Imogen pounded on Adrian’s door. There was no answer. She looked around and saw that his car was parked a little further up the road. It was gone midnight, but she couldn’t sleep. She didn’t want to be one of those girlfriends who couldn’t spend a night away from her man, but at the same time, she didn’t want to leave it the way it was.
She had scrubbed her kitchen and bathroom until they looked practically new again and then she had hopped in the shower. After drying her hair and jumping in bed, she accepted that she couldn’t just go to sleep. She at least needed to try to speak to Adrian again. Her mother had always said that you should never go to sleep on an argument. It was strange which pieces of advice stuck.
He wasn’t answering, so she decided paying him a visit was the only way. Wherever he was, it was just a walk away. She could take a punt and try a few pubs, find him and tell him again that she was sorry. She hated the way she was feeling. She felt like a bitch.
Usually that would come with some implied victory, but this was not deliberate – she didn’t play games with Adrian; there were no points to be won by upsetting him. Why couldn’t he stay in and binge-watch TV like everyone else did when they were pissed off?
She could probably get into Adrian’s place through the back if she wanted to, but he wasn’t at home and so there was no point. She looked at her phone again, but there had been no activity. This is bullshit. She was going to save herself the humiliation of ringing him again just to have her call ignored.
She didn’t understand his need for conflict. She could go to a pub if she wanted, flirt with some guy and get into some kind of disagreement with his girlfriend who she could pretend she hadn’t seen before, knowing full well that it was never about the flirting, more about the fight afterwards. There were worse ways to blow off steam, she supposed, but it wasn’t something she could ever imagine herself doing to relieve stress. For Adrian, it seemed to be the only way.
She got back into her car after a few minutes of waiting for him to turn the corner and walk towards her with his cheesy smile, telling her he was happy to see her and all was forgiven. The same when she pulled out of his street – she just expected Adrian to be walking right there. He wasn’t.
That familiar feeling of anger mixed with dread settled inside her. Anger that he was ignoring her, out somewhere getting drunk, mixed with the fear that the reason he wasn’t in touch was because he was lying dead somewhere. Try not to overreact. Imogen drove back to her flat; she would deal with Adrian in the morning.