“I hate that I can’t drive, I really need to finish with my lessons, so when I’m eighteen I can get a car and no longer need to use public transport!” I say to Alisha.
“I’ve been telling you for ions to finish with your lessons, you’re beyond lazy.” She replies. I roll my eyes at her and look out of the window, we have some pop song blasting through the speakers and I can feel the pounding in my head increasing. We pull up to the restaurant and I amuse myself by watching Alisha attempt parallel parking-in the end she resorts to just dumping her car on the sidewalk. “You’ll get a ticket, it’s a double yellow!” I warn her. Clearly she has no qualms about it as she shrugs her shoulders and walks towards the entrance. I’ve always admired her careless attitude, she doesn’t care what people think, what they say or whether they like her or not. I’ve attempted to adopt the same attitude but in the end I always worry about people’s opinions.
As we wait for the maître d’ to seat us at a table, I hear a group of boys walk in behind us. Boys are so obnoxious, they speak extremely loudly, and they’re crude and vulgar- especially Asian boys (Pakistani’s and Indian’s). I glance behind me to see a group of White boys walk in. I smile and turn back in time to follow Alisha to our seats. “If you would like to take a look at the menus, I will have another waiter come and take your order in a while, also the toilets are down the stairs and to the left. I will bring over some complementary cheese and breadsticks whilst you familiarise yourself with the menus” says the maître d’. I look around only to realise we aren’t in our usual restaurant that serves Asian delicacies, but instead Alisha opted to come to a French one.
“Why are we here? Is it even halal, what do you expect me to eat if we aren’t allowed to eat the meat here?” I fire the questions at her but she continues to stare at her phone with a stupid lopsided smile on her face. “Erm, best friend, Alisha, hello, I am speaking to you, but that’s fine you just carry on texting your ‘friend’ because I clearly am not important.”
“Ohh stop whining girl, I’ll put the phone away- in reply to your questions, no you cannot eat the meat but I guess we’ll just have to select the vegetarian dishes. I couldn’t be bothered driving further than this place because driving is effort and it takes up fuel, if you’re going to pay for it then be my guest but we are in a recession.” I look at her with a straight face and realise that there is no arguing with her and I will have to settle for this place instead. I looked around to see the lights were dim, giving the place a romantic feel and in the middle of the room hung a chandelier.
“Order for me, I’m off to the toilets to ring my mother and redo my lipstick.” I grab my clutch and walk down the stairs. Obviously being me I bump into someone. “I am ever so sorry, I wasn’t paying attention to my whereabouts and I failed to notice the last step.” I apologise whilst taking hold of my stuff that had spilled out on the floor.
“So the girl next door is stalking me now!” I look up to see the amused familiar face of Aiden. I roll my eyes at him whilst folding my arms over my chest in a defensive manner.
“Don’t flatter yourself pretty boy, I had no idea where you’d be tonight and also I’d say you were stalking me. How do I know you didn’t wait for my friend and I to leave her house and follow us here?” I reply.
“I find the term ‘pretty boy’ rather offensive to be honest. Firstly I am not a boy, I’m all man. Secondly I wouldn’t describe myself as ‘pretty’, I prefer the terms handsome or sexy.” He replies with wit and an ever so annoying smirk on his face.
“Well good for you mate. By the way calling yourself sexy or handsome isn’t conceited at all. Who are you even here with? Girlfriend?” I realise once I reply it seems as though I am asking if he has a girlfriend but before I could correct myself or he could reply his phone rings.
“Hi mate, no I haven’t got stuck in the loos you prat, I just ran into a friend and I stopped to talk to her, and if you so much as think of inviting that skank and her mates, I am ditching you all.” His tone turns more aggressive as he mentions the ‘skank’. I was about to turn around and walk away but he grabs hold of my arm and stops me. I turn to him and raise an eyebrow but don’t say anything as he is still speaking on his phone. He puts the phone down and cusses.
“Errm Aiden as much as I know you’d love to keep hanging on to my arm and keep me close to you because you are a stalker, my friend’s waiting alone.” I pull away slightly and start walking away.
“Mind if I join you? It’s just that my ex is here, and she really bores me and she is the definition of a slut and errm I don’t want to sit near her. Plus I errm want her to see me with another girl so she can get the message and leave. I know it’s a lot to ask since I only met you today but you can trust me, I promise I’m not actually stalking you.” He stutters slightly and pushes his hands through his hair. I can feel myself blushing as his stare bores into me-or I could feel my face getting warmer, I don’t think it’s possible for me to blush with my darker complexion.
“Yes sure, I don’t mind to be fair but you’ll have to excuse my friend Alisha, she’s really upfront so don’t take anything to heart.” I smile and reply. We both walk up the stairs into the main dining area, I notice a group of boys sat behind us waving at him. Those must be his friends, as I look closer there are 3 girls with them. One of them must be his ex as he shoots daggers at the table but it’s hard to see who they’re directed at.
He entwines his fingers through mine and whispers in my ear. “Sorry but I have to make it obvious that I’m not interested in her.” I assure myself that he’s only doing it to make his ex-girlfriend jealous and that he doesn’t like me but my major crush on him isn’t helping at all as I continue to blush profusely or just get extremely warm-still not sure on which one is happening since I have no mirror in front of me. We walk to my table and Alisha is deep in conversation with her phone stuck to her ear. As usual she is talking to her boyfriend which just further reminds me that I’m alone. Forever alone. She puts the phone down and looks at me and then Aiden then me again.
“Explain why you have cute little white boy attached to your hip babe.” I burst out laughing at her absurd reference to Aiden. He smiles and moves his head to face his friends. “Well as you saw before, he dropped me off, I saw him again just now, we got talking and he’s avoiding his ex who is seated behind us, that’s the long story in short.” Is my response, I hear shouting behind us and see a girl making her way over to our table. This must be his ex then.
“Cassandra leave, don’t bother making a commotion over whatever our relationship was. I told you on the phone before and I’m telling you again, our relationship is not salvageable; you ruined it now you live with it. You invite yourself out with MY friends, if I didn’t have Arissa here I would have had to leave so please just save yourself the embarrassment and go sit back down.” I could feel the gaze of his friends, his ex and Alisha on Aiden and I and. I hate crowds and moreover I hate people staring and this situation is making me want the ground to swallow me whole.
“Are you bloody well kidding me? You moved on already? And she isn’t even pretty, she’s a paki too.” Cassandra was staring back and forth between us and screaming loud enough so she could be heard over the soft, mellow music playing through the speakers. Yep, the ground should swallow me whole right about now. That would be perfect.
“Excuse me for interrupting you dramatic performance but since my friend is too nice to correct you, I will. Arissa isn’t a ‘paki’, she’s Indian. In fact the term ‘paki’ is rude and highlights how uneducated you are because the correct term would be ‘Pakistani’, being racist clearly isn’t convincing Aiden to give you another chance and you’ve also ruined a perfectly lovely meal between three friends. Now instead of creating a scene I suggest you leave or go sit back down willingly or I may just force you to do so.” Alisha is practically seething at the end of her little rant ad Cassandra clearly gets the message as she starts to walk away with her nose in the air.
I find it rather surprising that we haven’t been kicked out of the restaurant yet, I no longer feel hungry. Instead I just want to leave and go home. I share my thoughts with Alisha and Aiden and they agree. “Arissa, shall I just give you a lift in my car, we are staying on the same road after all and it’ll be pointless asking your friend to drive you to yours?” Aiden questions me whilst we walk to the car park. “Oh Aiden, that would be perfect because I’m going to meet up with Adam now so Arissa you can just leave with Aiden and I’ll see you later babe.” I clearly have no say in the matter because Aiden starts to steer me towards his car.
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