chapter 5

When we left the restaurant the inevitable Glasgow rain had began in earnest so we quickly settled on a nearby bar. It was a Thursday night and most of the students had cleared out of the city for the summer so the place was empty aside from a couple of guys drinking by the bar.

I tried to order a vodka and diet coke (who was I kidding, right) but Alex shook her head and switched my order to a double and added on some shots.

"I don't really drink," I protested.

"We're getting fucked up," she said firmly and I was powerless to disobey.

After downing our first round of drinks way too quickly, silence settled and it became one again apparent how little we had to say to each other. I tried desperately to think of something clever or funny to say but nothing came.

"So when do you get your exam results?" I asked.

Even I was cringing at the weakness of my own chat but Alex could barely conceal her disdain. "Is that really all you have to talk about?"

I must have looked wounded because a moment later she sighed. "Sorry. If you must know, I failed my exams."

"Don't be silly, no one fails first year," I said. "I'm sure you did better than you think."

"I know I failed," she said slowly, staring down into her glass. "Because I didn't show up to any of my exams."

"Oh," I said quietly.

She looked up and met my eyes, their pale blue suddenly had a vulnerability that I hadn't seen in her before. "I guess I just wasn't expecting it to be so... hard, you know? I was always top of the class without trying, I never really studied for an exam in my life and suddenly I was being taught things I didn't understand and being thrown into hospital placements where I didn't have a clue what I was doing. My dad is a surgeon and I couldn't even take blood without my hands shaking."

I suppose i shouldn't really have felt sorry for her. Supergirl discovering kryptonite and finally experiencing what we mere mortals have to face every day isn't exactly the most sympathetic story but she looked so sweetly dejected, so adorably pitiful.

"I had a volleyball scholarship so I threw myself into the one thing I knew that I was still reliably good at: sport. But I guess I must have thrown myself into it a little too hard because I gave myself a shoulder injury and had to sit out the rest of the season. And that was the end of that," she downed what little was left in her glass and slammed the glass down with finality.

"I'm sorry, Alex, I had no idea."

"Yeah, well, you're the only person I've told aside from my parents," she said. "I've pretty much been avoiding everyone."

"Is that why you didn't want to go to your volleyball game?" I asked.

She rotated her arm and gave a little grimace of pain. "The truth is that my shoulder is all messed up. The doctor says that even with physio and surgery, I'll still have to relearn how to play with my left arm."

"Is that even possible?"

She shrugged and grimaced again."Jessica Ennis re-learned how to long jump with her left leg after an injury to her right foot that should have ended her career so I suppose anything is possible. But I'm not Jessica Ennis. And I'm not sure I can face failing again."

I felt closer to her now that I had seen the chink in her perfect girl armour. It struck me that she was just as lost and lonely as I was. She had fallen, failed for the first time in her life. She was no longer her parent's golden girl, no longer the sport star or the most popular girl in school. She had shed every part of her identity, everything that had once made up Alex Park and now she didn't know what to do. I realised that the beautiful, distant girl that I had quietly been deifying from afar was in fact a person like me who sometimes got nervous or said and did stupid things and for a moment I thought maybe we might be friends after all.

"I think we need another drink," Alex said.

When she returned from the bar, something had imperceptibly shifted and I felt the distance between us growing again.

"Sorry for getting so angsty," she said with a little embarrassed laugh. "It's no big deal really. I'm going to Bournemouth to study Physiotherapy in September."

Bournemouth. My heart sank stupidly at how far away it was.

"The only problem is I need to pay my tuition fees - Nicola Sturgeon's generosity doesn't extend to first year failures and I've got no chance of a sports scholarship now - which is what brings me to the glamorous world of checkout six of Tesco Maryhill." Alex said. "And I've come to terms with being the only one in my family who won't be called Dr Park. Besides, I'm beginning to realise that there's an upside of being the family fuck up: when no one has any expectations for you, they pretty much leave you alone to do whatever you want."

I wanted to ask Alex what she wanted but her eyes were drifting distractedly towards the two guys by the bar and I thought i already knew the answer.

"Which of those guys is your type?" she asked.

"I don't know. I don't have a type."

"Everyone has a type."

"What does it matter?" I muttered. "Neither of them would look twice at me."

Alex rolled her eyes. "You know, you're not even bad looking. It's just all this shrinking violet, Perks-Of-Being-A-bloody-Wallflower stuff that puts people off. You just need to have a little confidence."

I didn't feel confident or attractive. I felt like a huge bloated hippo. Like an enormous balloon inflated big enough to burst. With my previous humiliation still fresh in my mind, my secret desire to swell up and revel in my own bigness was losing out to the more immediate desire to shrivel up and hide away.

"What would you know? Look at you, you're gorgeous. You think people are nice to you just because people are nice? Well, that's not the way it is."

Once again Alex looked a little taken aback by the heat of my words but after a moment a wry smile played across her lips. "Oh. I didn't realise that I was your type."

"What?! No! That's not what I meant!" I cried, knowing that I was only incriminating myself further by protesting so much.

"Relax, big girl, I'm only teasing," Alex laughed.

'Big girl'?!

"Not that it would be a big deal anyway," she shrugged.

My head was spinning. What the hell did she mean?

Her attention was still on the two guys who were now moving towards the door.

"I'm going for a smoke. You want to come with?"

"You smoke?!"

"Only socially," she said.

"Well I don't."

"You don't smoke, you barely drink," she said, that mocking smile playing on her lips again. "What do you do? What's your vice?"

I stared down at the slope of my belly. Food. Mindlessly gorging myself on naughty, delicious, fattening food like a fat, hungry and horny piggy. "Nothing."

She laughed at me again and I could do nothing but watch her walk away.

When she returned she was accompanied by the smell of smoke and summer rain. And the two boys.

She introduced them as Ruaraidh and Stuart. I knew straight away that it was Ruaraidh that Alex was interested in. It would seem that her "type" was tall guys with man buns and neck tattoos. Stuart on the other hand was small and wiry, shorter than Alex and barely taller than me. I could easily have squashed him. But from the reluctant look he had on his face as he sat down beside me I doubted that that was the kind of thing that he was into. I suppose he was OK looking if you like granddad shirt wearing Ed Sheeran lookalikes.

Ruaraidh barely acknowledged me, he didn't have to. I knew the routine well: Stuart was a scud missile deployed to take me out and clear the path to Alex for his friend. Ruaraidh would get the hot girl's undivided attention and Alex wouldn't have to feel guilty about abandoning me. So everyone was happy. Except Stuart and I who were awkwardly trapped in each other's company despite our mutual disinterest.