Live Forever // A Liam Gallagher Fanfiction

Chapter Five

I COME STOCKED WITH RICH TEA BISCUITS AND YORKSHIRE TEA. Somewhere along the line, I've acquired that knowledge about Liam. As if I cared about that shite anyway. It's funny how many bits and bobs of material you pick up along the way.

I knock on his front door. He opens the door and makes a show of letting me in. I roll my eyes and throw him the biscuits.

The main living areas of his flat are clean, though I know that's Mrs. Gallagher's work, not Liam's. Nor Noel's though he's long gone now. Off touring and shite, at least that's what Liam always says.

In the orderly kitchen, I quickly figure out the workings of the tap, tea kettle and stove. Anyone with half a brain can figure out how to make tea.

And in walks Liam with a battered guitar. He sits on one of the chairs and starts strumming something. I roll my eyes and wait extra long so the tea starts singing. A little ambient noise to block out the out of tune pitches coming from Liam is all the better.

At the table, Liam has pieces of folded notebook paper strewn across the surface and various pencils there too. His pocket Macbeth is a folded nightmare as well, with a flattened cigarette package acting as a bookmark in the first tenth of the book and a sticky substance on the cover of the book. One can only hope it's honey.

"Here ya are," I say, setting down a mug with a Twinings teabag gracing the side. He eyes it.

"You overboiled it," he notes.

"You can't overboil water," I say, exasperated. "Anyway, are you finished with your guitar? You need to start thinking about a claim."

"Macbeth hates the Beatles. That's why he dies in the end."

"So you did read the play," I say, a little more hopeful for this session.

"Well of course I read the fucking play. I have to write an essay."
I sigh. "What's your opinion on it?"
"It was overdramatic. Too hard to figure out sometimes."
That's a start. "What was overdramatic about it?" I ask.

"Why the fuck would a man believe three people off their fucking rockers?"

Slowly and painfully, we work through the writing process. It takes a solid thirty minutes to convince Liam to put his guitar on the floor and not on his lap so he can finally write. Liam also sloshes loads of tea onto his paper, obscuring the pencil marks he makes. And, in the fashion of a true boy, he spills honey-coloured crumbs all over his notebook paper. But I feel at least a little accomplished when I am able to look at the three front-to-back pages of paper with fairly intelligent comments about Macbeth.

"Okay. Next's session's next Wednesday. Hopefully your teacher grades this ten we can look at it."
"I hope I get good marks for much a pain in the arse this was."
"You must've written essays before."
"Not this fucking seriously."
I roll my eyes and head for the door. "Don't lose those pages. And goodbye."

The next Wednesday Liam is too busy on his guitar to care about what I have to say. Turns out he got top marks for his essay, among the best in his class.

"What's so bad about that?" I ask.

"She knows you're fucking helping me, that's what. So she gave me top marks without even readin' it."
"Then why didn't you just give her a fake one? A shite one?"

He looks at me suddenly. For some reason, my heart flutters for a beat. I pinch my thigh to snap me out of that crazy idea. "What're you saying that for?"

"Am I not supposed to?"

He smiles suddenly, then turns back to his guitar. "You're fuckin' crazy."
"Do it then. See if it makes a difference. You can go back to your career of half-assed essays because she thought I wrote this one."
"Fuckin' crazy," he smiles into his guitar.