Samuel Simons vs. football and his one friend

There’s two things you need to know about me before we start. Number one is that I hate football. Number two is that whenever the footy’s on, I go down the pub with my mate Mathew to watch it. It’s become something of a tradition since we became sort of friends at our work, and no matter how boring I find watching a bunch of rich, fit men kick about a ball on a field of grass, I still can’t bring myself to say no to coming. Maybe it’s because Matt’s my only real friend and the only tolerable person I know, or maybe I’m just really gay. It’s probably a bit of both.

Sometimes I think Matt can read my mind, because I catch them staring at me out of the corner of my eye with a little knowing smile on their face. I turn to look at them, to shut them down, but it’s too late as they laugh a little.

“You’re staring at van Dijk’s arse again, mate.” They say with their scouse accent, such a smug attitude to them. Like they wouldn’t be doing the same… well, they wouldn’t be, actually, so I have no real comeback for that.

“No, I’m looking respectfully, there’s a difference!”

Looking respectfully, sure, if that meant zoning out, staring at someone for a full minute and not hearing a thing your friend just said to you.

“Come on, you do it every time he’s on the pitch! You really thought I wouldn’t notice?” Matt tutted dramatically at me, elbowing me gently in the arm. “Learn some subtlety, Sammy, you’ll never get a bloke interested in you like this.”

I roll my eyes, taking a sip of my half drunk pint and sighing like it’s just taken all of my troubles away. I don’t give that a response, mainly because me not having a boyfriend isn’t something Matt will ever let me hear the end of. I’m not even that bothered about being single. If anything, I like it. No expectations, no pressure, no annoying miscommunication issues, it’s honestly the best thing for me.

There’s a round of very loud cheers from around me and from the TV as Liverpool score their third goal of the game. People stand up and shout and spill their drinks on each other, but our table is off to the corner so we’re pretty safe.

“Bloody hell, that was a good one, weren’t it?” Matt exclaims all excited and giddy, like I have a clue whether or not that goal was any better or worse than the other two. They have a habit of forgetting that I’m only actually here for the fact that they buy me a pint. I nod with as much enthusiasm as I can muster, and they barely notice as they watch the replay.

I let my gaze and my mind wander for a bit as Matt continues to enthuse over grown men kicking a ball about. I like to play a little game with myself where I make up stories for the people around me. Who are they? What’s their life like? Do they have a dark, mysterious past? Well, they probably don’t, but it’s fun to imagine they do.

There’s two girls at the bar, one with long, brown curly hair, like mine, and one with blonde hair cut to a bob, a little wavy at the ends. They keep touching hands, their pinky’s brushing occasionally, and they keep glancing at each other and just laughing. I can’t help but come up with some incredibly romantic sapphic love story for them. I hope, if that’s what they want, they get it.

There’s a guy and a girl off in the corner. Both look very similar and they’re clearly related. The girl looks pissed off, and the guy looks like he’s waiting for an excuse to leave. They’ve had some classic sibling fight. Most likely it’s over something stupid, like who gets the bathroom first or whether cats or dogs are better. But that begs the question of who’s the cat person and who’s the dog person? That’s a question too ancient and advanced for my head to comprehend while tipsy on a Sunday afternoon, so I leave their sibling rivalry for another day.

Then there’s a man off in the corner, sitting alone with a drink in his hand. He has short cut blonde hair, clearly dyed with his roots showing through. He’s wearing a collared shirt with a couple of the top buttons undone, neatly ironed black trousers and some loafers. He has pale skin, deep brown eyes and has his legs crossed neatly as he leans back in his seat. He looks effortlessly perfect and, weirdly enough for the fact that he’s in a skanky pub, kind of elegant in his posture. I realise now that I’ve been paying a lot more attention to this posh looking stranger than I probably should be, but he’s kind of hard to stop looking at.

Embarrassingly enough for me he notices my incredibly obvious staring. He glances over, eyes tired and distracted, and he gives me a tight smile that looks actually difficult for him to hold on his face. It takes me a second to return the gesture as I look over his features. I didn’t notice before just how stressed he looked, but now it’s obvious in how tense his shoulders are and how his eyes had before been darting around the room like he was looking for someone.

Then, a girl struts over and sits in front of him. He turns to her and immediately removes any trace of stress or discomfort, and puts on one of the most charming smiles I’ve ever seen in my life. I realise now why he was so dressed up. I can hear his shameless flirting with this woman from halfway across the room and can’t help but be a little curious about his motivations. Maybe he genuinely likes her, or maybe he’s just looking for a distraction from the stress that had been etched onto his face just seconds ago. My guess is the latter.

I’m brought out of my thoughts by Matt roughly placing their glass on the table with a sigh. I didn’t even notice the game had ended, Liverpool beating Man City 3:0. Matt is, as I thought they’d be, very happy about this.

“Guessin’ you don’t want to stay out, then?” They ask me with just a tiny bit of hope in their eyes that I’ll say they're wrong. I don’t really feel like getting drunk over a win that I don’t really care about tonight, though.

“You know me, world class hermit.” I give them a bit of a smile as I stand up, downing the rest of my drink and putting the empty glass back down on the table. “See you tomorrow though, yeah?”