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Chapter 25

Noah

"Shit, what time is it?" I reached across to my phone which for some reason was now on the bedside table. I'm pretty sure, I left that in the kitchen last night.

Dead.

"Shit!"

Where's Alice? She must have a charger spare somewhere. What am I still doing here? I allow my head to fall back to the pillow and let out a hefty huff as I pull the duvet back over naked body.

"Alice?"

Still no answer, I look across to her bedside table to check the clock. 10:15am! "Fuck!" How have I been asleep for so long? Why didn't she wake me up?

I force myself out of bed and pull my clothes on from the previous day. Disgusting, I know but what can I do?
Once dressed, I hunt around for a charger. The guilt inside of me is killing me, my mind races back to last night and Chelsea's call which I left to ring off and ended up spending the rest of the night in bed with Alice. She's going to be so angry with me for not returning her call.

I'll have to come up with a reasonable excuse when I do eventually find a charger. "Where the fuck is it?" I search almost everywhere with no joy but then my eyes come across the white charging port. Finally!

"Fuck!" I exclaim as I realise that Alice has taken the charging cable with her to work. Just my luck. I need to get home.

As I make my way to the door, I notice a piece of paper stuck to the back of it.

'Sorry Noah, had to go to work. Didn't want to wake you. Make yourself at home for as long as you need. Spare keys are on the kitchen surface. Please lock up. Alice xx'

I grab her spare keys from the side and make my way out of the apartment.

~~~

After what seemed like the longest train journey back to my own apartment, I finally made it home and plugged my phone in to charge.

I decided, as I waited for the charge to take hold I needed to wash last nights events from my body, not that it was a bad night but the feeling of guilt is making me feel dirtier than I am.

Once dressed, I pick up the courage to check my phone. Knowing full well there could possibly be a barrage of texts from Chelsea but to my shock. There was nothing. Thankfully, with my phone being off the journalists couldn't get through so no missed calls waiting for me. Maybe, I'm yesterday's news now and it's all calmed down now.

I think back to the conversation I had with Alice last night about keeping my Instagram ticking over with posts so decide to draft a new post. I'll use one of the shots from my 'Peaky Blinders' shoot the other day. The photographer had sent the final copies over yesterday afternoon but due to everything else I didn't really look at them properly but after scrolling through them now, they are a amazing, the edits have been made to perfection. He's actually made it look like they were taken back in the 1920's. Impressive.

As I load up my Instagram, my DMs are flooded with messages but decide to revert back to type and leave them unread.

Hmmm, that's weird. I have a notification to say Alice has tagged me in a post but after clicking on the notification it looks like she's deleted it. That's odd. She never deletes her posts, maybe it wasn't getting the likes she was expecting. I'm guilty of doing that a handful of times, posting and if the likes are not coming in like they usually do, I delete and repost later on in the day or the following day. Sad isn't it? But I hate having a post that flops, I know it shouldn't but it makes me feel insecure.

I don't think I'll have that problem with what I'm about to post. The close up shot of me, holding a glass of whiskey with half a smoked cigarette hanging from my lips, the smoke from the cigarette clouding around me perfectly. The scene looks set and I love it.

'By order of the Peaky f*****g Blinders' I decide to go with a tried and tested quote from the show as my caption and hashtag the shit out of it, hopefully this shot will open up a new audience to my work. Fingers crossed.

Posted.

I'll allow that to do its thing, I'll check back in half an hour or so to make sure the likes are coming in as expected.

In the meantime, I scroll through my timeline and catch up with the posts I've missed since last night, liking the odd few as my finger scrolls.

My scrolling is interrupted as a call comes through from Emma. "Hey Em, how's things?"

"Much better for you, you'll be pleased to know. Your story in the 'news' has been pushed out in pretty spectacular fashion. Do you remember Dylan? Used to be on our books before doing Love Island?"

My face screws up in confusion. Yeah, I remember Dylan, he was a model I'd worked with once who had shot to reality TV fame after appearing on the last series of Love Island in the summer, who has since found himself a bigger agency since coming out and having over a million new followers. Clearly believing his new found fame is warranted.

"Yeah, what about him?"

"Well, he has been caught outside of a nightclub having sex with some girl. Photos and videos flying around everywhere. So I think we can safely say, you've been forgotten about."

"I'm not sure, it's that easy Emma just to be forgotten about. You know what these tabloids are like. They won't just leave me alone at the drop of his trousers."

"Wanna bet? No disrespect, Noah but you're not in his league any more. He is much bigger news so just do me a favour?"

"Of course, what's that?"

"Stay out of fucking trouble and away from other people's phone cameras for a while, yeah?"

"I'll try my best. Thanks for the update, Em."

And with that, the phone went dead. What is it with people not saying goodbye anymore?

I had felt like a weight had been lifted pretty quickly, my shoulders felt lighter almost as soon as I had put the phone down.

As much as it was nice to have the weight of that lifted from me, my stomach was still filled with the guilt of last night. I needed to see Chelsea and I'd be honest, I had to be. I couldn't hide this from her, I can't walk around with this guilt around her. I was serious about this girl and I had to prove it to her.

I knew she took lunch at 1pm, I had half an hour to get to her shop and surprise her for a lunch date. I'd never make it in time with the trains being as fucked as they are today so pulled up my uber app and book myself a cab.

I wonder if she'd appreciate flowers? Or would that just be a sign that I've done something wrong?

***