Rotation

Another Man's Treasure

"...I'm gonna show you tonight! I'm alright! I'm just fine! And you're a tool so, so what?"

You belted your heart out up on stage, pumping your fist in the air to empower your words even further. It was a good thing you knew all the words, too, because your mates had bought you so many drinks your vision was crossed and blurred you couldn't have read the lyrics to an unfamiliar song. Then you would have just been a blubbering fool butchering a karaoke performance. And that would have been embarrassing.

Singing yourself blue in the face—and drinking yourself into oblivion—served as the perfect outlet for your aching heart. Hours earlier, you'd been dumped. Or more accurately, replaced.

It'd been a week since you'd heard from your long-term boyfriend, and while you knew he was on holiday with his mates—a holiday you hadn't been invited on—it was still odd that you hadn't heard from him at all. Not even a text to let you know that he'd made it to Amsterdam. You didn't expect too much communication; you trusted him to treat you right, but, silly you, you thought your boyfriend might actually miss you and want to say hi.

Last night after seven and a half days of nothing, you completely lost it and called him forty-seven times in a row. And not a single one was answered. So you rang your closest friends and they came over, laptops and tablets in hand, and intense cyber-stalking commenced.

It only took thirty-four minutes for your good mate Lindsey to unearth a damning post on Insta that your boyfriend was tagged in by a girl you kind of knew. The picture itself wasn't awful; honestly you couldn't make out much besides silhouettes and drinks. Even the caption wasn't much; all it said was, "this guy" with a random slew of emojis. But the funny thing was, when you tried to search for it yourself, nothing came up. Meaning you were blocked. You weren't meant to see this picture.

Twenty-two minutes of super-sleuthing was enough time for your oldest friend Ashley to find every social media account the girl had, and then eventually uncover her phone number.

In thirteen minutes you had a text drafted to her that was so long it was broken into five different parts when you hit send.

And one minute and fifty-four seconds is all the time your boyfriend—well ex-boyfriend—allowed you to speak to him today before he told you he was coming back tomorrow and there'd be no need for you to come see him. Tomorrow or ever again.

So your mates did what they knew best. They took you out, got you absolutely smashed, and then got you up on stage to pour your heart out. Somewhere in between I Will Survive and Total Eclipse of the Heart, you got a bit weepy and ended up calling your brother from the toilet. It took you awhile to realize you weren't actually sobbing to him but his voicemail, and as soon as you did you pulled yourself back together and headed out for another drink and a rousing rendition of Since U Been Gone.

The few other patrons in the pub were hardly paying attention to your drunken warbling on stage, only breaking from their conversations when your mates would cheer at the end of each song, some of them even offering half-hearted claps. If they were annoyed, they certainly didn't let on. Most likely, they pitied you; for Christ sake, you pitied you.

When your song ended, you finished the rest of your drink and began flipping through the songbook. Liberation was surging through you and you wanted a song to match your mood; something to serve as a proper fuck you to the twat you'd wasted the last few years of your young life on.

The book closed on your fingers, and you stumbled back in surprise. Were books automated now too?! You still weren't over the automated tills at Tesco, would you now have to get used to robotic books closing on you when they'd had enough?!