Mad Sounds, Alex Turner

TWENTY TWO

"No! No, we never dated." She quickly clarified.

"They basically dated!" Breana remarked in exasperation, flinging her arms in the air.

"Bre!", Katie scolded giving her a glare from across the table when she saw Olivia awkwardly run the back of her neck, "They didn't date" she told Kelly backing Olivia up and Olivia sent a grateful smile. She wasn't mad at Breana at all, from her point of view she could understand why it look looked that, she just felt extremely and uncharacteristically awkward.

"Alex was practically in love with her! Like wouldn't stop talking about her, begging us to invite her out so he could see her. Then they'd obnoxiously flirt in front of all us after denying that they liked each other. It was ridiculous." Breana explained for Kelly.

"Bre! Really that's enough." Katie said getting genuinely annoyed.

Breana was clearly drunk and Olivia couldn't exactly deny what she was saying. "No, it's fine." She told Katie after the initial shock of hearing the news about Alex that she hadn't heard before. Olivia re-adjusted herself so her legs were bent underneath her. "She's not wrong. Well, I have no clue about the Alex stuff but the flirting." She said.

Lauren already knew all of it and she knew Katie and Breana long enough to trust them. Kelly seemed nice and she couldn't imagine her gossiping so Olivia sighed and pointed at them in warning, "If you guys tell anyone then I won't talk to you again and I also don't want any of you to judge me."

They all nodded eagerly and in anticipation (apart from Lauren who smiled at Olivia in reassurance).

"Okay, well erm so I kind of figured out that Alex had a crush on me. I mean he's not very good at hiding it. We had like moments before where I thought he was might try to kiss me but I always shut it down. Like remember when we went for coffee?" She asked Breana and Katie and they both nodded.

"Yeah you guys said that Alex was acting weirdly and didn't get back until the morning, well I think he was going to kiss me then and then I backed away and he left and I could tell that he was upset."

"I know that at that point I probably should've behaved more . . . I don't know more, responsibly? Like at that point it was clear that he liked me but I didn't try to talk about it, I just ignored it. I think I liked the attention but I didn't want the commitment." She admitted looking at her hand playing with the hem of her tights since she didn't want to see their reactions.

"Then on Halloween we actually did kiss and I freaked out and then ignored him for like a week. He was pretty pissed off, not that I blame him. I was kind of coming to the realisation that it might be nice to date someone but when we argued it scared me - I was worried that if we were fighting already it probably wouldn't work out in the long run."

"So, erm, we didn't talk for a bit then when we went the pub we both kind of cleared the air. Like we weren't mad at each other anymore but we knew that it wouldn't be good if we kept seeing each other."

"Alex wanted to date me and I didn't so . . . Yeah that's why we didn't talk or see each other. You guys were kind of just too connected to him, if that makes any sense. Like I knew if I saw you there'd be a possibility that Alex would be there or you'd probably mention him to me. I just needed to not think about him for a bit."

After she was done explaining she looked up at them apprehensively, worried about their reactions. They all looked pretty stunned and not sure what to say until Breana shouted, "I fucking knew it!" She point at Katie, "Didn't I say Alex had been acting off since Halloween, I knew something happened that night."