Google Can Wait.

-

The dimly lit cafe buzzed with the soft hum of conversation as I sat across from Sheila, a friend I had known for over two decades. We’d weathered some storms together, we’d shared joys and heartaches. We’d even, once or twice, shared a bed. This evening, though, there was an atmosphere. A palpable shift, a space between us that had never been there before. I could feel something was eating at her. It was unsettling.


As we sipped our wine, Sheila's excused herself to powder her nose. Honestly, I thought, women’s noses must weigh a ton, what with being caked in all that powder. Anyway she left her phone behind. I don’t now remember exactly what the reason was - one of those sudden ‘oh, I wonder how much nose powder weighs?’ type of questions I suppose. But I picked it up to Google something and there, staring me in the face, I saw a text draft addressed to Steve i.e., me, that she had not yet mustered up the courage to send.


"Hey, I’m done with you. Go away.”


You know when they say in stories ‘My heart sank’? Well, this was one of those moments. Actually I was flabbergasted and alarmed. Sheila, my best, best friend for years, was about to send a message ending our friendship.


This was not good. I sat there, frozen, staring at the message. Questions swirled in my mind, and a knot tightened in my stomach. What did I do? What had gone wrong? Why did she feel this way? And do you know what? The thing that got me the most? Not my best friend’s worries and concerns. Not what was eating Sheila. Oh no. What worried me the most was the pain of rejection. What a selfish twat I am, I thought. No wonder she wants to send me the text.


She came back from the bathroom. I finished my wine, smiled, leaned over and kissed her cheek. “I have to go now,” I said. I left.


Days turned into weeks. Sheila, once the cornerstone of my support system, had vanished from my life with my few cold words. I tried to console myself with the idea that it was the least I could do. Make it easy for my old friend. Save her the angst. I concentrated a whole lot on sorting out my book collection, ordering by author, genre, alphabet, cover colour and size. After a few weeks it was getting to the point where I couldn’t find anything I wanted to read. But at least I was busy.


The ache of the severed friendship lingered like a persistent shadow. Conversations with mutual friends hinted that Sheila was struggling. Cleanest cut, soonest healed I consoled myself. But the void left by her absence grew, nevertheless, the unspoken words of the unsent message echoed in my mind.


In the quiet moments of solitude, I replayed our shared memories, searching for clues to the fracture that had torn us apart. The laughter we once shared felt like distant and far away. Like someone else’s existence. And all of it accompanied by the bitter taste of an expedient farewell.


Months passed, and the wound remained raw. One day, a chance encounter brought Sheila back into my life. It was in Aldi’s supermarket. She looked at me like I was a pile of seagull shit.


“Why?” she asked, sliding her trolley out of somebody’s way.


“The text,” I said, with what I hoped was look of polite martyrdom.


“What text?” she asked.


“The one you didn’t send,” I said, “I thought I would do the decent thing,” I said, “save you the trouble.”


“No, seriously,” she said, “what text?”


“The one you were about to send to me that said ‘Hey, I’m done with you. Go away.’.”


She looked nonplussed. Well, I think that’s what she looked like, never actually having been sure what nonplussed looks like. Thoughtful anyway.


She pushed her trolley passed me and went on to buy some eggs.


Later, I got a text from Sheila.


“It was for Steve, (that’s the builder Steve, as opposed to Steve, my friend and outrageous dickhead). He was trying to over charge me and was getting nasty. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about that night. You twat.”


Oh. I thought.


That was five years ago. I still apologise at every verse end. Sheila says she has forgiven me for “being the most selfish dickhead in the solar system”, but I don’t think she has. Not really. But at least we can be friends again. I don’t look at other people’s phones anymore. Google can wait.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Eli

-
Eli squinted, the unforgiving sun blazing relentlessly above. It has been years. A lifetime of this relentless brightness. His aged face, which bore the creases of someone who had lived through a particular era, looked out over the shimmering dunes of the desert, which seemed to go on forever. The tales of a bygone era, when the celestial expanse shimmered with countless stars and the serene glow of the moon illuminated the world, had faded into obscurity. Here, the past seemed to slip away, the moon a distant memory.  He embodied a bygone era, a living testament to a time when Earth's deteriorating ecosystems compelled a frantic quest for a fresh abode. This desolate, scorching planet, Proxima B, had provided the solution. But what is the price?  However, a gust of transformation swept through. The days gradually and inevitably became cooler. The sun appeared to sink lower in the sky. After months of careful observation, Eli confirmed a clear trend: the sun was gradually lowe...
Read more

The Kite.

-
He was definitely what you would call a weird man. No doubt about it. Bartholomew Wizzle lived in a charming little town that was like something out of a story book. The streets and alleyways were all narrow and twisty, with interesting nooks and surprising squares. The buildings all ancient and astonishingly close together. There was a Main Street, but it was mostly a market place and although the Main Street was paved with large stone slabs, the rest of the streets and alleyways were cobbled with the local blue-grey cobble stones from the silvery river that ran through the town. The town was surrounded by whispering forests and rolling hills. It was delightfully old fashioned and quaint. You wouldn't call Mr. Wizzle a regular guy. Nope. Not in a month of Sundays. What he was though, was a master of the esoteric arts, a dealer in anomalies, and a merchant of wonders. Hidden along a winding cobblestone alley, his little shop held an assortment of oddities, many of which would amaze...
Read more

The Spinney

-
When I was a boy, aged about nine or ten, I think, I used to ride my bicycle to a long, narrow wood. It was about a mile long and perhaps a quarter of a mile wide and filled with old, tall deciduous trees. There was a path down through the middle, from which it was not possible to see the edges of the wood in summertime. The path crossed the same stream three times along its length. It was called The Spinney.   A liminal space between a main road and a vast golf course, which was strictly private and where angry men in odd trousers and check argyle pullovers would shout at you if you ventured out of the Spinney and into the bright green sunshine. But it didn’t matter because the Spinney was, in my imagination, a vast and endless forest stretching for all eternity and filled with beasts and birds, hidden dangers, lurking wild men and aliens.   I went often with friends. We would dam the streams and race along the path through the middle. We would cook sausages on sticks over a ...
Read more