Free Beautiful Mess by Lucy V. Morgan Page B

eat.”
    I couldn’t sit down. Couldn’t think. I was just so mortified, and so…rage-y.
    I put music on so I wouldn’t hear anything else they said; it was so hard not to listen. I splayed my sketchbooks out on the floor and tried to come up with some new designs for the ridiculous wedding cake one of our clients wanted, but it wasn’t happening. In the end, I hugged headless Pooh to my chest and had another good sob into his bulging neck cavity.
    Had Craig really been that bad in bed? So he didn’t last that long, but that was a compliment, right? He was generous with foreplay…sometimes. And I’d never been a screamer. It wasn’t his fault--
    -- argh. No. Too annoyed. I couldn’t stay in here.
    I sauntered out and poured myself a large Jäger and lemonade. Then I found the boys in the living room, claimed the last slice of pizza and wedged myself between Linc and Tom.
    “You decided to grace us with your presence, then?” said Tom.
    “I would have stayed in my room if I realized you were playing this shoddy game again.” I nodded towards the huge TV. “You know that Glee is on, right?”
    Linc elbowed me. “If you insult Assassin’s Creed again then I may be forced to tickle you.”
    “I’m about to down a pint of disgusting alcohol. If you tickle me, I will vomit.”
    Olly laughed. “Classy words from a classy lady.”
    “Sod off,” I grumbled.
    In the end, it took me the best part of an hour to finish my drink--it was either pace myself, or pass out. In the meantime, I made short work of the pizza. It was cold and not as nice as it looked, but cheese is one of a girl’s greatest comforts during a break-up. I thrashed Tom and Linc on the Tekken game until they tasted my pain, and got slowly, steadily drunk.
    I’ve said it before, but my body doesn’t know what to do with booze. As the alcohol seeped into my veins, there were moments that I not only thought, just for a second, that gnomes of self pity existed, but was actually afraid of them and thus kept delaying going to bed.
    If I didn’t know the boys better, I would’ve suspected that they drugged my drink. Fortunately, they knew me even better and realized I didn’t need more than a few short measures to fall out of my tree.
    At one point, I tried to stand up and crumpled at the knees. “I feel weird.”
    “Shush,” said Olly. “It’s therapeutic. Trust me, you’ll feel all purged in the morning.”
    “Is that another way of saying that I’m going to be date raped?”
    Tom grinned. “It’s a good idea. But no.”
    “Well maybe you should.” I sighed. “Then Linc and Olly can stand outside and listen.”
    Silence.
    Oopsie.
    “Oh.” Linc shifted about, folding his thick forearms. “You heard us earlier, then.”
    “I heard you slagging off my ex, yep.”
    “We’re your friends,” Olly protested. “We’re supposed to slag him off.”
    “Yes, but, but --”
    “But nothing. Admit it. Craig was crap in bed.”
    The blood sloshed in my ears as I glanced from Olly to Linc, and back to Tom.
    “She’s got that look again,” said Tom.
    I blinked. “What look?”
    “The one where you’re wishing you had some pissy girlfriends to whinge to, and do face masks and shit,” said Tom.
    “I do not.”
    True--the boys were my closest friends. I met Tom and Olly during our first week at uni and we just kind of clicked in that comfy, mellow way. Linc got dragged home from the pub one night and became an honorary by association. I got enough pink frippery at work, and having girlfriends just never seemed that important.
    Over the past few days, though, I might have had fantasies about going shopping with some cool blonde girl who helped me pick shoes, and we got our nails done, and then we came home and burned Winnie the Pooh while deciding which member of the Twilight cast we’d like to do bad things to with a tube of--
    “See,” said Tom. “I was right.”
    “I don’t need girlfriends to cheer me up,” I insisted.
    Olly