take me back to the start [teddy]

[mikayla leigh james]

nobody said it was easy

no one ever said it would be this hard

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Huddled together in a close group on one side of the room, all of Kayla’s friends happily fawned over some attractive guy who had just entered the party and who swaggered his toned and tanned self into the living room. Despite their incessant giggles and claims of what they would like to do to this guys rippled body, Kayla had managed to completely detach herself from their conversation and had entered into a daydream, clutching onto her glass and staring across at an empty wall as a blank canvas for her overactive and dreamy imagination.

”Wouldn’t you Kayla? Kayla?”

Catching the tail end of whatever her friend had been trying to ask her Kayla suddenly blinked back into reality and looked across at the girl speaking to her, raising a small smile and nodding as she breezed a confident ”Yeah” despite having no clue what they were talking about.

”You need to stop thinking about him Kayls” The girl shrugged with small smile, apparently being able to read Kayla’s mind with more efficiency than she had hoped.

Her mouth dropping open a little aghast that she had been rumbled, Kayla shook her head and protested her innocence. ”I’m not” she assured ”I’m over him”. She looked at her glass, swishing the limited contents around a little bit before raising it to her mouth and downing the drink, noting her friends unconvinced nod as she did. She was over Teddy. Completely. Right? ”I’m going to get another” She muttered vaguely, holding up her now empty glass with small apologetic smile.

Swishing her dirty blonde waves over her shoulders, Kayla headed out of the room and into the kitchen, barely even noticing the hot guy her friends had been so eagerly discussing. Once again tousling her hair in a nervous ‘I need something to occupy my hands’ sort of routine, she squashed her way through groups of people and into the busy kitchen. The new change from bleached blonde locks to a more demure shade hadn’t been the only change for her over the past few months. It seemed like recently, everything had seemed to go down the pan well and truly.

After the huge fallout from finding out that her boyfriend had once dated her sister and neither of them had thought to mention it to her, relationships had soured completely. Teddy and Kayla had split and she now spent most of her time trying her best to avoid even setting eyes on him. Addie and Kayla had also had a massive screaming match, and since then had never managed to get their close relationship back again. Instead Kayla merely tolerated her sister, managing to utter short remarks to her but never wanting to engage in the lengthy conversation they used to have. Her parents meanwhile were quickly losing patience with Kayla, considering her grudge selfish and ridiculous under the context, as they rushed around looking after the now heavily pregnant Addie. All in all, things weren’t great and that’s why instead of giving everybody the silent treatment at home, Kayla had chosen to come out tonight and get trashed. Sure it wasn’t going to improve any of her current issues, but it might at least help her forget them for a little while.

From the laddish shouts from across the kitchen, it sounded as though a group of guys were engaging in some shot drinking game. ”Come on Theo!” one shouted merrily, obviously trying to encourage some participation from their friend. Kayla rolled her eyes a little as she poured her drink, not particularly in the mood for tolerating a group of drunken lairy boys. She wanted her meet her prince charming tonight, not an inebriated and cocky slurring mess. Still, as she generously poured the vodka, she realised it was probably only a matter of time until the drink blurred her mind so much that the slurring guy and the prince charming became one and the same bloke. Topping up her drink with some cheap supermarket lemonade from the counter, Kayla pledged not to let the vodka goggles fool her tonight. She was not going to throw herself at some drunk guy in the hopes he would make everything better and then end up feeling used and rejected come morning.

Way too absorbed in her thoughts, Kayla let out a sudden gasp as she too swiftly turned to leave the packed kitchen, running straight into some guy standing right behind her behind her and spilling some of the overfilled contents of her glass over his shirt. ”God! Sorry!” she yelped, shocked and more than a bit embarrassed at her clumsyness. She looked up at the unfortunate guy, her eyes meeting with his in a look of horror at the realisation of who she had just spilt her drink over. Kayla’s mouth hung open and her brain suddenly seemed to turn to mush. No more profound words seemed to enter her mind as she stared at the guy she had been trying to avoid for so many months and so another small ”Sorry” escaped from her mouth as she cringed and waited for the ground to swallow her up. Teddy. Of all the people. Why is life so cruel that it lets you literally run straight into the person you least want to see?

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[theodore james caplan]

[/b] Teddy paused when he saw who he'd managed to run into. People said things like they didn't want to run into their ex, but something told Teddy that this wasn't quite how they meant it. Teddy had quite literally ran into his ex girlfriend. He thought of their break up, how they'd left things after he'd told her about Addie. Teddy had only wanted to bring them closer, but had seemingly only succeeded in pulling them apart. For the most part, Teddy had been avoiding memories of Kayla, and he'd been doing pretty well for a while, and now here she was; the biggest reminder of all. He smiled briefly at her, but the smile didn't last long. Teddy wasn't exactly sure of how she wanted this to go down.

"Hi," Teddy said, feeling as sheepish as he had done when she let him into her house that day and he'd had nothing to say. His friends were calling to him, having spotted Kayla too. Teddy wasn't sure whether to thank them for trying to force him away or to push them away. Being pulled back to the table with the beers clasped in his arms, Teddy tried to say something to Kayla but was forced to place the beers down in the center of the table so the game could restart. "Kayla?" Teddy muttered, looking behind him to see if she was still there.[/ul][/size]

[mikayla leigh james]

A few months ago, Kayla had wished above all else that her and Teddy could be closer, that their relationship could just go smoothly and that he would stop pushing her away with every attempt she might. Right now, with the painful irony that she so close to Teddy she was practically on top of him, Kayla wanted nothing more than to be as far away from him as possible. If only life had a rewind button for situations like this, something that could undo the awkward moments and let you relive them and avoid your mistakes. If such a thing existed, Kayla concluded she would probably horrifically abuse it, considering the frequency of her mistakes and moments of cringey embarrassment. Stuck here now, gawping stupidly at her ex, Kayla wondered just how much she would remove from her life if it was possible. If she could, would she take back telling Teddy to leave? Would she take back telling him she liked him? Would she choose to never meet him in the first place? It was futile to even consider and Kayla was realistic in that what was done was done but even so she couldn’t help wondering now, as she stood face to face with Teddy, how things might have been if she’d just played her cards differently.

”Hi..” Kayla repeated back slowly, noting the awkwardness in his body language and struggling to decide if this was a positive or a negative. One the one hand, the fact that for once it was not just her struggling for words was surely a good thing. On the other, Kayla felt like a cheery bit of Teddy Caplan confidence would do a world of good in breaking the ice right now. She chewed her lip a little, trying and failing to think of something to say to him. What was there to say? Apart from another sorry.. but then that tended to drive Teddy to despair with her anyway. Perhaps thankfully, his friends suddenly broke their awkward stand off by making a grab for Teddy and the beers he was carrying. Watching him getting dragged back towards the drinking game he had been participating in, Kayla let out a little sign. That was it then. Their first bumping into each other moment, done, with all of about ten words spoken between them.

It was a bit sad really that after spending so much time with each other, they couldn’t even any longer string a conversation together. But then perhaps it was better to look on the plus side, in that the pain had hardly been prolonged during their fifteen second first rendezvous this evening. There was always a plus side to things but tonight, like most times, Kayla was struggling to accept it. She blinked, turning away to rejoin her friends as Teddy got dragged back to the game, wondering if that would be the last they saw of each other tonight.

Just as she took her first step though, Kayla heard her name spoken from behind her. It was quiet, barely audible above the noise of the party but, being a paranoid individual, she was adept at hearing her name being mentioned. Closing her eyes for a second, she considered whether to turn. It would be quite plausible that she hadn’t just heard Teddy, she could easily get away with just walking. Yet, despite having the perfect excuse to get away from him, Kayla just couldn’t stop herself from turning. Why, when she’d spent so long trying not to see him, she would want to continue this moment of awkwardness with Teddy, Kayla was quite unsure. Yet reluctantly, she turned on the spot, looking back at her ex a little expectantly. Did he want to say something? Tell her something? Ask her something? Her big eyes probed him, waiting for him to continue. Without a word she just stood there, unable to stop herself from fawning a little guiltily over just how beautiful he was.

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