The Gooseberry

This wasn’t supposed to happen like this, not supposed to happen like this at all. Rhiannon had invited me, not Alec, to have a drink with her. But who had she spent all night talking to? Yes that dickhead from accounts who everyone thought was Mr Golden Balls. Why was I the only one to see the sleazebag behind the smile? 
The bastard had slyly gate-crashed our date and was doing his best to hog the limelight. To top it off, it was all my own fault, after all it was me who had boasted to Alec that the most beautiful girl in the office had invited me for a drink. And why did I boast? Well partly a functional reason, I had to tell him I couldn’t go to the game cos I had a date, but it was mostly because I knew he liked her too and so it was a bit of one-upmanship. I even went as far as telling Alec we were meeting in the Kings Head. How naïve was I? I knew Alec was a double-crossing, sly, little bastard who wouldn’t think twice about sabotaging something for his own ends, so I should have known he’d turn up.

Still my heart sank when I saw the bastard come into the bar. I’d tried not to get eye contact but he spotted us and asked if he could join us. I tried to say no but Rhiannon smiled her lovely smile and invited him to pull up a chair.  She’d then proceeded to laugh at all his jokes and his cruel little put-downs. 
This was really getting embarrassing, I was feeling like a gooseberry at my own date. I’d been gazumped, shoehorned out; he’d muscled in uninvited and taken over. To make matters worse my dad was sitting in the same bar with his new flame, watching his son being out manoeuvred by another man. I was in half a mind to cut my losses and leave the two lovebirds to it. Maybe I could still catch the second half of the match.
I needed time to think, I made my excuses and went to the toilet. I splashed some water on my head to cool off, trying to decided what to do. Surely moving in on another man’s date broke one of the man commandments. Alec should be disciplined. But the man code was fiction and bastards like Alec were allowed to get away with anything as long as they smiled sweetly the next day.

 I came back to see that Alec seemed to have moved even closer to the woman that I wanted to cwtch up close to. I sat down feeling even more of an outsider but even more determined to stick around, if I wasn't getting anywhere with Rhiannon then I'd make damned sure neither was he. 

‘Let me buy you guys a drink,' Alec said, smiling at Rhiannon, 'same again?’

‘Okay, it’s house red,’ she said. 

‘A pint of Guinn,’ I said but he’d turned his back on me and gone to the bar. This was my chance to get back ‘in’ but I was so pissed off I didn’t want to speak for fear of sounding like a sulking 6 year old.

Luckily I didn’t have to speak.

‘What the fuck?’ Rhiannon said. ‘ How are we gonna get rid of him?’

‘What?’ I was wondering if I had heard her right?’

‘The creep with garlic breath,’ she said.

‘What?’ I said again but my brain was beginning to smile.

‘Look,’ she said ‘after this drink I am going to say I have a headache and I’ll ask you to walk me home. Then we’ll go to another pub, okay?’

The smile had managed to get itself down to my lips. I nodded and she winked mischievously at me as Alec returned with the drinks.

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