It was a middle aged party but he went anyway. He arrived after midnight and saw the debauchery had been at fever pitch for some time. Assorted parents, let off the leash; some leather-clad in that fiftyish, lets-take-a-risk way; the women talking about their husbands’ impotence and the guys addressing themselves to the nearest set of tits. All the stuff that dinner was spent avoiding.
He headed to the laden buffet table; as much a reason for being here as any. He was ravenous, hadn’t eaten since that morning. He spotted his now ex-girlfriend leaning against a wall nearby, blotto, and talking to someone’s potato shaped wife. They spotted him and Georgy, his ex, pointed him out. “I should body-swerve this ugly looking situation whilst I can,” he thought. But gut necessities were the motive force and before his plate was heavy enough, the potato came squeaking over; too tight leather pants compressing the blood into her cheeks.
“Are you David ?”
“Yeah”
“You must be craaazy to split up from such a bonny lass. Why are you going away, what’s the matter? Are you crazy?”
“Oh, you know. It’s complicated.”
He looked over at his ex. She was smashed, no doubt about that, looking good too; they didn’t break up because she turned ugly. It was complicated.
She looked at him and smiled. Alcohol gave her a certain glow and she had a tendency when drinking to get as shitfaced as possible and never anything less. David felt drunk just looking at her. Drunk in all the right ways. “Perhaps I should go over and speak to her,” he thought, but could think of nothing to say.
He thought about her letter. The job would pay for his escape in one month exactly and for her, now was the watershed; to say all the unnecessary, unsaid things.