Nat

by Beth

Nat looked at the small white pill in her hand, ‘just think of it like this’ said Tori, ‘If you had a headache you’d take a paracetamol so you didn’t have to deal with the pain, this is the same, just let yourself escape it for a few hours’ she grinned. Nat clamped it into her mouth before she could change her mind. Tori squeezed her shoulder, ‘right I’ll go get us some drinks!’

Nat hadn’t wanted to go out, but Tori was sick of her wallowing. She’d broken up with Jono and even though she knew it was right, that she was only answering the alarm bells, she was still left with a feeling of hopelessness that had burrowed down to her bones and seemed to cloud every thought with a bleakness she couldn’t shake. Nat had met Jono in the library, she was searching along the shelves for a book she needed and as she turned the corner there he was sat with his head in it. He was so confident and sure of himself, that’s what had excited her about him at first, but she came to realise that he was also prone to depression and paranoia that left him locked into his own pains, licking his wounds and completely unreachable. During their last argument Jono had taken her bag and stormed off. He had her phone, house keys and wallet. She had sat in the park opposite his office all day, too scared to confront him, but with nowhere else to go.

Tori returned with 4 bottles of beer. ‘How are you feeling’ she asked excitedly. ‘I don’t feel anything’ Nat sighed. ‘Aw come on, let’s have a drink’ Tori laughed. Nat stood drinking the beer and started to feel a tingling in her fingertips and shins and the top of her head. Then a wave of warmth flooded up from her knees almost making her wretch. It was followed by another and another, wave upon wave that made her head spin. She gripped the bar with one hand and turned to Tori, her heart racing. Tori was wide-eyed beaming at her. A barman passed carrying a huge pina colada with 4 sparklers sticking out of it. Nat and Tori both turned and gasped, awestruck, ‘wow’ Nat mouthed, ‘it’s like an explosion of glitter’. She looked at Tori and they cracked up laughing.

Nat and Tori danced until they were kicked out of the bar then wandered back to the flat, stopping to stare up at the light from a lamppost or to stand under a particularly beautiful tree. Cars and people seemed to pass by in fast forward, everyone else was in a rush. They made it home and fell onto Nat’s bed, heads on the same pillow. ‘That was fun wasn’t it’ Tori said. ‘It was’ Nat said, ‘thanks Tori’ she said and she meant it, but she’d already started to feel the sadness slowly creeping its way back in.

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