Number 18: The Girl I Can’t Forget

The Girl I Can’t Forget was the blueprint for literal decades of fantasies and fucks to come: the red-headed, curvy, voluptuous babe that turned me on in ways that I couldn’t begin to explain. Long hair. Green eyes. She wore glasses sometimes, which I loved. They were those thick, dark-coloured rimmed type of glasses, and I thought they made her green eyes look so much bigger. She was beautiful then. Honestly, I’ve seen her recently, and I still think she’s beautiful now.

We met through Bestie. I can’t remember how they knew each other. All I know is, one day, The Girl I Can’t Forget was in my life, and we were basically inseparable. We’d always joke that she would turn up to the opening of an envelope. She was always the first person to turn up at one of our parties, and the very, very last person to leave. Looking back, I think that was her way of spending time with me. Helping. Setting things up. Mixing drinks and making snacks. Clearing up after everyone had left. Helping us finish the mountain of alcohol that had been left behind, because drinks were cheap back then and folk turned up with endless bottles of weird stuff.

My feelings for her were not platonic. Not at all. I got jealous whenever she dated a guy, even if I was dating someone myself. I didn’t realise that those feelings were romantic or lustful feelings, though. Not yet. Not quite, anyway. I was just slutty, and she was my very best female friend. Of course I’d be jealous when she spent time with other people…

I think, looking back, that she had started to feel the same way. I can’t be sure, but there were moments that could’ve been moments if one of us had made a move. The Girl I Can’t Forget was at The Flat all the time; was she finding any excuse to spend time with me? Young n’ dumb me didn’t have a clue. I just laughed when she started water fights “to see me wet.” She was just joking, wasn’t she? We were all just joking, all messing around, all drunkenly having fun.

One night, things changed.

A few people had been at The Flat at one of our very regular ‘gatherings’. They weren’t parties; just a few friends that would help us eat and drink whatever was left over. There was alcohol in that place at all times, mountains of it. Mini kegs of Blue WKD and Stella. Bottles of Campari that had been stolen from some guy’s parents’ alcohol cabinet. Ouzo. Aftershock in various flavours. Sickeningly sweet Dooleys in tall, thin bottles. Those mini, half-sized bottles of beer that were all the rage among dads in the early 2000s.

We’d play games, too. We got a fold-out poker table with all the chips on a whim one day. Another lad brought the DVD version of Atmosfear. Twister was always hilarious after several bottles of some boozy beverage. Jenga, too, but some of the blocks were missing for reasons unknown. Scrabble, but with some of the tiles missing because I had a habit of drunkenly throwing the entire board when someone “cheated” (AKA I lost.)

It was getting late, so one-by-one people started to leave. Soon, it was just us: me, Bestie, and The Girl I Can’t Forget. We carried on drinking just as we usually did, but Bestie soon yawned and admitted defeat. Then, it was just me and her.

“Can I crash here?” she said.

“Duh,” I said back.

I threw her a blanket and pillow, then went to bed, shutting the door behind me.

It wasn’t quite the end of the night, though…

The next blog post in the dating timeline is this one: Rabbit.