Right Now, I'm Anyone's

“Oh, honey, Marie and Walter were asking how you’ve been the other day,” Victoria drawled, after swallowing her delicately cut, ladylike bite of food. “They haven’t seen you in such a long time.”

Levi swallowed the chunk of meat he had been chewing on and looked up in his mother’s direction. They started speaking to one another, while Matthew and I sat in total silence. I didn’t find the jacket potato on my plate at all appetising – it looked like somebody had nuked it, rather than baked it in the oven, plus, Victoria had a bad habit of destroying my appetite. I just pushed it around on the china in front of me with my fork and tried to refrain from fidgeting too much.

I looked around the large room from where we were seated, glancing past red drapes hanging extravagantly from the ceiling and trying to ignore the garish, Laura Ashley-esque patterned wallpaper, before my eyes melted in their sockets. Our table was secluded from the rest of the room – most likely done purposefully, as Victoria liked to feel exclusive to everybody else and her husband liked to give her everything she wanted.

Speaking of Victoria, I could hear her voice and she was getting tired of speaking to Levi about Marie and Walter, whoever the hell they were. I knew she was going to turn on me any second then, and start with either the Complete Life Story of Victoria Richards Volume 897, or the ‘if you just changed your hair/clothes/took out that dreadful piercing, you’d look very classic’ speech she seemed to have prepared for situations such as that one.

“So, Leila,” Victoria said, bearing her pearly white fangs in a smile she deemed friendly. “Levi tells Matthew and I that you’ve been very involved in your work these days.”

I nodded my head dutifully. “Of course. I enjoy my job.”

“Charming,” she said, her hand to her chest as she laughed. “What is it you do, again?”

“I work at a bar,” I answered, keeping my voice clear. “The next week or so is mainly focussed on a music festival.”

“Oh,” Victoria said, nodding with an extremely uncomfortable smile on her face. She sat in her hard-backed chair like somebody had planted a porcupine there before she’d sat. I knew she was itching to say something else, which, eventually, she did, “More tattooed thugs, I suppose?”

I pulled my eyebrows together, feeling my brow crinkle. “I’m not too sure what you mean.”

She cleared her throat pointedly and fixed me with a condescending look. “I saw you the other day with a few of that type, darling.”

“And what ‘type’ are you referring to, Victoria?” I asked sharply, letting my fork fall back down onto the table, next to the china plate.

“Leila,” Levi hissed, grabbing my hand harshly in his underneath the table. “Stop.”

I looked him in the eyes for an intense couple of minutes, trying as hard as I could to regulate my breathing a bit more than I had been. It only really annoyed me more that he was telling me to stop speaking when his mother was the one that started the whole thing with me. It always went like that, and it was getting boring. I tugged my hand out of his when my deep breaths weren’t calming me down properly and grabbed hold of the strap of my bag.

“Excuse me, please,” I said, not waiting for anybody to permit my leaving before I stood up, collected my cardigan and hitched my bag onto my shoulder. I was tempted to just leave straight away, but instead of that, I found a sign that looked like it said ‘toilets’. I pushed open the swinging mahogany door and walked over to one of the mirrors, dropping my bag on the counter beside the sink.

I pushed my hands through my hair and breathed deeply again, trying to calm myself down.

Letting Victoria get to me never helped anything, I knew that. Knowing still didn’t help me keep myself calm though. I’d shrugged off her comments for so long that I couldn’t actually take the tension anymore, because I’d never stormed off like I did then.

I mean; she insults me; she insults my friends, my style and my music taste. The only thing she’d never criticised was my taste in men, solely because my taste in men involved her precious little boy. Who was totally getting a massive dose of the cold shoulder from me after he hadn’t even bothered sticking up for me. My phone started vibrating from inside my bag.

From: Levi Richards
Time: 12:56PM

Could you please come out of the ladies bathroom? – Levi x

I rolled my eyes; of course, he eventually came after me. Now, it’d be him trying to get me to calm down and go and finish the meal with him. First, he doesn’t stick up for me, then he doesn’t leave me alone to collect myself for a moment or two after; he just had to come and make it worse. I sighed, reluctantly, and threw my phone back into my bag, zipping it up before I slung it back onto my shoulder. I fixed my hair in the mirror and turned to walk slowly out of the bathroom door.

He was waiting, leaning against the wall beside the swinging bathroom door, his phone in his hand. He glanced sideways at me as I walked out, giving me a slightly exasperated look. I stood in front of him and kept my eyes cast down, onto the highly polished, dark wooden floor. He sighed heavily, his breath unsettling my hair from my shoulders while his hands came down onto my shoulders lightly. Being gentle, yet letting me know about some kind of...authority.

“You calmed down yet?” he said, the condescending undertone in his voice scarily similar to the one his mother often used.

I just gave him a withering look. “Did you not see what just happened back there?”

“Yeah,” he frowned, taking his hands away from my shoulders and scratching his forehead with one of them. “I saw you overreacting and flouncing off; like you always do.”

“You can’t be serious,” I scoffed, shaking my head. “You honestly don’t get it?”

“What is there to get, Leila?” he said, leaning back against the garish wallpaper behind him. “My mother speaks her opinion – and quite a reasonable opinion, at that – and you completely overreact about it.”

“No!” I said, almost shouting. “She says something totally rude and insulting and you just sit there and act like you didn’t hear anything!”

“You know how old-fashioned she is,” he muttered. “Anyway, most of the things she said were true anyway.”

I just raised my eyebrows incredulously. “Excuse me, but just this morning you were having a good laugh with one of those ‘thugs’.”

“Oh, just cut the pretentious bullshit for half an hour and come sit down,” he growled, grabbing my wrist and gripping it tight.

I tried to pull free. “No. I’m going home.”

“Stop being childish,” he whisper-shouted, wrenching my arm painfully towards the entrance to the main room of the restaurant. I narrowed my eyes at the back of his head and pulled my arm again, getting free this time. He swivelled around as soon as he felt my wrist slip between his fingers and fixed me with a hard glare. I matched his glare, even after his face softened out and he tried smiling friendlily at me.

“Okay, look, I’m sorry,” he said, trying to lace his fingers with mine. “Can we just act our age and enjoy what’s left of this meal, please?”

I raised my eyebrows and gave him a false, sickly-sweet smile. “How about you stay here, and keep on acting the mummy’s boy, while I go home?”

*****

I shoved the front door of my flat open, hearing it bang violently against the plaster wall inside. It drew the attention of Dimitri, who was sitting on the couch, watching something on the television. I threw my bag down on the floor and hung up my cardigan on a peg, before I stormed into the living room and collapsed down onto the couch with a huge, angry huff.

Since I didn’t take any money with me to that stupid restaurant, I had to walk all the way home in the cold. After walking home, I could feel my skin prickling and my anger steadily escalating to the point where it was totally unnecessary, yet reasonable. I was actually kind of surprised that Levi had just let me leave like that. Then again, nothing like that had ever happened between Victoria and I; she’d never said anything to utterly ridiculous and close-minded before that I had to leave before I smacked her in the mouth. Her or her son.

And pretentious? Me? No, I don’t think so.

“So, I’m guessing lunch with the Richards’ went as smooth as a baby’s bottom?” Dimitri asked, once he was almost completely certain that I wasn’t going to rip his head off. “What happened?”

I growled slightly under my breath and explained the total extent of Levi’s arsehole-ness, and Victoria’s bitchiness. By the time I was finished with my recount, Dimitri’s jaw was practically sitting on his crossed legs, and I was considerably calmer.

“Okay, is it odd that Levi’s mum reminds me of the Mega Bitch out of Drop Dead, Fred?” Dimitri asked, once he’d managed to completely wrap his head around my story.

“Nah,” I said, shaking my head. “I thought that at first, now I know she’s about five times worse.”

Dimitri chuckled slightly. “When are you going to talk to Levi about all this?”

“I don’t know,” I shrugged my shoulders indifferently. “He called me childish and pretentious, so not any time soon.”

Dimitri raised his eyebrows. “Childish, you can be. Pretentious, you’re not. You’ve got a reason to be annoyed, but don’t drag it out for ages.”

“I’m still really angry though.”

“It’s his mum though, princess,” Dimitri reasoned. “He can’t exactly go mad.”

“Exactly!” I sighed, dramatically. “It’s his mum. If he went mad at her and told her to lay off me, she’s still going to be his mum at the end of the day. I’m just his girlfriend, going mad at me for something that isn’t my fault can change that really, really easily.”

Dimitri rolled his eyes. “You’re not going to break up with him over something like this.”

I shrugged. “Dunno, the whole things getting really fucking old with me.”

Dimitri just laughed at me and shook his head. “Look, you just need to try and find some common ground with Victoria, no matter how big a bitch she is about things. It won’t get any easier if you don’t.”

“Whatever,” I grumbled. “Stop trying to be all wise, it really doesn’t suit you at all.”

Dimitri slapped my arm. “Bitch.”

“Yep,” I said, scowling more. “Going to tell me about your date then?”

And before I had a chance to regret asking him about it, he was off. He was telling me how the blonde guy – Christopher – was charming, witty, funny and Irish. He told me about how they went into town to a couple of the bars, and danced and got drunk together. He explained how Christopher had walked him halfway home because he didn’t want him walking around Leeds pissed out of his mind all night. He told me they’d kissed when they said goodbye – very cliché first date move, but sweet nonetheless – and Christopher had also passed him his phone number.

“And now I have no idea when the best time to call him actually is,” Dimitri said, sighing deeply, the dreamy look on his face disappearing. “I don’t want to seem needy or pushy or something, but I don’t want to make it seem like I’m not interested at all.”

I laughed and kicked my moccasins off, curling my feet underneath my body on the couch and slipping my arms out of my cardigan. “You do realise you sound just like a teenage girl right now?”

“Oh, shut up,” he said, hitting me with a couch cushion. “Genuine crisis, help me out.”

I rolled my eyes for what felt like the umpteenth time that day. “Okay, I’ll discuss with you your options.”

“Which are?”

I shrugged. “I was hoping I’d think of more than one before you asked me that.”

“Okay,” he huffed. “What’s my one option, then?”

“Okay,” I laughed in response. “It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours since you went out with him, right?” He nodded. “Okay, so, I’d say call him tomorrow; dead casually, just to see how he is.”

“Right,” Dimitri said. “So, I shouldn’t ask if he wants to go out again.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. If he suggests it, and you want to, go for it. Just be yourself, y’know.”

Dimitri furrowed his brow. He was acting really, really unlike himself, since he was always the advice giver out of me, him and Georgia, rather than the advice seeker. Normally, he didn’t even need anybody’s permission to do what he wanted to do and he never usually got nervous about anything. Yet, here he was, asking me what he should do about Christopher.

Dimitri huffed after a minute or so and crossed his arms over his bony chest. “You don’t help all that much, you know?”

I nodded my head and he narrowed his eyes at me. I knew he was kidding, because he smiled at the same time before leaning over to kiss me on the cheek. He stood up and made his way over to the door, calling a thank you over his shoulder as he walked into his bedroom. I stretched my arms out in front of me and glanced over at the clock on the wall; only three in the afternoon.

I got up off of the couch and went towards my bag, lying where I had thrown it on the floor near the front door. I hunted around until I found my phone at the bottom of it. I sighed as I slid the screen up, catching sight of the numerous missed calls and text messages.

The eight missed called were all from Levi, as were three of the text messages while the last one was from Georgia. I only bothered reading the first message off Levi, because I knew they’d all say the same thing.

From: Levi Richards
Time: 1:43PM

Hey, can you call me back when you can? I’m sorry about everything that happened; I just want to talk to you – Levi xxx

I scoffed and deleted that, along with the other two. I opened the text that Georgia had sent me.

From: Gee Good
Time: 2:43PM

Hello friend. When you’ve finished your lovely, peaceful meal with Victoria, Matthew and Levi, come to the pub near work – G x

I smiled and tapped out a response, letting her know that I’d be there within the hour. I quickly went to my bedroom and collected my purse – complete with a couple of straggly five pound notes and my bank card. Purse in hand, I walked along the hallway to Dimitri’s bedroom, knocking on the door before letting myself in without permission.

“Georgia just asked me to come down to the pub,” I said, my head poking around the door. “Want to come with?”

Dimitri thought for about zero point two seconds before nodding his head. He got up and started moving around his room, collecting his own wallet, phone and keys, then slipping a jacket on over his white River Island v-neck shirt.

“Let’s go.”