Zoë

Chapter 1

On the day that my life just so happened to change forever, I woke up to the distant sound of my next door neighbour calling his lawnmower a "fucking bastard titwank".

Oh, how Chaucerian, I remember thinking to myself as my eyes refused to open.

Thank god it was a Saturday, and I was free from obligation, because I wasn't really in any sort of mood to work...or talk...or move.

I mean, why should I be, when my head was resting on a pillow so comfie that it felt like it was made from clouds and puppies?

But then I heard some mild sleepy grunts from the guy lying next to me, and I begrudgingly decided I needed to get out of bed, and avoid giving off the impression I wanted to lie in bed with him all day. 

Not that that's something I haven't done before with previous people I've brought home from a night down at The LiveWire, don't get me wrong. But trust me, nice as this guy was, he wasn't exactly the most scintillating of conversationalists. 

So, I wiped the sleep gunk from the corners of my eyes, blinked away the stinging the sunlight was inflicting on my corneas, and swung my legs out of bed, stretching my limbs and cracking various numerous joints, the noise of which made me sound like bacon crackling in a frying pan.

(Damn. I made myself hungry writing that. Well done, me.)

As I stood and gathered my clothing debris from the floor, I heard him wake up behind me, making sniffing and scratching noises as he pushed himself into sitting up.

"Morning," he said groggily.

"It is indeed," I replied as I walked up to my clothes drawers.

"You alright?"

"Yeah, you?"

"Not bad, not bad. It's kind of nice to wake up without a hangover on a Saturday morning, fair play."

"You're welcome."

He threw the covers off himself, and rooted around the carpet for his clothes, too. "So, um...do you, like, always not drink alcohol?"

"Yeah, pretty much."

I finally found a pair of underwear I fancied wearing, and with a some degree of half-asleep unbalance, I managed to get both feet through the holes, and pull them up over my [insert  innuendo comedy whistle sound here] so that he wouldn't happen to see all the way to China. 

(I really hope that that's a saying other people's mums taught them growing up, because otherwise, I am just too weird to function.)

"Not your thing?," he asked.

"Nah, it's not for me, personally. But I don't mind others who do like to drink. Like, my mate Hannah consumes more wine a day than the cast of Cougar Town, and she's one of the awesomest people on the planet."

"Ah, that's cool." He wasn't listening to what I was saying that intently, consumed as he was with putting his foot into his sock correctly.

I rolled my eyes, turned back, and opened the drawer containing my jeans.

"Oh, by the way...Miss...uuuuuh...", he uh-ed, trying but failing to remember my name.

(Hey, it's fine, I didn't remember his name, either. Still don't. Oh, well.)

"Zoë," I said, helpfully.

"Zoë! Right. Um, I think I should just like...you know...make it clear that last night..."

I froze, stopped adjusting the belt on my jeans right then, and thought:

You're not.

"...while it was great-- really great!..."