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By (user no longer on site) OP
over a year ago
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Hello. This is my first time so please be kind 
Jerome lived in his own head. When he was younger, he spent summers in Jamaica, with family, basking in the sunshine and enjoying life at home but a different home to the one he knew back in Britain. Everything fit here. Everyone looked like him, everyone ate his favourite foods, they spoke like his aunties and uncles and grandparents. They were what he knew, even though to them, he was a stranger. In spite of the place feeling like home, it wasn’t. So he did a lot of exploring. His family used to go to the Hard Rock Cafe in Negril and spend some of their evenings and nights there. Jerome didn’t remember much of it all, but he did distinctly remember one thing; he remembered watching, idiolising, the grown men and young boys jumping off the cliff and into the sea below them. Jerome couldn’t imagine doing something so mad. He worried a lot, about all the terrible things that might happen if he jumped. But these guys didn’t care, they just dove in. They weren’t in there own heads like Jerome.
Jerome had just graduated, and had decided to take some time to do very little, before committing everything he was, to a career, to progressing, to everyone other than him, to something bigger than him, to someone bigger than him. He’d spent the past however many years working towards this moment, he wanted to enjoy the last of his freedom.
Doing a job he hated, whilst watching his friends shine like the stars that they were, was tough and Jerome hated that. He hated himself for hating it, but he did. The new world meant that Jerome could see what all of his friends were doing with their lives with just the tap of a screen, in seconds. He found himself constantly wanting more from life. And he found himself wondering - did he want more because the world constantly told him he could have more, or did he want more because the world was telling him more was what he needed to want? And did he really want more? Or did he hate that he felt like he needed more?
Jerome always wanted more. More than he had, more than he could reach, more than he could see, hear, smell or touch. But he didn’t always get it. And he thought about that every day at work, doing this stop gap job. On this particular day, he thought about it as he walked with his new work colleagues to their favourite restaurant. They went so often that they even got a discount if they showed their badge at the till, much to the appreciation of his bank account. He walked in, miles away from the moment, outside of himself as he was so often these days, and then everything stopped, and he fell forward, right back into himself. He was no longer outside, he was present in the moment, in himself. He followed his colleagues to the table they’d booked. Of course, this was when he recognised her.
It wasn’t that she was stunningly beautiful, though beautiful she was, it was something else- there was something about her, that always drew him to her. She worked in the supermarket across the road from his office, a place he frequented, much to the dismay of his bank account! He would always look forward to their encounters- they were always a happy moment in an unhappy working day. You cannot live your life looking for your matches with a checklist, but she ticked a lot of boxes for him. On a superficial level at least, he’d been won over. She wore an oversized navy blue sweatshirt with a pair of loose ripped black jeans. She looked comfortable but also she looked fashionable. Different to how she did in her uniform- obviously. She looked like one of those social media influencers.
Her curvaceous figure was still apparent in her oversized clothing. Her hair, short and blonde today sat perfectly, as she did too, amongst her friends, drinking red wine. Her hair was always perfect, even as she rushed around making sure things were in order at work. And although, the work she appeared to be doing appeared exasperating; managing a busy supermarket on a weekday lunchtime, she always floated around like an angel. Her skin glistened like shined silver. She exuded a warmth that drew you to her, that made you want to know her... really know her... intimately know her. |
