She liked Harry Styles a few years ago, and now she likes that white-bread, absolute fucking baguette of a lad from Call Me by Your Name.
I remember finding him very attractive at the time; though any man who pays attention to you, at that age, can transform from frog to prince in the time it takes to tell you he likes your hair.
The feeling is like when someone sees a mark from where you’ve self-harmed, and you slap your hand over the cut, or the burn, or the bruise. You’ve tried to hide it and, in doing so, made it even more obvious that mark is not an accident.
‘Forgot,’ he says. ‘You’re a fucking bitch sometimes, do you know that?’ He doesn’t spit it at me. He’s not angry. It’s stated like an unpleasant fact, one he’s already dealt with. Global temperatures are rising, Brexit means Brexit, and Irina is a fucking bitch.
I click and drag this whole incident to the recycle bin icon in my mind, and I empty that bin, and I take a magnet to my hard drive in the form of a bottle of vodka and two Xanax, which have me out for the count for a full twenty-four hours.
My mam always used to tell me that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. And Eddie from Tesco is a fly, but he’s got a taste for vinegar. It’s like vinegar is all he’s ever had from people, and now he doesn’t even know what honey tastes like.
Do I have to smash a glass over the head of every single man I come into contact with, just so I leave a fucking mark?