Currents

Nineteen ~ Solace

Nineteen ~ Solace

During breakfast the next morning, Alastair finally acknowledged my messages. In fact, he even had the decency to call me.

"It's Alastair," I told Mia, holding up my phone to show her.

With her mouth full of toast, she gestured for me to answer it. After all the drama of last night, I'd forgotten about Alastair's silence. As I slid my finger across the screen, though, anger bubbled inside me. How many hours had it been?

"Hey."

"Hey, Rosa," he said, his tone chipper. "Sorry about last night. My phone died."

"Your phone died? Could you not charge it?"

The pause on the other end of the line suggested he'd cottoned on to my anger and was deciding how to play the situation.

"I was out," he said. "I didn't have a charger with me. Sorry if it worried you."

"What if I'd needed to talk to you and there'd been no way for me to do that?" I tried to calm my irritation, but my tolerance for boys acting like idiots was already low. "Even worse, what if something happened, and you didn't have your phone to call for help?"

"I was with people, Rosa. They'd have helped if something bad happened. One night without my phone isn't the end of the world. You had your party, anyway..."

If Alastair intended for these excuses to make me feel better, they didn't. I covered my face with my free hand and said nothing.

"Are you pissed off with me?" he asked.

"Yes."

Opposite me, Mia chewed on her toast as she watched without shame. If she felt uncomfortable witnessing me arguing with my boyfriend, she didn't show it.

"We're supposed to be in a relationship," I said.

"Yes, and I don't think you realise how suffocating you can be."

As if that wasn't offensive enough, he delivered the insult in such a cool and matter-of-fact manner that it sickened me.

"Don't act like I'm bringing this upon myself! You didn't even tell me you were going out last night. Being in a relationship means sharing our lives. Maybe if you don't want me to suffocate you, then you shouldn't have cheated on me."

I expected him to say something along the lines of, why are you still so hung up on Daisy? But what he did say surprised me, not least because he sounded sincere.

"We got together young, Rosa. You've never experienced going out and meeting guys or dating. You've only ever had me. But at the same time, I wasn't ready for such a serious relationship, either, so I did something stupid and slept with Daisy. If you want your chance to have a taste of something different, go for it. Then we'll be even."

I groaned. "Alastair, you're missing the point. Yes, I get the reason you cheated was because you were tied down too early and you wanted to go out and be with other girls, but that doesn't give me a free pass to do the same. It's not about being even—"

"Rosa, I know that we—"

"—and I don't want to feel like I should go out and get with other people," I said, ignoring his interruption. "I want to feel like I don't need anyone else. Like you care enough about me not to want to sleep with other girls."

"Rosa, I do care."

"But the fact you went out without your phone shows you weren't thinking of me. If it ran out of battery then fine, but you could have warned me, or messaged me off someone else's."