We sat on either side of a wooden table in a dingy old pub, the only people there under forty, it appeared. Grimy looking men scattered themselves about the premises, downing their afternoon beers, either unemployed or on break. Katya was the only female in the entire place, not counting the barmaid whose aged face acquired more wrinkles with each passing second due to the smoke that engulfed the room. If I’d had a choice, I wouldn’t have come here but Katya had insisted for some unknown reason and, feeling indebted to whatever kind of luck had been with me that day, I didn’t argue. Not that I would have argued anyway.

“So, a writer then?” Katya’s words rolled over the table through the hazy air and into my ears. I caught a glimpse of two old men, sick and decrepit looking, eyeing Katya and then saying something to one another, then laughing. I felt like going over to them and ripping their eyeballs out from their sockets. Dirty old fuckers. As I continued to watch them, I saw them look to me and again trade comments. I felt sick and embarrassed. I knew exactly what they were thinking. What the hell is she doing with him? As if I didn’t feel unworthy enough in her presence. My self-consciousness was having a grand party inside me, stomping and dancing and making me ill.

“Owen?” Her voice reasserted itself and I turned toward her, though gazed downward at the table in front of her as I replied.

“Yeah.” Nerves and monosyllables get on like a house on fire. I wondered how long Katya could continue to talk to me while I was so obviously uncomfortable. I felt that any minute she’d end the conversation and send me packing, realizing that whatever had drawn her to me was wrong. I felt like dirty water in a basin that had just been unplugged, serving no further purpose, just vanishing.

“Did someone tell you that you only had a finite amount of words you could use in your life time?” she inquired curiously. My tension was relieved momentarily by perplexity.

“What?” I snatched a glance at the two old guys who were now chatting to the barmaid, ogling her, I imagined.

“I was just wondering since I don’t think I’ve actually heard you form a full sentence yet.” She smiled teasingly and sent chills throughout my body. I took a sip from my beer and she did the same shortly after, as if I’d reminded her that we had drinks in front of us.

“Sorry.” I answered, then, following a few seconds of expectant silence, decided I’d better throw something out there to avoid her joke becoming her opinion. “I’m no good at talking to strangers, actually.” As soon as I’d said it, I was bewildered. Blatant honesty! Where the hell did that come from? I wondered.

“Oh.” She seemed surprised, as if it was a completely foreign concept. “How do you make friends, then?”

“Ah, I don’t know. I guess they make me.” I replied, choosing not to mention that I could count the amount of close friends I had on one hand. Without noticing, the task of talking had become slightly less daunting.

“Like I did?” She grinned and I couldn’t stop thinking about how fucking gorgeous she was. This was like some sort of fantasy. Stuff like this didn’t happen to me in real life. Suddenly anxiety decided to trap a couple of negative thoughts and force them to procreate until my mind was full of pessimism. Perhaps she actually didn’t have any interest in me. Perhaps what I’d interpreted as a move was just a gesture of kindness, or, even more likely, a sick game being played on me. Maybe the pictures of her in my notebook had morphed me into a pathetic freak in her mind and she was merely stringing me along before finally revealing her true opinion. Scenarios began playing themselves out in my mind, all ending with me feeling depressed and lonelier than ever.

“Yeah, just like you did.” I forced words out of my mouth and attempted to grin. “I just have no idea what to say to people that I don’t know.”

Her brows furrowed faintly, apparently interested, or possibly considering me a shy loser without the faculties to function properly within society.

“You can say anything. Take, for instance, how I asked you if you were a writer. You answered ‘Yeah’, and that was it. You could have gone on to say what you write about, or what writing you like to read, or what you’re writing right now. People aren’t questionnaires, they like depth to their answers. That’s how they get to know you.” Her advice sunk in deeper than anything I’d ever heard at school or from Hornby. I didn’t know what it was, but something in the way she was speaking set me at ease slightly.

“Yeah, I guess, but that doesn’t help me in getting to know others. I mean, how do you just spark up a conversation with a stranger? I’d have no idea what to say. I feel like if I go up to someone and just start talking, they’ll think I’m crazy.” The words were speaking themselves, but once they were done I continued wondering where exactly they were coming from. Why was I speaking so confidently?

“Some people are like that, but most people I know like to be spoken to, as long as you’re not blatantly hitting on them or mindlessly drunk.” She chuckled softly and continued “So anyway, other than writing, what do you do?”

And I answered. Not in monosyllables, nor brief sentences. I told her in length about how I liked to play guitar and draw and listen to music and watch certain shows and for the entire stretch of my words, Katya listened, apparently contentedly. And when I was finished, I asked “How about you?” now fully embroiled in an actual conversation with a stranger. I was proud of myself and for some strange reason thought that maybe Katya was proud of me too.

Katya told me that she loved to sing and play guitar. She told me that she worked at a bar and that she performed there every now and then. She told me that she loved to paint because that was when she got her best ideas for song lyrics and it helped to clear her mind. She told me plenty of things that had me completely intrigued and each new facet of her I discovered added to my infatuation. We’d both finished our beers by the time she was done and it was my turn to instigate a topic.

“Do you still live with your parents?”

Katya sighed. Her eyes dipped downward like a dying seagull crashing from the air to the cold harsh ground. I wondered what about my question could have caused this and was knocked off my feet by a wave of answers. For someone with a parental situation like mine, I should have been more sensitive to the multitude of possibilities that could have been upsetting about the mere mention of parents. I cursed myself spitefully.

Then she answered, her eyes still down, her tone completely different to anything I’d heard from her previously. The wavering pitch she spoke with repeatedly punched me in the guts for being so moronic.

“I live by myself. Things with my parents aren’t exactly…” she paused and breathed in deeply and I felt like the biggest prick in the universe. “Can we talk about something else?” she asked finally and I nodded apologetically. Silence followed as I struggled to find something to say, my comfort now washing away with the confidence I’d been building. I eventually opened my mouth to extinguish the hush, with no idea exactly what it was I was going to say, when I noticed a sound. Humming.

Katya’s eyes were away, gazing blankly out of the window beside us, hypnotized. I watched, stunned and confused, and listened carefully to the barely audible noise freeing itself like a tortured animal. It was her that was humming, a tune that I knew I’d probably never heard before, though one that seemed significant and familiar. The whispered song continued for what seemed like hours but could have been seconds before suddenly stopping. Katya’s eyes saw me watching and a look of embarrassment began to take hold of her. Knowing what she was probably thinking, I acted promptly to reassure her.

“It’s okay,” I said quickly, then let my words slow down for the remainder of the sentence: “it sounded nice. What was it?”

Moments passed by as she was a little reluctant to answer. Just as I was about to tell her that she didn’t have to, she did.

“It’s just a song I wrote when I was younger. About my Dad.” Sadness echoed in her eyes and I wasn’t sure if I should push the matter but I was intrigued and, seeing her this way, I wanted to know if there was anything I could say or do to relieve the feelings she had.

“Can I hear it? With words, I mean.” I asked, hoping I wasn’t overstepping my bounds. She gazed at me mutely for a moment, then reached into her pocket and retrieved a pen and small notepad. She wrote quickly before tearing out the marked page and folding it in half. She then handed it to me.

“Don’t read it now. Wait until later, when I’m not around.”

I nodded and carefully slid the paper into my pocket. Then, just as I was about to thank her, I saw something that sent both anger and revulsion rifling throughout my body. My father, already drunk, had entered the pub and stumbled toward the counter. My mind raced. I needed to get out of there without him seeing me. I hadn’t talked to him in days and had no intention of opening the lines of communication. I looked to Katya who was again staring out from the window. I hissed her name quietly to gain her attention. Her apparent sadness still lingered and took one last chance to blame itself on me and make me feel bad. Tossing that feeling aside, my father taking higher priority for the moment, I quickly spoke.

“I’m really sorry, but I’ve got to go.” I snuck a peek at Dad and saw that he was still facing the counter. I had to hurry. “It’s been awesome talking to you. I’ll see you around.” And then I leapt to my feet and walked as quickly as a walk can be without becoming a run, never turning back. I exited the pub and put as much distance between it and myself as humanly possible, hopping on a tram that arrived almost instantly.

Bitter thoughts of my father spread contagiously, infecting all else that was in my head. I was disgusted by his drunkenness and the fact that he wasn’t at work. Drinking had been his means of coping ever since Mum left, and I despised him for it. He was supposed to be there for me, to help me. How was I expected to get by with an absentee mother and a father who couldn’t deal soberly? I’d refused to speak to him in his continuing state. I’d barely spoken a word to him since Mum’s exodus, for a reason I couldn’t quite discern. Maybe I thought he should have tried harder to make her stay. Really, I didn’t know what I thought. All I knew was that whenever he tried to communicate with me, an unbelievably intense feeling welled up inside of me and made it impossible to speak, or even look at him.

As the tram carried me to wherever I was going, I couldn’t help but think about Katya and the way I’d left her. I blamed Dad for that. Why the fuck, out of all possible places and times, did he have to enter THAT pub while I was there? Between my stupid introduction of the “P” word into our conversation and my abrupt exit, I wondered whether I’d done enough to finally convince Katya that I wasn’t worth her time. Perhaps some hidden recess within me wanted to push Katya away before she got too close, before I got too close. I’d only ever had one girlfriend before and that relationship had thoroughly fucked up my head and heart for so long, it still hung above me like a guillotine blade. I knew that Bianca hadn’t meant to hurt me, though that knowledge did me no good in the long run. It just made events more tragic. If things had been just a tad different, we probably still would have been together. I regarded Bianca fondly for a moment before the crushing truth of the past weighed down on me with the uncaring viciousness of an assassin. The sadness her memory made me feel… had I been in love with her? The question reverberated in the space between my ears, considering itself deeply. My feelings for Bianca during the relationship, and after, were strong, but were they the result of love? Turning the issue over and over in my head, I eventually reached the only answer I possibly could at that point.

I simply didn’t know.

I rested back in my seat tiredly and watched out the window at life passing me by. My hands, searching for a comfortable position, found themselves in my pockets. That was when I remembered Katya’s song. She’d written it down for me and now that she wasn’t around, I could read it. I was both excited and tentative. I pulled the paper out of my pocket and unfolded it. I let my eyes wash over the words, scanning them, and I suddenly became infused by the emotions of another person.