I didn’t have to think anything over, my body just reacted instinctively, as my hand immediately pushed his away underneath the table. I couldn’t bring myself to look at Eric, so instead I decided to hurry out in the hall towards the bathroom just to get away from his way too confident behavior and cheesy smile.


I sat out on the toilet for a few minutes before splashing some water on my face, taking a couple of deep breaths and then heading back out to the others. A lump had formed in my stomach and was now leaving me with a slight poking pain that enhanced every step I came closer to the living room.

I drew a huge sigh of relief when I saw that Eric wasn’t sitting at the table as before, in fact it was only Sophie that was now left.


“Where are all the others?” I asked her as I sat back down on the chair next to hers.

“Getting some beds ready,” Sophie informed me. “Guess they’re about to retire.”

I nodded also feeling the exhaustion and sleep taking over me, slowly but persistent.

“So,” she then began in a whole different tone as she moved a bit closer to me. “Are you and Eric dating or something?”

“What?! Oh God no!” I immediately exclaimed before thinking about keeping it down.

“Oh good,” she just replied looking relieved.

“Why?” I asked in treed by her expression.

“No, it’s just he’s been talking about you...” she said.

“No, I mean why is it a good thing that I’m not dating him?” I interrupted her.

“Oh it’s just that… he’s a bit of a, womanizer you know. Every week a new one comes along, none of them unfortunately knowing that they’ll be history the week after, but you just seem like a really nice girl, so I just… you know, wanted to make sure that wasn’t going to make a fool out of you as well.”

What she told me about Eric didn’t come as a surprise to me at all.


“That’s what I thought,” I said smiling at her. “Thank you though.”

“No problem,” she said standing up as the others walked in the room. And then she did something that definitely took me by surprise; she went over and pecked Nick’s lips.

“Oh you guys are together?” I blurred out before realizing that that might be quite obvious.

“Yeah,” Nick smiled kindly at me.

“Really, for how long?” I asked trying to keep the conversation going so that I wouldn’t have to deal with the fact that Eric was staring at me from the door.

“We got married last year…” Sophie started answering.

“Congratulations!” I yelled a bit too loud and happy.

“And before that we’d been together for… how long was it, honey?” she then asked turning towards Nick.

“Uhm… about five years I think,” he said.

“Wow,” I gushed. “But why didn’t you arrive at the same time then? I mean, don’t you live together?”

“That’s awful lot of questions you’ve got on hand there, young lady,” Nick said smiling again. “I came straight from my guitar class, I’m a music teacher.”

“Oh okay, which school is that?”

I kept on talking and asking until Adam had to cut me off by saying: “”I think it’s time to go to bed now!”



Nick and Sophie said goodbye as they walked home to their own place that wasn’t very far away from there. Christian did the same, so that it was now only Ian, Eric and me spending the night at Adam’s house.

I followed them upstairs to a rather big bedroom when you thought about the size of the rest of the small house. Two matrasses were laid out on the floor next to a double bed.


“Uhm, can I sleep in the bed?” Ian asked. “I’ve got a bit of a bad back.”

“Yeah sure,” I said. “I can’t feel a difference anyway.” That was until I realized that I would have to lie next to Eric, since Adam had to sleep in his own bed.

Oh what the heck, I thought. You’re not a teenager anymore, Maja, grow up.

I went back down in to the kitchen to have some water before going to sleep, or else my head would pretty much explode tomorrow morning.



As I stood there sipping off my glass and feeling the alcohol still circulating in my body and mind I heard someone come in as well. Somewhere in my befuddled head I probably knew who it was, but I anyway turned around to see Eric grabbing a glass from the cupboard as well.


“So what do you think of the rehearsal?” he asked sounding completely normal. At first I didn’t know how to react, but the relief of still being friends like always cheered me up a lot.

“You guys are so good!” I smiled. “Thank you so much for asking me to play with you.”

“No problem. You are a lot better at playing folk music than I thought,” he said while opening the fridge and taking out some milk.

“No, you are a lot better than I thought!” I said cheekily which made the tense atmosphere between us from earlier completely disappear. “No, actually it was quite fun seeing you being so serious, since I’ve almost only experienced you, you know… making fun and stuff.”

“Yeah, music seems to be kind of thing that just… brings me down to Earth, you know what I mean?”

“Totally.”

I really was truly glad to experience us act relaxed around each other, anything else would’ve been such a shame.


A few minutes later of cheerful chatting we decided to walk upstairs to go to sleep after having turned off all the lights downstairs.

“Where do you turn this off?” I asked standing at the first step on the stairs in the hall trying to find the contact.

“This one behind you,” Eric said reaching behind me and then suddenly everything went dark. I was just about to turn around and continue up the steps but a pair of lips on mine stopped me.


This time I wasn’t as quick at reacting as before, because I spent most of the few seconds the kiss lasted on deciding what the hell was going on. The second I realized that Eric and I were actually kissing I pushed him away.


“What are you doing?!” I wanted to yell, but since there were people sleeping next door, I had to keep it down so it was more like a raspy squeal that ended up coming out of my mouth.

“What?” he asked chuckling a bit.

“Don’t kiss me!” I said trying to express my anger as best as possible through my low voice.

“Relax, I’ve seen the way you look at me,” he began. “You can’t say you don’t want to.”

“What the fuck?!” I then exclaimed way too loud. “I don’t want to kiss you!”

“Well do you have a boyfriend or something?” he then asked.

“That has absolutely nothing to do with it.”

“So you do have a boyfriend?”

“That is none of your business! Asshole!”



I immediately turned around and hurried up the stairs. I tried to keep it down as much as possible though I mostly just wanted to scream. How could he act like that?! I thought we were friends. I felt a few tears forming in my eyes. I felt horrible.

Niall was the best thing that had ever happened to me and then this idiot comes and destroys everything, making me feel like I did something wrong. And maybe I had? Maybe I had been looking at Eric like I wanted to kiss him, maybe we had been flirting.

I couldn’t sleep despite my exhausted body, instead I spent hours thinking about what had happened, what I’d done wrong and what I was going to do now. At some time the door opened and a person came in and lay down on the matrass next to mine, but I didn’t bother turning my head to look at the idiot that would probably just smile his usual confident and annoying smile.

God, I felt so fucking guilty.

The anger made a few more tears escape my eyes, but I remained completely silent not wanting anyone to know anything about this sick scenario.



I must’ve fallen asleep at some point cause the next thing I remember is someone lightly shaking me awake. I instantly opened my eyes wide and stared around the room having trouble finding out where I was at first, but then I remembered the band and the rehearsal last night. And the beers.


Oh shit, the beers. Yep, they’d definitely made their impact on me both yesterday but most certainly also today, my head was thumbing like hell.

It didn’t make the hangover better to remember what had happened last night as well. It all came back to me as I saw, to my horror, that it was Eric who was waking me up.


“Maja,” he said softly. “Do you want any breakfast?”


I sat up way too quickly and almost fell back down on the matrass from the dizziness that followed the second after. I managed to shake my head, I was definitely in no position of eating anything as I noticed my stomach complaining rather loudly as well.

Instead of leaving the room Eric apparently decided to sit down on the matrass in front of me. I didn’t look at him, both because I was still a bit pissed but mostly because it hurt in my head to look up.


“I’m sorry about last night,” he suddenly said which actually made me lift my eyes to meet his. “I was really drunk and I guess... I’ve just kind of liked you. But it wasn’t okay to behave like that, I know. And you’re right, it’s absolutely none of my business who you are or aren’t dating. I promise it won’t happen again.”


I waited a few seconds rethinking what he’d just said before replying: “I’m glad you apologize, it’s cool of you. And I’m sorry if I’ve mislead you in any way, but I have to say that I’m not interested in anything more than a good friendship with you, Eric, even though you’re a really nice guy. What I would be most sorry about now would be if that wasn’t possible now, after what happened between us last night.”


His flirtatious smile said it all; he wasn’t letting this affect his mood or our friendship at all, I think he really wasn’t letting anything affect him at all.

“That’s cool,” he said. “It’s that guy… Niall, right?”

His question surprised me and at first I didn’t know whether I wanted to tell him or not, but he seemed a bit serious and honest so I ended up nodding.

“How did you know?” I asked.

“From the hospital,” he answered. “The way he was looking at you and taking care of you, it was obvious that he liked you.”

I blushed from his description of Niall, thinking about his happy and giving person brightened up my mood so much and even the hangover didn’t feel as bad anymore.

“So…” I began reaching out my hand. “Friends?”

Eric smiled again and shook it. “Friends.”



Ian and Adam were sitting in the kitchen downstairs eating scrambled eggs and loads of bacon.

“Good morning,” I said when I saw them and they both just nodded in my direction not able to say anything with their mouths full.

“Sure you don’t want anything?” Eric asked me as he began eating as well.

“Definitely sure,” I said still feeling like shit as I sat down next to them taking a few sips of some water.

“Are you okay?” Adam asked when he’d swallowed the bite looking concerned at me.

“My hair hurts,” I just said which made them all crack up at the sight of my pathetic excuse for a functioning body and brain.



About two hours later I found myself unlocking the door to my apartment around two o’clock in the afternoon after having waited for me to feel good enough to walk all the way to the tube from Adam’s house. The girls would be home around dinner time and then we would start rehearsing for Dirty Dicks, so I decided to go back out grocery shopping and make dinner for them, they’d probably be completely burned out when they got home.


I decided to buy the stuff I needed for making some healthy pizza that would have a cauliflower crust instead of flour and so on, which actually tasted almost like a regular one.

I stuffed a basket with tons of fruit and vegetables, but as I came closer to the cake and chocolate department I felt the certain hunger rushing over me that I hadn’t had for quite a while, before I was in the accident and I guess I’d hoped that it might have gone away, but no.


It all happened like I’d never stopped doing it. My mind was flowing out of my body that acted completely unconscious but scarily determined and experienced, I didn’t think at all, I just did and before I thought about I was sitting in the kitchen opening multiple packets of cakes and chocolate bars, lining them up next to the Coca Cola Zero that contained the most bubbles which always made it a lot easier for it to come up again.


1, 2, 3.


I spend the rest of the afternoon scrubbing the toilet like a maniac making sure not to leave the smallest trace of what I’d been doing while they were gone, there were no reason for them to get involved in any of the mess that I made for myself. The tears were streaming down my face the entire time, I couldn’t stop thinking about what a horrible human being I was. Bulimic, flirting with guys when I already had a boyfriend that I loved, after having cut him off because he was doing the same.


I was a selfish, egoistic, deluded, short sighted and depressing girl that people would be better off not getting close to.


I repeated that sentence in my mind over and over again until it felt like my mind was frayed apart in a thousand pieces and spread out all over the toilet bowl.

I did manage to do one decent thing that day though besides cooking dinner for anyone else but my own glooming appetite, and that was dialing the number to the psychiatrist that I’d gotten from Denmark. I hadn’t had any time left to call her before now, where I was discovering myself being in the exact same position as a few weeks ago. I left her another message hoping that she would have time for calling me back soon.


In a situation like this I seriously couldn’t wait to get started on playing music with my girls, knowing that that would be the only think that could cheer me up at the moment. It felt like days before they came in the door and the sound of Em’s voice saying “Hi” when she saw me was one of the most comforting things I could think of.

Notes

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