The Third Wheel by Michael J. Ritchie

Author:Michael J. Ritchie [Ritchie, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Unbound

Twenty

The Reason I'm Single

There are more tears, but once again not from me. If I start, I’ll never stop. Georgina throws herself around my neck, burying her face into my collarbone. When Iris did this a few short hours ago, my natural reaction was to hug back. Now, I just feel awkward.

I broke up with Georgina eight months ago after she went mad because I was never free enough for her. She has (or is that ‘had’?) a tedious office job doing something repetitive with accounts, and was never willing to accept or understand that I couldn’t simply leave my work when I came home. Anyone who says that teaching is an easy job is lying or doesn’t understand. Alright, the act of teaching takes up a surprisingly small amount of my time, but so much else is given over to training, lesson planning, marking, preparing tests, meetings and research into recent educational theory. Don’t give me any crap about those ‘long, languid six-week holidays’. They’re still six weeks too short to get everything done.

I give a half-hug back, which makes her cling even tighter, like a barnacle in a rock pool, and I wonder if I’ll get her off me without the use of a crowbar. I’m pleased I didn’t reply to her text saying that I loved her. I decide to immediately introduce a topic that should make her see sense.

‘Where’s Marcus? Is he here with you?’ Marcus is Georgina’s boyfriend of six months, a tall, broad-shouldered rugby player who splashes his parents’ cash like he’s Brooklyn sodding Beckham. Any brains he had were in his balls and, if the rumours are true, they’ve shrunk to the size of peas thanks to years of steroid abuse.

Here’s the thing though. People think it’s weird that I’m so vehemently against the idea of someone dating my ex-girlfriend, even though I ended it with her, but I still like Georgina, even if not in the way she wants, and Marcus bullied me on and off throughout secondary school. I don’t have anything against her being in a relationship, but I don’t think it should be him. She can do so much better.

‘He’s gone,’ she says, extracting herself from me and sitting back on the desk. ‘He and his family vanished as soon as the aliens… I called him, and he said they were going. He didn’t even say goodbye properly.’ Fresh wails and more tears. I can’t help but feel sorry for her. Whatever the case, that’s a shitty thing to happen.

‘He didn’t ask after you?’

‘He was like, “Yeah, stay safe” and that was it,’ she says, hugging herself. ‘End of the world and I’ve been fucking dumped. Again. Didn’t even ask me if I was OK. Didn’t even call me.’ Georgina, like me, is parentless, but her loss was much more recent. Four years ago, she lost her father to cancer, and three months after that her mother had a fatal heart attack. Stress induced, the doctors decided. More than anyone else, she knows what I’m going through, and I understand her.

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