Never us, I hope.

"See that girl there?" I nod towards a largish girl, wearing a blue skirt standing underneath the stairs to the bar, talking to her boyfriend. We are sitting on benches not so far away, which stare directly at them, eating satay chicken sandwiches.

Or, I am eating a satay chicken sandwich. On the way back from the pharmacy (I wanted to get something for my throat - the pharmacist sold me Difflam. I hate Difflam. I also wanted to get a new prescription for my pills, but they told me I would have to go back to the same pharmacy I got it from. I was annoyed), we walked past the sandwich stand where the Sandwich Boy (who at a later stage introduced himself to me as Andrew) used to be.

Today, there is a sandwich girl there, standing behind a box of good looking rolls. We walk past, and I glance over. We walk a little further, and I glance back. Eventually I decide to go back and get one. Satay chicken, or chicken avacado. I stare at them for a while, then turn to Boy and ask him,

"What do I feel like? Avacado or satay?"

"I don't know." He says.

"They're both pretty good." The girl offers helpfully.

Choosing the right roll: the hard life. I ended up getting a chicken satay one, and made a mental note to tell her to make combination ones the next time I saw her, should I have this problem again.

So, there we were sitting on the benches, me eating my chicken satay roll and boy eating a tuna bun, which had come under the pretence of being a chicken roll (he was not too impressed when he opened the "Chicken" labelled sandwich to find that it was fish), when I spotted Jenny and her boyfriend.

"Which one?" Boy asks, wiping mayonnaise off the side of his mouth.

"The one in the blue."

"Yeah?"

"She was at my school. She used to be quite... sort of, thin. Like me."

"No way. What happened?"

"Well. I think she came to uni, then started going out with that guy," I nodded towards Jerry, "and the relationship was really bad and became depressed and ate a lot and became quite fat.... in fact, she's having an argument with him now."

We watch Jerry's face turn sour as Jenny tells him something. He storms away, and she follows slowly. Like a duck, I think. He looks around, sees her and begins to walk faster. She waddles a little faster and calls out to him. He turns around with an angry face and asks her what she wants. She tries to reason with him, but he storms away. She waddles off in the other direction.

Probably to cry.

"Wow." I say to Boy softly. "He seems like a real jerk."

"I know."

We sit in silence for a short while.

"I'll never walk away from you." I tell him. "Even if I'm mad. Maybe I'll sulk, and not talk to you. And then you will hold me and kiss me and say silly things, and I'll be trying hard not to smile..."

"...and then I'll ask you if it takes a lot of energy to be that grumpy..."

"...and then I'll end up smiling and hate you. For a little while."

We giggle at this commentary of our real life situations.

"I'll never walk away from you either."

We sit in silence, staring at the empty space where Jenny and Jerry had stood not so long ago.

"Do you think we'll ever be like that?" I ask him.

"No." He says, without hesitation. "Never."

previous - next; thanks, diaryland.