Cherry Coloured - Alex Turner

10. She's My Collar

  "Hey, it's Maeve. I just wanted to see if you're okay after last week."

  The nerves kicked in the moment she'd sent the message. Maeve quickly put the phone down and found something to do in the meantime of waiting for an answer. She didn't want to seem too eager.

  As all things did, it took longer for Alex to reply than she expected. He was working numb-nut, she reminded herself, but when she eventually heard her phone go off, her skin rippled with goosebumps and her stomach began to churn.

  "Yeah, I'm fine. Sorry you got dragged along," he'd responded.

  Maeve inhaled a deep breath and typed back a message. "It's fine. I'm sorry for what I said yesterday but I'm here if you wanna talk. I don't know what's going on but sometimes it's easier to talk to people completely out of the mix?"

  She hated extending olive branches. It wasn't her way of doing things. Especially towards people that had treated her as Alex had. Not long ago had she forgotten him completely and now was wrapped up in him all over again. Her flat mate Chuck would kill her if she knew what she was doing. He didn't believe in second chances in relation to things like this.

  "I don't need to talk."

  "Are you sure? Because I'm more than happy to help."

  "I don't need your help so don't bother."

  Maeve scoffed at his response, kind of pissed off with him. "Alright then, I'll just go fuck myself."

  "You do that."

  She felt like screaming into her palm reading that. When he was in a foul mood he sure as hell knew how to wind her up. Convincing herself not to bother with him and continue on with her life, she threw her phone down onto her settee and abandoned it until she'd calmed herself.

Cockfaced wanker, she thought to herself. 'You do that' fucking prick.

After watching half a late-night-telly show, Maeve eventually gave in. What she hated about Alex was how alike to her he was. She knew that she'd said things like that to someone before in a situation where she wanted help but didn't know how to ask for it. Maeve knew that if it were her in Alex's position, she would be up all night crushed by regret and wishing for the other person to see past her sharp words and offer her what she was too afraid to ask for.

With a loud sigh, Maeve took up her phone and wrote out one last attempt to console Alex before she gave up on him for good. There must've been some part of her that wanted to believe there was still good in him. A part that wanted what they'd thrown out to come back.

"I get that it's a defence mechanism but you don't need to be a dick. Especially since I don't owe you an ounce of my time after what you did to me. Stop pushing people away so that you can wallow in your own self pity." She read over what she'd written and told herself to be nicer.

"I'm here to talk if you want. You're welcome to come over but I cannot stress enough that this is a one time offer. I don't want to hear from you after." She gave him her address and instructions on how to get up to her flat. "Press the 5 when you get here and I can buzz you in. You don't have to, but the offer is there."

  Maeve waited on her phone for five minutes for a response and received nothing. She left it alone and had something to nibble and still, nothing. Even as the minutes ticked by the hour, she remained hopeful long after she expected he would never send her a response.

  Like an addiction, she checked the screen of her phone every ten minutes, wishing for something. Anything. And yet, Alex seemed to become a ghost. Her heavy eyes directed themselves to the black clock hanging in the kitchen and briefly closed upon seeing the time. It was already long past midnight and Maeve was beginning to give up entirely.