Hello! So I have had this idea for a while and thought I would get it typed up. I figured it might help me through my block. I have the majority of the chapter for 'Standing on the edge' typed up, I just have to add a few things and make some adjustments. Anyhow, let me know what you think and whether or not it's worth me carrying on. I was debating whether or not to put the flashbacks in but I think they were a necessary part of the chapter. I don't think I need to say it but just so you know, the parts in italics are flashbacks.

My eyes scrunched shut as a chink of light appeared through a crack in the curtains. The Las Vegas sunlight wasn't helping to ease the constant pounding in my head one fucking bit. I was surprised that the wave of nausea that crept up on me all of a sudden hadn't turned up sooner. It was only after escaping the warmth of my bed and hugging the toilet bowl for a gruelling 15 minutes that I realised, I wasn't in my bathroom. And that wasn't my bed that I just left. For a start, the toilet flushed properly, unlike mine that you had to pull at least two times before it even attempted to flush and the floor didn't have a tile missing. The mirror that was currently reflecting my hungover form, was complete. There wasn't a huge crack down the middle like there was in my bathroom.

I leaned forward, my hands on either side of the sink head cast down as I tried with all of my might to recall the events from the previous day and night.

"Just go fuck yourself, wanker."

I threw my mobile as hard as I could towards the mirror in front of me, instantly cracking it. Just what I needed. Seven years bad luck and a charge to my hotel bill, which would be high enough thanks to the several bottles of champagne that my best friend Cook insisted we drank.

I picked up the remnants of my phone and attempted to put it back together again but it was to no avail. It pretty much resembled my relationship with my now ex-boyfriend: shattered. We were a bad match from the start, Freddie and I. At the beginning of our relationship, I thought he was amazing and everything I could ever hope for. His brown eyes and olive skin made him the object of every girl's fantasy, but that's about as far as it went with him. Don't get me wrong, at first he was attentive, some would say the 'perfect boyfriend'. He'd make us romantic dinners, meet me from work with a bunch of flowers - not that I bought into all of that romantic shit but it was nice to feel appreciated. He had aspiring dreams to own his own skateboarding business, but once his bank loan was rejected, that was it. Instead of persisting and finding other ways to achieve his dream, Freddie gave up. Gave up on his dream, his life, and unintentionally gave up on us. Instead of trying to find a job like normal people, he would spend day after day in his poxy, stinking shed, getting stoned or wanking off to porn. Heaven forbid he pay me any attention. He was more like a Jeremy Kyle contestant rather than the Freddie I first met.

It was after Freddie's latest sacking that Cook and I booked our trip to Vegas. We'd had it planned ever since we spent both of our 18th birthdays sitting in the Fishpond Tavern, the local pub back home in Bristol. We had vowed to spend our 21st year of existence in Las Vegas making the most of the casinos by gambling our savings away, despite the reservations that Freddie had of me going. Freddie and Cook had never got on. It had all started in primary school when they were both chasing the same girl around the playground. The years hadn't changed them. Even after Freddie and I started dating, they still hadn't put their differences aside. Cook would never forgive him for what he put me though. Freddie's drunken rampages and vile, hurtful comments had gradually chipped away at my confidence, turning me into a person I had vowed to never become. Desperate, needy, just basically someone who certainly wasn't me.

Despite it all, I got on a plane for a ten hour flight to Vegas made more entertaining by the fact that Cook managed to shag two of the air hostesses and a passenger, therefore definitely securing him a place in the mile high club.

My trip to Las Vegas, however, came at a price and not only in the literal sense. I basically had an ultimatum from Freddie. Go to Vegas and we would be finished. To me it was a no brainer. Freddie didn't mean "Go to Vegas and we'll be finished." What he really meant was, "Pick your best friend over me and we're finished."

I don't do well with ultimatums, especially when they involve someone who has been practically a brother to me for the past 15 years. He often accused Cook and myself of having an affair which was just plain ridiculous. If it wasn't Cook it was John from the butchers or JJ from the Gadget shop. That was basically what I told him when he had phoned me on my mobile. From the sanctity of my hotel room in Las Vegas, I told Freddie to go fuck himself, before damaging my faithful phone to beyond repair.

I splashed cold water on my face in attempt to make me resemble something of a human nature. My efforts, however, proved futile. I still looked like fucking shit. Wiping my face on a towel, I grinned as my eyes fell upon one of what I believed to be one of Cook's magazines. I breathed a sigh of relief. I was in Cook's bathroom. Katie Fitch was gracing the cover of the said magazine, tits out, arse out, the lot. It was this famous Fitch that was the cause of Cook's latest happiness. On our first day in Vegas, he had spotted her in the hotel lobby wearing a leopard print outfit, complete with designer shades. Cook hastily whispered in my ear that Katie 'fucking' Fitch was in the building. I didn't have a clue who she was until she took her glasses off and glared in our direction. So that was Katie Fitch. She was the part-time wedding dress designer, part-time glamour model from the UK. More infamous for erratic behaviour and spending her parents fortune, Katie was currently participating in a reality show that followed the lives of her and her siblings. I don't know how, but Cook managed to charm Katie, and soon enough they just couldn't get enough of each other.

"Naomikins," Cooks voice boomed through my room.

His grin faltered as his eyes caught the broken mobile in my hand, and my bleeding knuckles which were a result of me punching the mirror, damaging it further. Grabbing my hand, he gently threw it under the running tap.

"You gonna tell me what's happened kid?"

I winced as the water hit a particularly painful spot. "There's nothing to tell," I mumbled. He raised an eyebrow and I knew there was no use in pretending. Cook knew me almost, if not better, than I knew myself.

"Fine," I conceded. "Freddie phoned and made some stupid remarks. He kept going on about the ultimatum so I just told him to fuck himself. I think we're over."

"Fucking hell. I'd say I'm sorry but it's about fucking time you got rid of that waster. He's been chipping away at your confidence kiddo, and Gina and I could do nothing but watch."

I ignored Cook's comment and instead wiped my hands on the towel that was handed to me and plastered myself up after making sure there were no shards of glass hiding in my wounds.

Tears suddenly started to sting at my eyes. They weren't tears of sadness, they were tears of regret, nothing more. I couldn't believe I had wasted two years of my life with Freddie, who obviously didn't respect me or give a shit about our relationship. Before I knew it, I was pulled into one of Cook's famous bear hugs.

"Don't waste any tears on him Naomi. You managed without him before and you'll manage now."

"I know that, I'm just… I don't know. I'm not sad that we've split up, just regretful for the last two years that I wasted hoping he would change. But he didn't and I don't think he ever will."

I allowed myself a couple more minutes of 'Cookie love' as he so fondly named it, and pulled away from him so I could start to re-apply my make up that had smudged. Cook watched me with a fond look on his face before telling me all about his night with Katie Fitch. She apparently couldn't get enough of him and he was on his way to meet her when he decided to pop in to see what I had planned for the night. When i told him I just planned to stay in and make the most of the tv he looked as though I had slapped him and insisted I tagged along with them both. I had my reservations. As much as I didn't want to stay in alone, I also didn't want to be a third wheel while he and Katie practically had sex at the bar.

"Come on," he persisted. "More the merrier. Think she's bringing her sister along so you won't be stuck for company if me and Katie decide to ya know."

He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively and I knew exactly what Cook was getting at. I pushed him playfully and got changed into something more suitable than my pyjama pants and a hoodie. After changing into my skin tight black dress and getting a whistle of approval from Cook, we headed down to the bar where we proceeded to get monumentally fucked up.

I couldn't push my brain to remember anymore, not in my hungover state. I took one last look in the mirror and groaned, running my fingers over the several love bites that marked the skin of my neck. What the fuck had happened last night? Making my way slowly from the bathroom and back into the bedroom, I smiled fondly as I noticed a lump under the quilt. Cook. He always hid away from the world when he was hungover. Claimed it was his cocoon. Undoubtedly he was hiding away from the light that had seemingly brightened the room somewhat since my trip to the bathroom. I pulled the curtain over, plunging the room into semi-darkness.

The bed looked so fucking welcoming that I couldn't resist jumping back onto what I had adopted as my side of the bed for the time being. I sunk back into the pillows, breathing out a content sigh. The bed was so comfortable and I told him as much but all's I received was a grunt and an arm thrown across my side so that I was being spooned. I grinned at the thought of Cook's face if he woke up to us in this compromising position. The last time he had woken up spooning me was after a night of drunken passion back in our adolescent teenage years. Naturally we both knew it was a mistake, but it took several weeks of awkwardness before we could finally be our selves around each other again.

I placed my fingers over what I believed to be Cook's hand. My plan was to lift the offensive hand off me so I could release myself from the tight hold he had on my waist. I froze when I couldn't feel the familiar calluses that adorned Cook's hands from the endless playing of his guitar. The hands that were gripped to my body were soft and smooth and a lot more feminine than what I was used to. I carried on feeling around, hoping I could discover who was spooning me. There was a ring. A ring on the third finger of this person's left hand. I flipped myself onto my back and glanced to my right hand side. My eyes fell upon the small form of a red headed woman, her brown eyes blinking open before they stared intently into the ocean blue ones of my own. She placed a gentle kiss to my shoulder and smiled contentedly at me.

"Good morning Mrs. Campbell-Fitch."

My only response was to speak the words that had played on a mantra in my head ever since I felt the unfamiliar hands securing me to the bed.

"Oh fuck."