Free The Way It Never Was by Lucy Austin

opened my eyes to find Liv giving me this look of utter disbelief. ‘You have so many choices and I think you’re so fucking crazy to give it all up for a boy you don’t really know. This is not real life you know. This.’ She then made a waving gesture towards the picturesque beach. ‘Seriously, don’t make your time here about him, he’s totally not worth it.’
    Suddenly, the boys who’d been playing the ‘who can hold their breath’ competition burst up through the water – Joe a fraction of a second in front. Wiping his eyes and shaking his hair over us like a dog in a really annoying way, he pointed over to the pub on the corner. ‘Girls, I do believe we need to go for some schooners of VB’.
    Upon hearing this, Anna immediately stood up and stuck out her chest, while sucking in her already taut stomach to put on her sarong – sort of like a slow motion striptease but in reverse. ‘Oh God, okay! Twist my arm, I’m in!’
    Later on that night, I had a little taster of just how dispensable I was to Joe. I found out from Liv that he kissed some girl at the pub just five minutes after I’d called it a night. Five minutes! Couldn’t he have waited fifteen in case I came back for my room key or something? This bombshell had me holed up in the hostel’s smelly loos crying my eyes out, while Liv just kept saying over and over the same thing.
    ‘He’s an asshole Kate. An asshole with a ponytail.’
    I don’t know whether it was Liv’s words echoing around my head, Joe’s unconvincing excuse for having done it in the first place – he was drunk – or the rather small matter of having run out of money, but the following morning I booked my ticket home. If I was going to extract myself from whatever this was with my dignity and bank balance intact, I was going to have to at least appear like I was showing common sense, even if I didn’t feel like it inside.
    ‘We were so right but our timing was wrong,’ sighed Joe at the Departures Gate, stroking that golden ponytail of his thoughtfully. ‘This is for the best.’ Without uttering a word, I just listened to him say all the right things and then give me his idea of a kiss to end all kisses. ‘Remember, if I was in London, we’d be together, you know that right?’ he said and looked me right in the eyes, by way of demonstrating sincerity at having to part. ‘It’s just that I’m on my path.’
    Following his destiny with the universe supporting him, Joe couldn’t get me on that plane quick enough.

 
    CHAPTER 7 - BY THE SEA
     
    I get out of the train station at Broadstairs and head down the hill towards the harbour. Walking past all the shops lining the high street, I’m feeling a little sweaty and more than a little tired, not helped by a rough night’s sleep at Anna’s on a sloping futon that really should belong in a skip – clearly payback for not committing to a second date with Chris. Added to which, there was a one-hour delay on the train and no seat for half the journey – just my bags on the floor and a mind full of stuff going around and around like a washing machine on the spin cycle.
    Stopping every five to alternate the load on each hand, I wave back at a blacked out Chelsea Tractor who has beeped at me at the lights. I have absolutely no idea who that was but I smile all the same, before stopping at the corner shop that sells sweets to buy some gum. This was where my flatmate Claire used to live with her parents, living off a diet of cola bottles and the bon-bons that her friends were offered whenever they went to play. Once my parents realised that her folks basically said yes to whatever the request despite us being only in our early teens, I wasn’t allowed to go there again – not before I had been to the Margate arcades, tried a night bus after late night skating and worn electric blue mascara. I used to stand there late at night, waiting for Claire to finish snogging someone, wondering why it was called a ‘french