it’s not so bad when you’re around
He looked pathetic: a peach yoghurt on his right hand, eyes staring blankly to his blindingly bright laptop screen, sitting in the middle of a dimly lit bedroom, in his sweatshirt adorned by buffalo wings sauce drippings and disgusting beer stains.
This peach yoghurt is damn good.
His resume has progressed since that fated night — he has added his email and phone number under his name, at least. To hell with job experiences, are they not just bluffed descriptions of “mastery of PowerPoint transitions” and “experienced with Excel’s IF functions”?
Holy fuck, this peach yoghurt is so fucking good.
It’s a big embarrassment, he thinks, to be unemployed after his big debut in an overseas company at the expense of his then-kinda-long-term relationship and missing out on his college group’s after-work drinking sessions. When he first moved overseas, understandably his family was all over the moon for it — suddenly Alistair the second son who isn’t a lawyer is now Alistair the son who went abroad for work whom all the aunts dote. Understandably, too, he presumes, that it is heavily frowned upon when he decided to go back home — the son who went abroad for work now is just oh, him.
I wonder if I still have some cups of the yoghurt left?
He had thought that facing his family and their influx of questions would be the hardest thing about deciding to go back home — now, five months since, it is facing himself that is the hardest. If he could send a text to his previous self he would send, in all caps: DON’T FUCKING DO IT YOU WILL REGRET IN 5MOS. Never had he felt so useless in life, and everything he lays his eyes into brings him an uncalled for misery. Maybe everything but one (the ponytail, but he wouldn’t admit it). Whosever the voice in his head was that whispered to him to resign and book a one-way ticket back, he wants to meet and have a conversation about what the heck, man?
You know I should text Hannah to say how good this peach yoghurt is.
He often pondered how things would have panned out if he had just stayed here after graduating: would he be a manager by now? When he looks at his instagram feed, would he feel more dignified, compared to his college cohort? Would he too, have a picture of him presenting in front of the general public in a blog of his own domain (alistair.com, how cool is that?) on a weirdly obscure but trending topic? Would he be married with a pet cat (British Shorthair, please) or a pet dog (by the love of God, a Golden Retriever) — to Hannah, perhaps? He stopped after some time, acknowledging that one of mankind’s strongest yet most dangerous indulgence is the indulgence of what ifs.
—
He woke up the next morning in the most pathetic way imaginable: empty can of beer on his left hand (the other three cans on the rubbish bin, and one more by the carpet), and his phone on the right. Four sad and crumpled yoghurt cups lie motionlessly on the table, as if staring at him, judging.
He wasn’t sure whether it’s the disgusting mix of beer and yoghurt or the disgusting mental image he imagined himself to be in that sent him off flailing and reaching for the toilet bowl.
It was the second “fghghrlghlrgrhlh” when his phone dinged.
He opened his phone after he collected himself (his dignity, however, is another issue altogether). He wished he was still dreaming or at the very least, intoxicated, so that he can find the most horrifying thing funny, when he reads:
Haha. Were you drunk?
Two scenarios where this response is a nightmare: 1) driving in the middle of the night and a cop pulled you over for your reckless driving, 2) a drunk text to your ex whom you haven’t spoken in years and bumped into in a supermarket. Sadly for Alistair, cops don’t text you, they don’t send you “haha”s, and they won’t just ignore you for an entire night before taking you into custody for reckless driving.
In a frantic state he looked up to the previous texts he sent:
09:28 PM — Hey, the peach yoghurt is amazing. Thanks!
10:02 PM — You looked great in the ponytail. How have you been lately?
10:31 PM — Want to have yoghurts w me tmrw/?
At this point, Alistair had bumped his head to the wall pretty much ten times.
10:55 PM — U know, iw as thinking how
11:09 PM — jja e a jk nmaeio op. L.
He’s in a complete mess. Four questions on Alistair’s head:
- Who would get drunk from beers and yoghurt as early as nine in the evening?
- Why was she already asleep at 9:28? Didn’t she have any Netflix series to binge or any clothes to fold a la Marie Kondo?
- I was thinking…what? (as opposed to what was I thinking, this is a question referring to text sent at 10:55 PM)
- So, does she want to have yoghurt with me?
—
The phone dinged:
Let’s have yoghurt :) I’ll meet you at the supermarket. See u at 7!
—
