Charlie and Me

Chapter Five

He'd offered to escort me to the medical centre; though the last thing I wanted was to sit under the romantic strip lights of what was essentially a hospital. I was desperate to stay in a heady state of bliss with the most beautiful boy I'd ever seen. All right, he was more of a man but that was a good thing. He wasn't some scrawny lad from the estate, some loser with a Community Service Order to his name for scrawling graffiti on the back of the police station.

Charlie was a real-life strapping specimen of a man; the kind of man who could throw me over his shoulder with one hand and still down a pint with the other. After he'd come over all Florence Nightingale it appeared my falling down the pole may just have snagged me the man of my dreams. I could spent the rest of the night staring into his eyes and I'd be happy, but he was eager for conversation with actual words, and for that you needed music at least ninety decibels lower than what we were trying to talk over in Ya-Ya's.

I followed him out onto The Strip. Bo's Pizza wasn't the most romantic of settings but it was a little quieter at least, apart from the drunken dick heads mooning people from the window as they passed.

'Do you want to share? You like Pepperoni?' Charlie asked from the counter.

'Perfect, thank you.' At least he wasn't a Margherita boy. I liked a man with a bit of imagination, though I was pretty much going to like anything he did or said at that point.

'How's the elbow?' Charlie said, escorting me to a table.

'I'll live, thanks to you.'

'I should've taken you to the medical centre, it looked pretty nasty.'

I didn't want to talk about my stupid elbow any longer. I wasn't sure if he was nervous or just really interested in injuries. Maybe he was a doctor. I wouldn't have to wait 'till Durham to find my surgeon after all.

'So, what part of Ireland are you from?' I asked. I was firmly putting a stop to any more elbow talk.

'Cincinnati.' 

'I'm pretty sure that's not in Ireland,' I scoffed. I could see he was amused at something.

'Of course it's not. I'm American; hence Cincinnati,' he said, ruffling his nose when he smiled.

I prayed he thought I was cute rather than stupid. I'd been so enamoured with his eyes that I hadn't paid attention to a word he'd said. Irish, American; he could've been Martian for all I cared.

'And you're from...wait a minute, let me guess.' He paused and framed me with his fingers, like he was going to paint me. 'Australia?'

'Manchester!'

'I'm only playing, with an accent like that you're not fooling anyone.'

Perfect. Charlie the Adonis Doctor was never going to contemplate dating the commoner from the council estate. Not that he'd left or anything, and even appeared happy sharing my company in the dingy backstreet pizza place. Maybe there was hope for us yet.

'Did you want any pizza or are you just going to stare at it?' he said after he'd collected the pizza from the counter and greedily chomped through three pieces himself.

The more we talked, the more I liked him. I mean, really liked him. Not lust or fleeting fascination or knowing I'd wake up regretting the pole and the bleeding and the non-eating of the pizza. Lust at first sight meant nothing if you didn't have much to say once the food had been devoured. I guessed he did like me judging by the way our feet kept bumping under the table, or how he let his hand brush mine as he reached for another slice.

'How come you knew that guy at the bar, and knew the Greek for napkin? That's an impressive piece of trivia you have stashed away there.' I was trying for cool, but manically excited might be another way of putting it.