laura’s a policewoman (or female police officer if that’s more PC for you– no pun intended). She entered a graduate program after finishing university and she’s worked her way up and is currently working in CID and loves every minute of it. Then I thought of Liz. Liz who had to repeat god only knows how many years of college in order to get the grades she needed to head to university, only to end up working, whilst studying, for a security company who she began full time with once she completed her degree simply because she’d enjoyed being able to watch all the concerts that she worked at for free!

What with all the noise going on around me in The Station I decided to push the subject to the back of my head and told the girls instead about the black leather boots I had seen in Oxford Street on my lunch break yesterday.

We stayed drinking till about midnight, talking to friends and being introduced to friends of friends, catching up on their lives, dancing every now and again between the cramped tables when a good song came on and singing every now and again to the bad ones. Every one got fairly drunk and by the time we began to spill out onto the streets we were all in high spirits (again, no pun intended). A quick stop at the chippy and some tipsy hugs goodbye and the next thing I knew I had got home and was lying fully clothed on my bed deciding whether I could actually be bothered to get up again to take my make-up off and hang up my clothes. I decided it was easier to stay where I was.