Free Peer Pressure by Chris Watt Page A

gone un-noticed by the two women at the bar as they both took turns looking across in his direction. One of them even smiled at him a little.
    “Rob...Rob?”
    Amy’s voice was a little annoyed and it snapped Rob out of it.
    “What? What were you saying?”
    Jon and Steve laughed a little to themselves. Amy shot them a look of anger, before turning back with her sweetest smile.
    “I was asking you what you look for in a relationship.”
    And then, to everybody’s surprise, not least Amy’s, Rob started to get to his feet, answering the question with a simple;
    “Something new.”
    Rob knocked back the last of his pint and gave Jon, who was watching him like a hawk, a wink as he headed off towards the two women at the end of the bar.
    He wasn’t really sure what he was going to say, but being the spontaneous type, not to mention two beers into the evening, he felt a surge of confidence, backed up as he remembered the advice of his father many years ago.
    “If you see something you want, go for it. What’s the worst that could happen?”
    He saw this as an opportunity too good to miss. It didn’t hurt that he hadn’t been in a relationship or even to bed with a woman, come to that, for nearly a year and was beginning to feel that all he did was work, eat and sleep. He felt that, now that he had established a career path for himself, perhaps it wasn’t unrealistic to think he could find someone to eat and sleep with . And of the two women, the one he was focused on was, as far as he could see, gorgeous.
    And it was with this confidence in his heart that he approached her, focusing his gaze straight at her, ready to deliver his first, killer, opening line.
    And that is exactly what he would have done, had some knob-end, or ‘helmet’ as Amy would have called him, not banged into Rob at the moment he stood before the woman that had caught his eye, causing him to nudge the drink in her hand.
    It landed somewhere on the left side of her blouse, followed by an awkward moment of silence. Rob quickly grabbed for a napkin from the bar and handed it to her.
    “I’m so sorry. That knob-end, I mean, that helmet, no, I mean, that dick just bumped into me. I’m sorry.” Rob looked in the woman’s eyes for some sense of forgiveness. In the end all he got from her was a;
    “Twat!” as she grabbed the napkin from his hand to clean herself up.
    Rob was crestfallen, looking to her friend for some sense that he could recover from this moment of embarrassment. However, she could give him no such reassurance and instead motioned with her eyes for him to leave.
    Who was he to argue?
    When Rob returned to his table, Amy was half-way through another glass of wine, while Jon and Steve were choking with laughter at what they’d just witnessed. Rob sat back down and grabbed for the nearest pint glass.
    “How’d it go?” asked Jon.
    “We decided it would be best to see other people,” quipped Rob, with a mixture of sarcasm and hidden humiliation. This was met with a mock round of applause from Jon and Steve, while all Amy could muster was a half-cut smile in Rob’s direction.
    ‘ Yeah ,’ he thought, ‘ THAT’S the worst that could happen. Thanks Dad.’

FIFTEEN
    “Are you wearing makeup?”
    It was a fair enough question for Katy to ask, given her daughter had never worn makeup to school before, not even during the brief acne breakout of her fourteenth birthday. And despite having a mild hangover and no breakfast, Katy was sharp enough to notice Jodie’s cheeks looked redder than usual, as did her lips.
    Jodie, however, just shrugged grabbing a slice of toast as she rummaged through her bag, making sure she had all her notes with her, but also as an attempt to divert her mother’s attention.
    “Yeah, why?”
    “It’s just an observation sweetie. Is there any reason for it?”
    Jodie didn’t want to tell her mother the truth. However she was smart enough to know that it was, in the short term at least, an easier