Weirdly, my day isn’t as bad as every previous year.I find myself watching movies and eating cake without really pondering anything of the past and anytime I catch sight of my new pretty, it makes me feel kind of strange. I have no idea why. I mean, I love jewellery as much as the next girl, but I have never been particularly attached to any I ever owned.This one little bracelet is fast forming some strange attachment to my heartstrings so that anytime I catch a glimpse, I smile. Stupid little inward bubbles I cannot explain.Maybe it’s because in all the twenty-nine birthdays I have had, this is the first one someone bought me a gift; Even if it was from him. It’s a strange feeling to think of it that way, yet it has somehow distracted me from the usual routine of tears and low mood and lying in a depressive state. The dandelion reference got me thinking and maybe I’m not done with it yet.My tattoo had a meaning once, and despi

I wake up disorientated and groggy, well rested but so out of whack. I’m in my own bed when I was sure I fell asleep on the couch during my movie marathon and blink at my surroundings. I sit up suddenly when I realise that I don’t have my duvet over me, but the throw from the end of my bed and can only assume I was put here by someone else. I am still wearing my sweatpants and yoga bra and try to get my bearings. Completely confused at how I ended up through here.The smell of coffee lingers in the air and I get up warily to stretch and yawn, knowing only one person would be in here brewing that foul stench, and he is probably the one who moved me from the couch. He maybe came up and wanted to sit in the living room and moved me for that reason. I shrug it off; run my fingers through my bedhead before padding out into the apartment sleepily.It feels eerily still and I can tell no one else is here anymore, but the mess I left on the coffee table has been cl

 ‘Just a little bit of touching … You’re too irresistible to not want to touch.’ It’s a wink, a return of playful and yet my heart plummets.Don’t go there, Alexi, please. I don’t want to fight again. I mentally will him to not go down this route and just push his hand away as he smiles my way.‘Did you have some sort of personality transplant when I was gone?’ I chide him, half serious and deflating inside, knowing that this was a dumb invitation to accept. There’s too much between us that comes out whenever we are left alone, and I don’t think we should try to build any sort of camaraderie outside of the club if this is anything to go by. History means there is so much tension and resentment lying in the silence that neither of us wants to air. I’m not that great a communicator, and he seems like he wants avoidance of the before too.‘Maybe I just had a wake-up

She’s small and brunette, curvy in places with an ample pair of tits and has that exotic brown-eyed beauty of a native Sicilian —Attractive in a wifely, cosy girl next door kind of way. I’m not impressed much by her, and she’s dressed like an Italian peasant right out of a history book. I wonder if it’s the gimmick for this place.Alexi is as he always is around adoring Carrero women, even though she is not one. Charming, warm and entertaining and seems to think touchy-feely is appropriate as she leans in for an awkward hug that lasts for a few seconds. I watch with a lack of amusement, gut aching a little while I battle the spiralling emotion rising in my stomach of my jealous bitch side clenching her claws into my soul. Bitterness has a horrible taste.She ignores my presence, even when Alexi says my name mid foreign spew of words, and she barely glances my way. It’s not hard to tell she has a major thing for him and I lift my menu

Alexi regards me for a long moment, so much so I look up at him to see if he even heard me and catch those calm grey eyes locked on me. He looks thoughtful and strangely sobering.‘When Gino and I were around nine years old we looked after a stray dog we called Benny …’ He frowns at me, an air of cute boy crossing his face as though locked onto a happy memory of a pet he once loved. A tiny little hint of dimple as something in his mind’s eye makes him smile just a fraction. I quieten myself down and listen intently, immediately drawn to the hints of genuine in him and captured by it.‘This one day, after school, we took a bone down to the street where we knew he liked to hang around during the day, and we found his body in the gutter … car had hit him and he had died quickly from his injuries when we weren’t there.’ Alexi frowns harder and that softness pales out to a far more sinister look that I am more familiar with;