Free Gone by Anna Bloom Page A

I have only hazy recollections of what the no good afternoons involved but I know they centred around smoke filled rooms and the clinking of glasses.
    That’s one of the promises I have made my parents for the next two weeks. No Alcohol. The last time I touched the stuff I lost an entire night of my life. The images I do have of the night are the ones I am trying to fight from behind my closed eyelids.
    Part of me could do with a drink now though. It’s easier to drink myself into oblivion then it is to face every second of time painfully ticking past.
    I didn’t feel like this yesterday. Yesterday was not a bad day, why is that? Joshua.
    I shake any thought of him and his distracting abilities away. Mum and Dad scared him off last night. That’s the last I am going to see of him.
    Or is it?
    “Want to come to town?” I ask Emily instead of scouring the cupboards looking for any drop of alcohol.
    “No I’m busy.” She does not bother raising her eyes from her pad. Emily is oblivious to the constrained, suffocating feelings I’m battling. She just continues sketching away as I nearly combust in front of her.
    Ah sketching!
    “Need anything from the art shop?”
    This makes her put down her pencil, her blue eyes glance over my twitching form and a frown dimples between her eyes. “Do you need anything from the art shop, Bex?”
    I flush instantly, which is really bloody annoying. “What are you implying?”
    She picks up her pen again. “Nothing.”
    Clearly she does not need anything from the art shop. Bollocks. “I’m going to go buy a sausage roll.”
    Emily keeps her gaze focused on her sketch. “Have fun, Bex.” She starts to giggle that annoying flower fairy laugh she owns.
    “It’s not what you think.” Sort of.
    I attempt to walk calmly to the garden gate, but when I am ten steps away I break into a run.
    “Sure sure,” she shouts back. Who knew her voice could get that loud.
    I make a point of going to the bakers first and purchasing a sausage roll – seventy pence! How cheap is that!  And then I start to loiter on the small high street.
    The fact hits me that I know nothing about Joshua at all. Apart from the fact he works at the Art Shop that his aunt owns and he looks like he is made with the light of the moon and the depths of the sea. I don’t know what he would be doing if not at the art shop.
    Maybe he even has a girlfriend, but I’d like to think the random hand-holding and lip grazing that took place yesterday counts against this theory. But I know nothing about dating so perhaps that’s how it’s done. And to be fair to him I haven’t asked him if he has one. Why would I? We are just hanging out, well we were until my parents frightened him off with their crazy Gestapo BBQ.
    Maybe he is just super friendly to all newcomers to town. Maybe he gives everyone a surf lesson and then slides his hands firmly over their skin when they come up from a trip to the bottom of the ocean.
    I remember what his dickhead friend said yesterday at the beach about him trying to forget something and I realise that Josh may not have a girlfriend right now, but he may possibly be trying to forget one. Does he want to forget though?
    I am aware that my street cred rating I once used to own in London goes down the pan as I sneak my way across the road and try to peer into the shop window. Damn it, the sun is reflecting on the glass and obscuring my view. I know I may have been spotted so I straighten my shoulders which allows my string vest top to fall down on one side and expose an expanse of skin, and jingle the bell on my way into the shop. There is no music on, so I instantly recognise that he is probably not going to be here, a fact which I find crushingly disappointing. What the fuck is wrong with me?
    Glancing about the shop, my eyes once again absorb the pictures hanging from every available space of wall. Dark hair and eyes, mixed with smooth limbs. Limbs that the artist knew well, very, very