The next morning, Oli made me breakfast and picked up another photograph. “Do you remember this one? You must remember this one!”
I looked at the photograph for ages, before finally looking up blankly at him. “Not really.”
“This was the night we first kissed, baby.” He said, looking romantically at me.
I felt disgusted by it for some reason, so I yelled at him, “Don’t call me that, okay?”
He looked disgruntled, but carried on. “So two days after that party, with a bit of mentoring from Alice, you were convinced into giving me a chance and calling me. I told you I would take you on a date, so you turned up in this stunning little purple dress. I drove us out of town to this lake, and lets just say you weren’t impressed at all. You actually had a go at me for not telling you where we were going, because you wore that short purple dress and it was freezing cold. You told me you expected me to take you to a restaurant or the cinema, not to some ‘swamp’ as you called it. I loved how hard you were to please to be honest. You were such a challenge for me…”
I sighed. “Can we just stop with the cringey, gross shit, and get on with it, yeah?”
He nodded. “Anyway, so there we were, at the lake right. And I bought you this fancy bottle of white wine… you know, the one in the picture. Sauvignon Blanc it was. It’s actually turned out to be your favourite wine, I bought it for you for every single date that came after it, because you went on and on about how good it was.”
I didn’t even know I liked wine. I guess all I could ever remember having back at college and University was bad tasting red wine that came out of a box. That stuff always left my mouth furry and always made me gag. I didn’t even know I liked wine, but apparently, I did!
Oli carried on. “So we get to the lake, and I pulled out my cigarettes. I started smoking in front of you, and you told me you had never had a smoke before in your life. I’m not going to lie, for someone who was, what 22? And you’d never had a cigarette in your life! Fuck that. Anyway, I just told you that they were great, and they took the edge off, and I gave you one. I think they were Marlboro? I haven’t a clue, but anyway, I gave you my lighter too, which mysteriously vanished that night and you smoked your first cigarette whilst drinking your favourite wine for the first time. It made you choke at first which made me laugh, but after that you seemed to manage it pretty well. You told me it made you feel freedom, because normally you wouldn’t let yourself do those kinds of things.”
I sniggered at him. “Pshhh. Did you spike my drink that night? I can’t ever imagining myself smoking. Ever!”
He smiled, got up, and walked over to the dining room where there was a handbag on the table. He brought it to me and held it open for me to see. I had several cheap lighters, three boxes of cigarettes, a pouch of tobacco and a tobacco tin with my name on it. “That’s all yours in there.” He said. “You smoked, usually three or four a day, but on a night out you could go through packets of them.”
I raised my eyebrow. “So the smoking thing, that was your fault then? For getting me into it.”
He awkwardly sat down. “I suppose. That night I gave you my blue hoodie to wrap yourself in, and we sat by my car, with the windows down listening to the radio. You got out at one point, and started singing and dancing to it, which I thought was really cute. So I came over and joined you, for one of the first times I would ever dance in my life. We danced together for a while and then I leant in and kissed you, which you responded by jumping up and wrapping your legs around my waist and completely making out with me really passionately while we swayed to the music.”
“Sounds nice.” I said. It did sound pretty romantic. But how the fuck was I supposed to love him now, knowing nothing about him or our past together. It was as if I had just met him, and yet he expected me to act like I’d known him for a whole year.
I heard the doorbell go. Oli got up to answer it. It was Mercedes, looking angrily at me through the door. She stormed in. “I left my phone here.” She yelled. She approached the coffee table.
“Why do you seem so angry at me? What did I do?” I asked her.
She turned to me with a sinister smile. “You ruined my relationship. That’s what you fucking did. But I’ve been told by Oli and Alice to shut up about it and pretend I ‘love you’ or whatever. I’m not a fake bitch, I want to say it how it is. But poor little Laura has to be treated like a child after she has banged her silly little head.” Her outburst finished, she grabbed her phone and then stormed out again.
“What?” I said to Oli, completely shocked.
He sat by my side and wrapped an arm around me. “You did no such thing. Let me explain.”

Notes