My journal!

Chapter One

Alexis Harris flopped into the cushioned seat and groaned as her backside hit the hard, wooden bench underneath. Cursing crappy train seating and her life in general, Alexis turned to the person sitting next to her. “Have you ever just wanted to die? I mean, it’s not like I would ever actually kill myself, I think suicide is a coward’s way out but right now I want to die.” The woman gave her a startled look as she carried on “There’s something about a broken heart. You feel ashamed, you constantly replay every conversation you’ve ever had with the person over and over in your head, trying to figure out where you went wrong. Then there’s the hope. Oh you know that there is none, you tell yourself constantly but that doesn’t mean that you don’t hope anyway. Hope that they might change their mind and decide that you are worthy after all.” At this the woman’s expression softened and Alexis could tell she knew exactly how it felt. “I’m sorry I suppose I should introduce myself to you, I’m Alexis Harris and I’ve just been dumped.”

The woman was elderly, the grandmotherly type. Quite pretty with soft, gray hair framing her face. At a guess you might say she was 65 and while Alexis would pour her soul out to anyone at this particular point in time, this particular lady was the type of person you could really seek solace in. Alexis continued her monologue, not giving the woman a chance to reply as only one who truly has the need to release themselves from their misery can do. “Of course, you know, I was dumped because all men are evil scumbags who should be shipped off the face of the Earth and quite possibly propelled towards the sun to die in the fiery hell they deserve. It’s not true but I like to think it anyway, it makes me feel a little bit better.” Alexis smirked then sighed. “Do you want to know what happened? Do you want to know how a girl like me could turn into such a bitter, insecure hag? I’ll tell you. For starters that bastard David didn’t give me much of a reason for breaking up with me. Let me think about it and perhaps I can figure it out.”

Alexis gave a dramatic cough “starting at the beginning usually helps. I met David Washington when I was doing a night course on web design. I was working as a receptionist back then, a job I will loathe till the end of time, but I’d decided I wanted to try and get out of it to do something different. I’ve been using computers and going on the internet since I was 15 years old and web design was definitely something I wanted to have a go at.” She shifted to a more comfortable position on the seat. “I’d made a couple of pages, just for fun of course, but I knew that people could make a lot of money as professional webmasters so I thought I’d see if I could do that as well. Now how old was I at the time? Well David and I have been together, sorry WERE together and God it sucks saying that, for two and a half years. I mean, that’s a long time, you’d expect that he would propose soon, right? But yes, I’m 26 now and the course started in July because I remember it was coming up to my brother’s birthday so I would’ve been 24 at the time. David’s 3 years old than me, his birthday was last week on January 17th. I got him the most beautiful watch ever and it cost me a fortune too. Bastard. I had ‘To David, love forever Alexis.’ on the back so at least he gets to remember how he crushed my soul every time he wears it.”

A few tears escaped from Alexis’ eyes and she sniffed as she wiped them away. “Sorry, I just…so anyway the first day I met him, I’d had a horrible day. The bitch secretary at work, sorry about the language I’ll try to keep it clean, Stephanie had been on my ass all day. The worst thing about her was that she would randomly hate me, then love me, then hate me. This was a hate me day. Ugh. It was so annoying. Luckily I was looking forward to starting the course that night and the possibility of one day leaving or I might not be talking to you right now. I’d be doing an interview from a dingy five foot cell about how receptionists everywhere should never give in to the primal urge to literally wipe the snotty look off a secretary’s face.” Alexis paused for a moment and frowned at the thought of Stephanie. Stephanie convinced herself that she was gorgeous. It’s not that she was ugly, she had an okay looking face but at around 5’2” she wore short skirts, tight tops and had breasts that were overly large. In fact anytime you saw Stephanie it was hard not to be amazed that she didn’t fall forward, how she kept her balance had been a constant source of amusement to Alexis. “Now like I told you, I’ve been using the internet since I was 15 so I knew when I walked into the classroom that it wouldn’t necessarily be full of the classic ‘net nerds’ and let’s face it, they all know how to make web pages anyway, right! Seeing David, though, completely amazed me. Have you ever looked at somebody so beautiful that you feel like somebody’s punched you in the gut really hard?” the elderly woman smiled at this as she remembered the first time she met her late husband. “All the wind escapes from your lungs and you’re left in pure shock because you didn’t see it coming. That was what seeing David was like. His absolute and utter beauty was astounding. I could go on all night about his perfect, spiky hair, liquid crystal blue eyes, textbook perfect cheekbones and a physique that would bring you to your knees with lust” Alexis sighed dreamily “but I wouldn’t want to bore you and really you probably wouldn’t believe what an Adonis he is unless you saw him yourself.”

“Nonetheless let’s just say that the three girls in the class and one of the boys” Alexis nodded conspiratorially at this statement “pretty much spent that first lesson staring at David. In all honesty I probably would’ve been bored and knowing me, I’d more than likely have quit if it hadn’t been for David. The first lesson was just going over the basics, things I’d already learnt from online tutorials about frames and layouts etc. sorry, I didn’t ask, do you spend much time on the internet? Most people have the internet nowadays and at least know how to surf web pages but I don’t think there’s that many that actually make them. There’s millions of web pages out there but I’m not sure that Average Joe spends his time making them. I love it and I get paid for it now, but I’m getting side tracked. Where was I? Yeah, staring at David. It could be considered an Olympic sport, in fact it SHOULD be an Olympic sport. I might write to the IOC, you know, the International Olympic Committee and tell them it should be included in the next Games. I’m sure if I include a photo…I’m getting off track again right?”

This time her listener gave an audible laugh and Alexis couldn’t help but smile back. “God I’m such a moron, every time I talk I do this, go off on side stories and tangents. I’m sure you’ll get used to it by the time we get there but I really should try and stick to the point. Anyway, so after that class the teacher said that there was a nice pub down the road and asked if anyone wanted to go for a drink. Well I didn’t really want to commit myself till I knew if this piece of delicious man meat was going but luckily David was the third person to say yes, isn’t it amazing the stupid little things that people remember? Anyway of course I was going to go, I mean fuck it…oh sorry I didn’t mean to swear again. Errrrrr stuff it if Stephanie had told me that day” Alexis put on a posh voice “‘you have to be in tomorrow at 8 o’clock sharp because Mr. Robertson has an early meeting with some VERY important clients’.” she rolled her eyes and continued in her regular voice “Believe me, David was WORTH turning up to work with the hangover from hell. Needless to say, I had a few drinks too many to try and relax around this man. When we got there, I’d neatly managed to position myself in the chair next to his and spent the first hour trying to sound charming while surreptitiously checking him out from beside and pretending to look at Darren. He’s a stay at home Dad and he wanted a career that could keep him occupied while looking after his and his wife’s four year old twins.”

Alexis grabbed her bag, pulled out a bottle of water and took a sip. “Don’t get me wrong, though, I was a vivacious, outgoing and sexy girl. You can see me, the guys always go for the long, dark hair and I know I’m not stick thin, but I have curves in the right places and I used to think I was pretty hot, I never had a problem getting guys’ attention at least. David was no different, of course, but because HE was so hot I didn’t realize that at the time! So after three drinks I was feeling pretty buzzed and I became a lot flirtier with David. Okay, well if I’m going to be completely honest with you, I would’ve slept with him that night if he hadn’t held back.” Alexis had the decency to blush at telling the elderly woman such a frank thing, it was like she had verbal diarrhea. For a second she almost stopped but the woman did look interested and she knew she should clarify that statement so she didn’t sound so bad. “Really, though, most women would have.” Alexis nodded. “Anyway, I found out later that the only reason he didn’t sleep with me that night was because his parents were visiting at the time, they’re devout Christians and he didn’t want to disappoint them. Do you see how perfect he is? He even cares about his parents’ opinions.”

Alexis hadn’t noticed yet but a man, somewhere around thirty years old, dressed in a business suit and sitting across from them had begun to listen to the story. “Okay so get this, the course ran Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 6pm. Well you can imagine that I was REALLY looking forward to Wednesday. Then that cow Stephanie gives me some ‘last minute mail’ at 4:50pm which I had to stamp, write up in the mail book and put in the post box before I could leave. Once I’d done that, I had just enough time to run across the street and see the 5pm train leave. How pissed off do you think I was? Well you know the next train after that is at 7pm and Stephanie knew that as well.” The man in the business suit made a sound of disapproval as he thought of the annoyance of office politics. Alexis and the woman sitting next to her looked up, startled, and Alexis smiled. “Hello. Anyway, normally I’m able to get everything done in time to dash out the door a few minutes before five but today was one of Stephanie’s love me days and in my excitement I’d made the stupid mistake of telling her I couldn’t wait to go out tonight. I didn’t tell her what, of course, because I didn’t really want anyone at work knowing I was studying so I could possibly leave but I idiotically told her that I was going out! So instead of heading into the city because honestly at that time there was no point, I’d get there at 6:45pm and be an hour late by the time I got to the class, I headed home in a foul mood. To make it worse, when I got home there was a message from my sister-in-law. It’s not that I don’t like her, it’s that sometimes I just don’t want to deal with family. Do you ever feel like that? I know you do, everyone does, I bet.” The businessman knew what Alexis was talking about. Some days he didn’t want to hear from his family, telling him how proud they were of how successful he was but then asking him when was he going to start a family. On the other hand, the elderly lady loved when her children and grandchildren called and always had time for them, she felt sorry for this poor girl who didn’t want to speak to her family.

“Well I called her back and it turned out that she was pregnant. Imagine my excitement. Well I tried to be excited. She did ask me what was wrong but I just told her I was tired and it doubled as a great excuse to get off the phone. So when it came to Friday there was no bloody way that I was going to miss that train. I had all my work done, with everything cleaned up and locked away by 4:45pm. Then I hid in the toilets for ten minutes before running out the door and yelling behind me to Stephanie that yes, everything was done. I couldn’t contain my excitement on that train ride, I’ll tell you! I must have told at least five people about how I was going to this course and this REALLY hot guy was there.” At this Alexis gave a small chuckle because of the similarity of the situation she was now in. “I’m so talkative, I always talk to strangers, I don’t know why. I must have missed that lesson at school about stranger danger. Anyway, when I got there the class was about to start so I sat down at a computer near the back. That way I could still check out David and of course I tried to look my sexiest in case he turned around. The teacher finished his spiel and got us started on our work for that class which was to make a basic webpage using frames, a table and a drop down menu.” The man nodded, knowing enough about computers to understand this sentence. “Then he came over to me and talked about what I missed in the last class which was again stuff I already knew anyway. Nothing really exciting happened during the class that night except for the few times I caught David looking at me. When it ended, though, this time it was David who suggested that everyone go out for a drink since it was a Friday night. A few people turned it down but I swear to this day that he was looking at me when he said it. Oh my God that night was the best night of my life.”

Alexis took another sip of water and a dreamy look appeared on her face as she remembered the night. “We all went back to the same pub, but this time we sat out the back in the beer garden where the music was a little less loud so we could all properly talk. David and I found that we had so much in common. We had the same wicked sense of humor meaning that we both liked to make dirty jokes and filthy implications,” Alexis smiled cheekily “we could talk about anything and everything and even when we disagreed it was interesting to hear his point of view. In all honesty I think I fell in love with him that night. What is it about girls? Why is it that we can meet someone and just be so positive that they’re the one after talking to them for two hours?” The woman smiled, she knew what Alexis was talking about this time. “I think every woman’s done it, well I know I have, but David was different. I mean, why did he dump me? We’re perfect together, or we were.” Alexis was positive at that very moment that some invisible hand had reached inside her chest and was squeezing her heart, it physically hurt and for the first time in the last fifteen minutes there was complete silence in the carriage. A silence broken only by the sound of Alexis sobbing. She leaned forward, placing her head on her hands and sobbed into them as the woman beside her reached over and gently rubbed her back.