One In A Billion Read online

  One In A Billion

  ANNE-MARIE HART

  Copyright © 2014 Anne-Marie Hart

  First Edition, 28th November 2014.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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  Table of Contents:

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Epilogue

  About The Author

  Thanks

  Holding On To You (excerpt)

  Chapter 1

  The mirror seemed like a good place to rest my forehead for a moment. Bent over like this, hands gripping the edge of the sink, I either looked mad or melodramatic, and I didn't really care which. I told myself I was an idiot, but I already knew that. The problem was how to stop being one.

  It had happened again. Another date, another loser, another knock to my already low self-esteem. He was still out there too, waiting for me to come back from my fourth failed attempt at escape, each one going exactly the way I knew it always would, too spineless to do it for real. This time I'd even left my bag at the table, knowing full well, perhaps, that I wouldn't have the balls to go through with it, choose the door to the toilet and not the one to the street I'd have much rather taken, and come in here to take as long as I dared, berating myself for being too lame to say no, for fear of hurting his feelings. God I could be so weak sometimes.

  I peeled my forehead off the mirror, began to wash my hands, and noticed a young, wide-eyed girl looking up at me.

  'I'm not mad', I said quickly, just in case she thought I was. Neither of us were all that convinced.

  I made my way back to the table, and the date I didn't really want to be part of, hoping the next time I had a chance to escape, I'd have the balls to grab it round the neck with both hands. Marth smiled as I approached. He was the only person I had ever met called Marth, which could have been quite an interesting topic of conversation if he hadn't gone on and on about how unusual and brilliant it was, like a complete and total dick machine.

  'I took the liberty of ordering the bill', Marth said, which surprised me, because when I'd left to go to the toilet, I was half way through my dessert. I like dessert. In fact, I like it so much, I consider the main course to be a necessary chore to get through in order to win the prize of dessert. I'd been enjoying the chocolate layered cheese cake I'd ordered, which had come with both vanilla ice cream and cream, infinitely more than the date I was having. It was my one moment of pleasure in an evening that was otherwise devoid of it, and now the plates had been cleared, and my delicious dessert had vanished.

  'My dessert', I said feebly, as I lowered myself into my chair.

  'They cleared the plates', Marth said, wiping what looked like a smudge of chocolate from around his mouth. I tried to look at his napkin, but he folded it too quickly into his hand. That bastard had had panna cotta, and I knew for a fact it didn't come with chocolate.

  'I was half way through that', I said in disbelief, as though just saying something might in some way bring it back.

  Marth cleared his throat loudly and shrugged his shoulders. 'I thought you'd had enough already', he said.

  Enough already! What the hell does he mean by that? I thought. 'Okay', was what I said instead.

  I shouldn't have left it with him really. The way he'd been eyeing up my risotto, after he'd devoured his own huge plate of pasta, should have been a clue enough to his capabilities. At least he hadn't finished my wine. I made sure I knocked that back quickly - half a large glass - just in case he thought I didn't want that any more either.

  'Thirsty?' he said when I put the empty glass back on the table.

  'Yes', I said dramatically, and wiped the back of my hand across my mouth.

  When the bill came, Marth initially insisted on paying for what he had eaten, and then agreed on my suggestion of just splitting the bill equally, after he'd worked out it would be cheaper for him to do it that way.

  'It's still quite early', Marth said, outside the restaurant, when that awkward silence after a date kicks in, and neither person knows the other well enough to dare tell them what they really want to. Or maybe that's just me. 'We could go back to my house for another drink. I only live around the corner', he continued.

  Run, I was thinking. Just run away, quickly, now. Do it now before it's too late. 'Er, okay', I said instead. 'We could do that, for a little while I suppose.'

  Here's the thing. I like to give people a chance. Usually several chances, but I think it's fair to not judge them straight away. I also like sex, and hadn't had it for quite a long time, and, well you already know the other part, I'm pretty weak when it comes to saying no, even if the guy is clearly a total douchebag. I hate myself for it, but that's just the way it is. I was kind of hoping that Marth would be a bit of a machine in bed, or at least he'd stop talking about how great he was and we could get the whole thing over with quickly. I wouldn't say I felt obliged to sleep with him, I just thought that perhaps the sex might be better than all of the indications were leading me to believe it would be. Besides which, Marth wasn't all that bad looking. I mean, he'd lied a little bit on his application, but as the night wore on, and I got more drunk, and when the light fell on him properly, he kind of looked a little bit like a cheaper, fatter, older, balder version of Justin Timberlake. I mean he had to have some positive qualities, right?

  'Round the corner' ended up being a thirty minute bus ride and a forty five minute walk. When we finally got to his house, we had to creep through his living room and up to his bedroom, because his mother was fast asleep in front of the TV, spread eagled in a crumb-laden dressing gown. When I saw her distributed like that, like a ghastly pair of winter curtains, I knew I'd gone past the point of no return.

  Marth's bedroom was infinitely more interesting than he was. There were dirty clothes all over the floor, which he made no attempt to hide or clean up, posters of Japanese fantasy characters stuck to the walls with far too much sellotape, and about six books, none of which looked like they'd ever been read.

  I sat on the edge of the bed and sipped sour red wine from a plastic beaker, while Marth took to his computer gaming chair, to leer at me like a sexual predator might his latest kidnap victim. I was here, because Marth was the most recent in a long line of dates I'd arranged through an internet matching service I had high hopes was going to deliver me the knight in shining armour I'd spent most of my life wishing for. I was attracted to him because his profile had read like this:

  Adventurous, open minded, thirty two year old, with a love of the arts and a passion for creativity, seeks a special girl for friendship and possibly more. I love travelling, being creative in any way I can, and have a healthy passion for sports. My friends describe me as generous, thoughtful and funny. I work in software development and volunteer at a charity centre at

  weekends teaching art.

  And because his picture didn't make him look like an axe murderer. Neither of them t
urned out, however, to be quite as accurate as I had believed them to be. He was neither thirty two, nor seemed to have a love for the arts - apart from a clear love of borderline pornographic Japanese fantasy images. Software development also meant IT for a phone company, and I didn't want to ask him about the charity centre. There was nothing about him, or the room that we were in, that gave any impression he knew the first thing about art, let alone how to teach it, and his travel experiences amounted to a stag do in Prague, and a weekend away in Madrid with an ex girlfriend, which he told me he hated every minute of.

  He had lied quite categorically on the online dating application form, which he explained as something everyone did just to give themselves a 'necessary advantage'.

  'It's like a CV', he said, as we sat in the bedroom he had grown up in, knees almost touching. 'Everyone enhances it a little bit, to make sure they have the best chance of getting the job.'

  'Oh', I said naively. 'I hadn't realised.'

  I'd never lied on a CV in my life. I suppose that might have been why I was waitressing still and not already semi-retired with a holiday home in the Algarve, a fortune in the bank and animated Japanese pornography all over my walls.

  Later he admitted to paying a company to write it for him, as though I'd be impressed by his entrepreneurial skills, and I felt even lower for not seeing through it straight away. The photo he'd submitted had been taken ten years earlier, a rare moment on that trip to Madrid where he seemed to be enjoying himself, and he admitted had been 'digitally enhanced' with a series of filters, I guess as an attempt to make himself look much more appealing than he originally had. I suppose it worked too, because I was the idiot who agreed to go on a date with him. In hindsight, perhaps I should have asked him to send me some more, but I guess at that point I was already sucked in.

  I had been internet dating for a few months already, and continued to plug away at it, despite seeming to have an innate ability to pick only losers or jerks. I had no idea what I was doing wrong and was told by anyone I felt comfortable enough to talk to about it, that my profile was good and my pictures not only did me justice, but were actually pretty sexy. I certainly hadn't had difficulty finding people, but finding the good ones was proving to be the sticking point.

  I knew people who had met their husbands this way, had had fantastic life changing experiences they never would have had otherwise, and had nothing but glowing reviews to say about this way of dating, so I was hopeful, but typically my experience was always different. I seemed destined to pick the bad ones, or at least have the bad ones seek me out, and Marth was just another one in an increasing long list.

  He wasn't dangerous, which was one thing I had worried about when signing up for the service in the first place, and he certainly wasn't forcing me against my will to be here, he was just kind of hopeless, and in his company I felt even more hopeless than I normal did.

  Just to give you an idea, my internet dating profile read like this:

  Dreamy book lover seeks companion for exciting nights out, and steamy nights in. Must love reading, antiques, open fires and radio 4. Own hair and teeth essential, age negotiable. Special points given to men with facial hair (natural and not styled) and those who like Sunday markets, music festivals and exotic sounding craft beer. I like finding new things, listening to the rain, and breaking the rules. Want to come and do those things with me?

  My photos were nice and normal - sexy, but nothing too suggestive like some of the more up-front girls had put on their profiles, and I didn't lie. I had agonised for a while about whether to put in the description that I was looking for 'steamy nights in', worried that it might attract weirdos and sex pests, but my flat mate Sophia, younger than me by over ten years, and already a veteran of internet dating, told me I needed something suggestive, just to get the good ones excited enough to contact me. It was true too - it was exactly what I was looking for.

  Marth was none of the things I had described as essential, despite his claims to be so, in the fairly convincing chain of emails we'd had back and forth before the date. Now, with me already lured to his bedroom, and very much past the point of no return (thirty minute bus ride and forty five minute walk), he didn't seem to care too much about keeping up the pretence. I had given up trying to talk about travel, art, literature, music and politics, because every time I had done so previously, Marth would look at me like I was talking to him in a foreign language, and then say something like:

  'So anyway, I was telling you about my car/job/gym membership/penis size.'

  Bad sex was still sex, I thought, still trying to rationalise the decision I'd already made to myself, as though I was coming to terms with the decreased interest rate on a fixed rate bank account, and I had to be positive about something I'd locked myself into and couldn't now go back on. There was also still the chance, no matter how unlikely, that Marth was the animal in bed I had hoped he would be. At the very least, I could use it as material for one of my books.

  Marth was still leering at me. He'd put on some generic commercial pop music that definitely wasn't radio 4, and the red wine had stained his lower lip, like a strongly dyed boiled sweet. I expect I looked equally stupid. Marth refilled my beaker and came and sat alongside me.

  'I like your room', I said, just to say something.

  Marth ignored me again. Whereas I could name the people he'd met through the service, who he sat next to at work, how much money he earned, where he was going to buy his flat, what his ex-girlfriends were all missing out on, how new his brand new car was, why the fuel economy was so good on it, where he last went on holiday and a thousand other things he'd told me over the course of the evening, I bet he couldn't even remember what I did for a living.

  I watched Marth's hand creep towards me and I didn't stop it. A moment later we were lying back on the bed - half the bed actually - and were sort of tangled together all mouth and arms, trying as best as possible to indulge ourselves in each other. In Marth's eagerness, or inexperience perhaps, he managed to bang his teeth against mine, and then dribble a little bit onto my cheek. It wasn't glamorous.

  I should have left when I had the chance, I know. Like Marth, you probably think I'm a little bit easy, and it's true, I probably am, but not because I don't put a high value on sex. It's because most of the time I'm desperate for the companionship.

  Generally what happens is that despite all the signs warning me against sleeping with someone, either because they're a loser, a jerk or quite often both, I end up doing it anyway because I'm lonely, and then I end up feeling even more lonely the next morning for doing what I did. It's a horrible cycle, but I can't see a way out of it, and every time I find myself in the same position again, tangled up in a mess of skin and horniness, I hope that I've been too quick to judge, and the loser or the jerk will miraculously turn into the man of my dreams, immediately after we've slept together. Guess what, it hasn't happened yet, but that's the problem with me, I can't help hoping.

  Marth struggled with my clothes so much that I had to stop him and pull them off by myself because the way he was yanking at my bra was hurting. It kind of killed the already low buzz a little bit more, but Marth didn't seem to mind. He'd got his full beams on and they were pointing right at me. I folded my clothes carefully and stacked them in an empty space on the floor, before turning off the light and returning quickly to the bed.

  We fumbled, we kissed, we pressed our bodies together and arranged ourselves into traditional positions, and once again, despite my optimism, the earth did not move for me. The bed, however, certainly did. At one point squeaking so loudly I had to hold onto the sides to try and quieten it down, praying the comatose woman downstairs couldn't hear our gallant frolicking.

  Actually, that's probably a bit too fair on Marth. What really happened was that I had to 'attend' to him for a good ten minutes until he was ready, after which we had probably three minutes at the very most of 'action', when the bed did leap and complain a little, while Marth screwed up his fac
e like he was trying to fart, until he came loudly, like a truck squeezing on its brakes, and eventually fell into me, gasping heavily to pronounce the session successfully over. Less than five minutes later he was asleep and snoring loudly into my ear, and I cursed my luck once again, promising as soon as I worked out how to get home, that I'd take my profile off the dating site immediately, and forget all about trying to find a man.

  I drank the rest of the wine while Marth slept off his dubious bout of love making, and fingered through the books he had on his shelf.

  The only title I recognised was 'Mr Nice', Howard Marks's autobiography, which amused me to see had been inscribed inside with the following:

  Thought you might like this.

  Lots of love,

  Gran.

  The rest of the books were either troubleshooting guides for some technical aspect of computing, or had something to do with how to guarantee internet business success. Each one had the same kind of targeted business speak on the back, designed to engage the audience and sell what was essentially a lie. I read as much as I could of one, and then put it back on the shelf with the others, bored by what it was telling me. I couldn't help but think I'd been sold a lie myself, and he was right there, snoring away peacefully in the bed in front of me, another notch carved into his bed post.

  There were thousands of people around the world all snuggled up with their loved ones, and here I was with yet another dud. I couldn't remember all of their names, but the list was long enough to give me a complex, and showed no signs of slowing down. It was another unsuccessful evening to add to the catalogue of others I'd been busy building up, and the bad sex had made me feel exactly how I knew it would (and hoped unsuccessfully it wouldn't). Empty. If their was one thing I wished for (apart from a tall, dark, handsome and rich stranger to come into my life and whisk me away on a wondrous adventure), It was to have the capacity to learn from my past mistakes and see things for what they really were. That, and the tall, dark, handsome and rich stranger, seemed like such a long way away from where I was right now, that it wasn't even worth my while considering it.