Having gone back and forth over a couple of hours as to whether she would go, Gillian finally made the decision that she would venture out.
She had been happy to hear from her boyfriend when he had phoned from France an hour earlier. He had been away on business for a couple of days and would not be back until Monday night. In some ways she missed him, but it had also been a difficult few months, where she had felt up and down, fighting against anxiety again. He was away a lot for work now, which was a pain, but sometimes it suited her, as more and more she wanted to be on her own, and had been having doubts about the relationship again. After over four years and many happy times it felt lacking in some special spark. They loved each other and had fun together, sharing a lot of interests, but it felt routine at times.
The physical side of things had been good for a few years, but to her it had become predictable, always going the same way. Over the course of the relationship she had overcome her initial shyness to embrace the realisation that she had a very high sex drive and wanted him to surprise her or change things up, but she was not totally sure what she wanted him to do. Having voiced it in bed, he had tried a few new positions, but it didn't work for her and they quickly fell back into the normal way of things.
She tried to shake the melancholy feeling of being alone in the flat and focus on going out. It made her nervous being out socially. The curse of chronic shyness. They never went on nights out with the climbing group. In many ways she wanted to go, but at the last minute she always decided to stay in rather than feel uncomfortable in a group socially. The call with her boyfriend had made up her mind. He had slightly patronised her on it, whilst at the same time trying to be sympathetic to her anxiety as to whether to go out or not. She was not some pathetic creature that could not function without him being there. He was away for 5 days and she wanted some company, shyness or not.
More than that, she had just had a brilliant afternoon at the climbing wall with a few members of the group and had promised a couple of the girls she would come out that night for a change.
It had been good to climb without her boyfriend. It allowed her to speak to other members of the group far more, and share a few laughs. She smiled thinking back to the afternoon. It had challenged her a bit too. She had tried a more difficult route on the biggest wall. That had been down to Davey. He had encouraged her to push herself a bit. The same way he had done on the Kalymnos trip back in September.
She had a little knot in her stomach thinking about him. He was the best climber in the group. Up until Kalymnos they had barely spoken to him at the climbing centre or out bouldering. However, on that trip she had got the chance to belay with him on one of the faces and enjoyed his company and guidance.
He was tall, dark haired, slim but very muscular. Good looking and confident with interesting stories and a great sense of humour. She remembered back to one of the days in the Greek sun, seeing him shirtless with a perfect six pack. It made her tingle. No wonder he was popular with the girls in the climbing group.
On the last night on Kalymnos he had chatted to them both in the bar across from the hostel, and she had enjoyed that a lot, getting to know him. Later that night when she was at the bar she had also overheard Jamie and Dave from the group making a joke about Davey having an advantage at climbing due to "his third leg" She blushed thinking about that.
