8. Night / Burst

Just a quick warning about terrible poetry. You'll see.

8. Night / Burst

Molly burst into my sitting room with a triumphant cry, hair everywhere, skirt twirling, glitter-covered eyelids and wide smile momentarily blinding me.

I was sitting curled up on the sofa with my laptop, but at her sudden entry I dropped it to one side and picked up a cushion to defend myself. I'm not too sure what I would have done had it been someone with bad intentions.

“Ta da!” She exclaimed, slamming the door shut behind her, “I'm here!”

“How did you get in?!”

She smiled at my obvious concern.

“You gave me a key, remember?”

“For emergencies,” I clarified, putting the cushion down, “not so you could explode into home and give me a heart attack.”

She sat herself on the arm of the sofa, one leg crossed over the other, a little glitter dropping from her eye make-up.

“Well, if you'd had a heart attack, that would count as an emergency, which means I would have to get you to hospital. So really I'm just taking contraceptive steps.”

“Preventative steps,” I corrected, “Why are you here?”

And she stood up.

I should have taken it as a warning sign, for not a moment later she started singing.

“I could have danced all night, I could have danced all night!”

I love her dearly, really I do, but there is no nice way to describe Molly's singing. And my mother always told me that if I had nothing nice to say, I should say nothing at all.
I shot up and slapped a hand around her mouth.

“Do you want to get me evicted? Be quiet!”
“Effctad?” She mumbled through my fingers.
“Yes, evicted. For Chrissake, Molly, it's one a.m.! My neighbours are all asleep.”

“Oooh,” came the (too late) noise of comprehension.

I let her go.

“So, emergencies aside, why are you here?”

She smiled sweetly at me and a sense of dread filled me.
“Well,” she started, sitting down on the sofa and almost squashing my discarded laptop, “we are going to go, yes, we are going, to Black Gold.”

A moment of silence.

“Black Gold? The outrageously expensive nightclub on the other side of town?”

An enthusiastic nod from Molly.

“No. Absolutely not. I am exhausted, it's quarter past one in the bloody morning and I want to go to sleep.”

“But you were on your laptop.” She pointed out unhelpfully.

“I was going to shut it down in a minute,” I argued, “before you burst in. And I am most definitely not dressed for clubbing.”

She looked at my sleepwear – an ex-boyfriend's pair of boxers (don't look at me like that, he never claimed them and they are incredibly comfortable) and an old too-large T-shirt that I had won in a raffle that declared with a bright blood-red slogan, “Meat is Murder.”
“No, you're really not.”

But I wasn't finished, “I need a shower. That won't take less than 20 minutes. And I need to get up early tomorrow, Molly. I can't just go clubbing.”

She nodded, folding her hands in her lap, a defeated look on her face.

“I understand. But I got given free VIP tickets, valid for tonight only, and since we haven't caught up in a while, I thought it would be a fun thing to do together.”

Oh, Molly, no, no, not the guilt.

“But that's alright, if you don't want to go, we don't have to. We'll do something else another time. Really.”

She got up and straightened her skirt.
“So I'm just going to go. Sorry to bother you, Abs. I'll call you tomorrow.”

She got to the door, even had her hand on the handle, before I caved.
“Wait.”

She looked round, face full of hope, eyes wide – I never could resist that pleading look. It's the reason we used to get into so much trouble at school.
“I'll go.”

“Yay!”

I was enveloped in a flurry of glitter, hairspray, hugs and Britney Spears' Curious.
“Excellent! Go and have a shower, we'll discuss clothes when you get out.”

So I went and had a shower, leaving her in my sitting room with the laptop and a cup of herbal tea.
I must have taken twenty-odd minutes, maybe less. The quickest complete shower I have ever taken.
But, by the time I came back out into my sitting room, it seemed Molly's enthusiasm had dwindled. She was fast asleep on my sofa.

Once more, in verse! With added poetic license, because really, I only wrote this in the time Abs had a shower.

She burst into my life with a smile on her face.

[I never should have given her a key to the flat.]

She sang of love with a warm embrace.

[Probably woke up the neighbours, they'd complain about that.]

She told me to gather up my courage for an adventure was nigh,

I said, “For Chrissake, Molly, it's one am, are you high?”

She had tickets to a club, the famous Black Gold,

and wanted me to help the night unfold.

All I was left with was a sense of dread,

everything else was already in bed.
I listed the reasons why I didn't want to go,

but her eyes pleaded, how could I say no?

So off I went to get clean, was as quick as can be,

left her with Facebook and a cup of green tea.
In the end, we didn't leave the house,

for when I got back, she was asleep on the couch.