I Unlove You by Matthew Turner

before
slotting the ball into the net. Cheers and hugs and whoops and
whistles, Joey meeting them all with a shrug and smirk.
    “ Thank God, ” he said, after a cup
final a few years ago. “ Let ’ s get to the band
room and practice. ” He draped his arm over me as I dripped in sweat.
He scored four goals that afternoon and couldn ’ t care
less.
    I
doubt he remembers that game, although I do, because I feel the
same now as I did the day after that brutal match. Ever
since B shared our news, my stomach ’ s danced a dance it
can ’ t quite keep up to. I ’ m two steps behind
each thought, thinking about B , and then telling my
parents, and then money and houses and how the hell
we ’ ll cope.
    Before I grasp one, another fret
tumbles forward and attacks my chest with another blow.
    “ You should have seen her,
brother, ” Joey says, leaning over the small pub table and grasping my
wrist. “ She was filthy gorgeous. ”
    “ Huh? ” I say, bringing my attention back to
the present. I ’ ve sat across from
him for over ten minutes, and he hasn ’ t stopped talking
once.
    “ The girl. From last
night. ” He rolls his eyes, lifting his pint to his lips. “ Haven ’ t you been
listening? ”
    “ Oh, no. I mean, yeah. The girl
you met last night. ”
    He
laughs and twists his pipe between his fingers. “ What ’ s wrong with you
today? You sick? ”
    “ No, I ’ m
fine. ”
    “ You don ’ t look
it. ”
    “ Cheers. ”
    “ Well, you
don ’ t. You look like you haven ’ t slept in
days. ”
    I
rub my neck and work my hand over my face, recalling my
mirror-induced shock earlier this morning. Sleeping becomes tough
when your insides dance all night, but it ’ s even harder
to come by when the girl you love rests peacefully to your left.
For an entire hour I watched her, dumfounded by her relaxed
state.
    “ How are you so
calm? ” I whispered, unsure whether I was annoyed at her peace or
my own panic. “ Are you awake? ” I said, testing her
resolve.
    Not a peep. Not a sound. Not so
much a twitch of the nose.
    Despite being surrounded by covers, and her legs and arms,
I ’ ve never felt so alone in my life. I
don ’ t think I drifted off once, and as soon as the alarm
clock beeped, I rushed to the bathroom and met a stranger staring
back. A somewhat familiar stranger who shared some of my
appearance, but in the same instance, none.
    He had my chestnut eyes, but an
eerie string of red lightning strikes surrounded them.
    My usually thin and nonchalant
eyebrows jutted out in several directions, assumingly from the
non-stop tossing and turning.
    The skin around my eyes hangs in a
haunting manner, all dark, blotchy and cracked. My eyes are
normally my one saving grace on a face sporting goofy smiles and a
big bulky nose.
    Shaking my head, I hopped into the shower, hoping water
would cleanse me, and although it did - easing my woes and haggard
appearance - there ’ s only so much magic
it can muster.
    “ Fine, ” Joey says, clenching his pipe
between his teeth. “ Don ’ t you want to know what we got up to? Or should
I say, what she did to me? ”
    “ What who did to
you? ” I ask, my stomach churning further.
    “ Last night ’ s filthy
gorgeous minx. ”
    “ Absolutely
not. “
    “ Yeah you do. Trust
me. ”
    “ Doesn ’ t she have a
name? ”
    “ Of course she does.
It ’ s Jenna, or Sammie, or Gabrielle,
or … I
don ’ t know. Who cares? All that matters is her kinky
ways. ”
    I sigh, incapable of listening to
his seedy affairs. I struggle at the best of times, but present
woes considered, I stand no chance.
    “ There I was, minding my own
business behind the DJ booth, loading the next song and readying
myself for an onslaught of bass, when this leggy blonde saunters
over. ‘ I like your tattoos, ’ she said, eyeing me
up and down, and I swear to Bob Dylan himself, she undressed me
with her stare. ” Placing his pipe on the table, he takes a deep
breath. “ Finally, after all