Right Now, I'm Anyone's

“Leila! Dimitri! Over here.”

Truth be told, I had already seen Georgia before she called our names and was making my way in her direction with Dimitri close behind. I peered over the heads of people to keep her table in my sight. The pub was oddly full, considering it could only have been around five in the evening. We took so long getting from our flat to the pub because Dimitri started being a girl about his hair in case Christopher was out.

“I’ll just get us some drinks to start off, alright?” Dimitri said to me, stopping so that he could turn towards the bar. I told him not to get me anything strong, but knowing him, he either didn’t hear me or completely ignored it. Probably the latter.

I turned back towards Georgia’s table and started elbowing my way through the crowd – similar to how Dimitri had to do to get to the bar. Georgia was sat in a booth with Maddox, Ryan, Lee, Daniel, Jake and Johnny, a fake looking, beaten up mahogany table between them. I said hello to everybody briefly before sitting down beside Lee.

Georgia said hello to me across the table and Lee gave me a small one-armed hug. Jake smiled from across the table, sipping at a pint glass almost full of what looked like Guinness. It took me no time at all to notice Jake’s arm draped over Georgia’s shoulder and a dreamy look plastered all over her face when she greeted me.

Thing is, I knew that everybody was here for a good time, and I could hear them speaking animatedly about what they were going to do after the festival. I overheard Lee telling Daniel that James had turned up shortly after they returned to the van after the show on the day he went missing. Everybody was speaking happily, while all I could do was dwell on that stupid argument Levi and I had earlier. I thought about it until I felt like throwing up.

Sure, he was probably sorry for the things he said, but I wasn’t completely sure he was going to change the way he treated me around his mother. Actually, I was almost completely sure he wasn’t going to change that. Even if I asked him to. Even if she was completely and utterly wrong, he was still going to stick to her side over mine.

“Hey,” Lee said, breaking through my minds wall. “You don’t look too happy.”

I shrugged my shoulders and tried to keep my eyes trained on the round table in front of me. I was trying not to give anything away, and I learned that showing somebody my face was basically as easy as vocally saying what was wrong. I felt Lee’s hand pat my knee very gently and I looked up at him. He was smiling encouragingly at me, all his brown hair pushed to the side so it was away from his eyes. The absence of his usual sock hat didn’t go unnoticed by me, either.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, taking his hand and his eyes away from me and leaning back into his chair. He linked his hands together and rested them on his stomach.

“Boyfriend stuff. It’s a really long, boring load of nonsense, now I think about it,” I said, lifting my hand to scratch my temple as I gave Lee a sidelong glance. I watched as he shrugged his shoulders in my peripheral vision and lean forward, putting his elbows onto his knees and balancing his chin on his hands. He was looking at me.

“Want to talk about it?”

I thought for literally three seconds. I don’t even know how he got me to tell him so easily – Georgia’s usually probing me for hours on end about what Levi had done to piss me off; though, that was probably because I didn’t want to tell her and make her dislike him even more than she had to. Lee listened intently as I backtracked through the entire fiasco that took place at lunch, nodding his head in appropriate places and keeping the facial expressions to the barest minimum he could manage.

“Hate to say it, but most lads are actually really bad mummy’s boys,” he said, chuckling. “But that was just a little bit out of line.”

“Thank you!” I said, throwing my hands up for emphasis. “Dimitri thought I was being too dramatic about it.”

Lee shrugged his shoulders at me and said, “Well, try seeing it all from his perspective.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Think of it like being stuck between a great big, jagged rock and a hard place. He doesn’t want to upset his mother – the great big, jagged rock – and he doesn’t want to upset you – the hard place. So, he has to try and reason-”

“It wasn’t reasonable at all though!”

“Okay, he probably worked it out in his head the wrong way, but whatever,” Lee laughed again. “Just calm yourself, girl. Take a day or two away from him and before you know it, bam! Everything’s fine and dandy again.”

I rolled my eyes and exhaled. “It’s not a one-off. He always does it.”

“What? He calls you pretentious when you and his mum have a tiff?” he asked, taking a swig of the amber coloured liquid in his pint glass.

“Pretentious was a first, I’ll admit,” I sighed. “But he never actually gives me any other comfort than a squeeze of the hand when his mum gives me a hard time.”

“Oh,” he said. “That’s crap.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said, breathing a tiny laugh at his response. “I don’t know if I can put up with it much longer, to be honest.”

Lee shrugged his shoulders. “What happens happens, right?”

*****

Four hours and about six double vodka and cokes later, I had to admit I was reasonably drunk. Drunk enough to stop being annoyed about my boyfriend calling me a pretentious child. Drunk enough to forget he even said it. My ‘no strong drinks’ rule went down the drain when Dimitri came back from the bar and placed the first double vodka and coke of the night down in front of me.

“God knows you need it,” he had said.

Lee and Ryan found it utterly hilarious that I was such a lightweight, and had endless fun taking the piss out of the teeny, tiny little lisp I get when I’m drunk. Which was a little bit hypocritical, since neither of the two could stand upright without the aid of something vertical and stable. They’d clutch onto each other if they were coordinated enough.

The taunting eventually stopped, though, because they both needed to use the bathroom. The table now consisted of Georgia, Jake, Craig and Johnny. It may as well have been just Craig, Johnny and I, since Jake and Georgia were just lost in their own world. Dimitri had disappeared to give Christopher a phone call to see if he was around, and Daniel had returned to Eye Witness’ van for the night. Maddox had just completely disappeared and nobody actually had an idea where he’d gotten to.

“Leila,” Johnny slurred, screwing up his face childishly and dragging out the ‘a’ at the end of my name. “I missed you, y’know?”

I laughed and scooted as gracefully as I could – i.e. not very gracefully – along the curved seat of the booth so I was right beside him. I leaned my head on his bony shoulder in a pathetic attempt at a hug, since I wasn’t quite sure if I was coordinated enough to lift up my arms or wrap them around him.

“You only saw me on Thursday,” I said, unable to keep the slight highness – or that stupid, shameful lisp – out of my voice.

“I know,” he sighed, ruffling the hair on top of my head as he put his arm around my shoulder. “I mean I missed you. Like, those six years when you weren’t around.”

I smiled. “I missed you too, Johnny.”

“We only knew each other two months,” he said. “But I swear, I think you knew more about me than anybody else did.”

“You too.”

I heard him laugh and he squeezed my shoulder clumsily. “It was a really, really amazing summer. Whatever happened at the end of it was just ridiculous.”

“How do you figure?” I asked, feeling my lips pull into an involuntary pout as I sat upright – without knocking him out of his seat. I looked at him. What happened at the end of that summer was most definitely not ridiculous. Yeah, it was ridiculously painful, wounding. But not plain old ridiculous.

“Jesus,” Johnny slurred, gesturing awkwardly with his hand. “You know what I mean. Our Dean did the stupidest possible thing he could ever do, and he’s a complete knob for it, even now. You two were just so perfect for each other, though, y’know?”

I shook my head and tried to force a laugh. “No, Johnny. If we were perfect for each other, we would’ve stayed together.”

“Only reason you didn’t was because you left like, three days after you found out,” Johnny said. “I think this whole meeting again thing is a definite sign!”

“Of what?”

“That you two should be together again, obviously!”

I laughed hard and rolled my eyes. “Johnny, I think you’ve had a little bit too much to drink.”

He just shrugged his shoulders, a sloppy half-smile on his face. “Maybe. But I think it’s truuuuuue.”

I just laughed it off and shook my head, like it didn’t bother me. Johnny put his head back against the wall behind his seat and closed his eyes. I saw Georgia excusing herself from the table – kissing Jake very slightly on the lips on her way – leaving Jake sat alone. He had been listening in on mine and Johnny’s conversation – which wasn’t entirely impossible, since we were speaking kind of loud. Jake had his little shit-eating smile back on his face, like he saw something I was stupid enough to overlook.

“I’m not the only one that thinks it!” he said triumphantly. I laughed again and tried to let it roll off of my back, like I’d managed to do with Johnny. I think it was harder because Jake was near enough sober, and Johnny was practically one drink away from a coma. I told myself it wasn’t true, that it couldn’t be, because I was in a relationship – an amazing relationship – with a man I loved. I told myself that Dean was old news to me, in the past. We were over each other, and it was that simple.

Oh, if only it were that simple.

“Why do you carry on insisting that there’s something between me and your cousin’s boyfriend?” I asked, tilting my head to the side in curiosity. I never thought about it before; why would Jake keep telling me he saw some kind of connection between Dean and I, when he was Zara’s cousin?

“I know Dean doesn’t love her and I could kill him if he hurts her enough,” Jake shrugged nonchalantly. “But the Daniels family tend to be able to hold their own; she wouldn’t want me to get involved and threaten my best friend for her.”

“So, you’re just going to let her find out her relationship is a lie?”

“Any relationship built from or based around sex is generally a lie. That’s how I see it,” he muttered, bitterly. “The sooner she realises that, the better it’ll be for everyone.”

I shook my head and thought it best not to delve further into that. I change the subject, because the conversation was killing my buzz. “Where’s Edie tonight?”

Jake laughed and rolled his eyes at my pathetic topic change. “She’s back at the van with Dean; he didn’t want to come out tonight.”

That’s out of character. Jake and I talked for a while longer while we waited for Georgia to return to the table from the bathroom. We both kept our eyes on Johnny, just in case he died or went into a coma – whichever came first. We mostly talked about our jobs, music and Edie. He did the talking about Edie; I just listened. Eventually, we got onto the subject of Edie’s birth mother.

“Her name was Lisa,” Jake sighed, nostalgically. “And she was possibly one of the most beautiful things I ever saw.”

“Well, we know where Eeds gets her looks from, then,” I joked. “What happened with her?”

Jake just chuckled slightly and shook his head, looking down at his knees. “We slept together on my twentieth birthday and a couple of weeks later, she came to my house and told me she was pregnant and I was the last person she had sex with. We stayed together through the pregnancy, but as soon as Edie was born and Lisa was well enough to not be bound to a bed, she was gone.”

I sighed and looked down at the table top, before lifting my hand to pat Jake’s shoulder slightly. Now, I can freely use the excuse that I was drunk, because I opened my mouth before thinking, and I said, “Lisa sounds like a bitch.”

Jake just lifted his head and gave me an incredulous look, before bursting into peels of rib-splitting laughter. “Definitely,” he said, chuckling a little bit between breaths. “She’s never even held Edie, not once.”

I shrugged. “Bitch gene won’t have rubbed off then.”

Jake laughed again and said, “I’m not sure I’d even let Lisa see Edie now. I know she’s her mum and everything, but she hasn’t got the right to see her.” I nodded my head and he continued. “I mean, it’s abandonment. In a way, I’m just glad Lisa’s not here.”

“Which way would this be, my friend?”

“Well, I don’t think I’d even be here if Lisa had stuck around. I wouldn’t have met half the people I have over the last four years. I definitely wouldn’t have met Georgia.”

The look on his face was actually, totally priceless. When he said her name, his face kind of just went all soft and his brown eyes melted in their sockets, making them a deep chocolate brown rather than the muddy brown they already were. He half-smiled when he talked about her and I could actually feel all of his happiness radiating off of him.

Jake Daniels was totally and undeniably crazy for my best friend.

“Jake!” Georgia called from where she stood near the bar with Craig. Jake turned his head away from her to look at me. I nodded to let him know that I’d be okay if he went over to Georgia. I watched him as he stood and walked over to her – as fast as he could, by the way – placing a tiny, barely noticeable kiss on her cheek when he got to her. She beamed up at him happily before they both started speaking to Craig. I sighed and leaned back into my seat, staring into space.

“Princess,” Dimitri said, plopping down in the chair beside me. “You have your sad face on. Tell me what’s the matter.”

I shrugged my shoulders and turned to look at him as he sat. “I’m just wondering why my relationship karma’s so bad when I do things like that”- I flung my arm in Georgia and Jake’s direction –“ and I want to talk to Levi now.”

Dimitri turned his head in the direction I flung my arm; the direction of the genuinely happy couple. I know I was talking completely out of my rear end, but I suppose it was kind of true. I set them up and now they seemed insanely happy with one another, while I wasn’t even speaking to Levi. Truth be told, I only wanted to talk to him because I hated it when we argued.

“Karma-shmarma,” Dimitri scoffed. “You and Levi fight at least once a month, and you’re usually talking again within twenty-four hours. If you want to speak to him, I’d save it for tomorrow.”

I stuck my tongue out at him and blew a huge raspberry. “Why tomorrow?”

“Because, sweetheart,” Dimitri laughed. “You’re too drunk to have a serious make or break relationship talk with him right now.”

“Shut up.” I pouted, crossing my arms over my chest. “Any bet he’s just as drunk as I am right now. Maybe worse.”

Dimitri shrugged his shoulders and laughed. We lapsed into silence and I watched him fiddle restlessly with his phone; sliding it up and down, locking it and unlocking it again, holding down the button on the side to make the screen light up every now and again. I ended up rolling my eyes.

“What’s going on with you and Blondie, then?” I asked, finally breaking his attention from his phone and back to me. Dimitri pulled a face before giving me one of his patented looks.

“His name is Christopher,” he said, witheringly. “And he isn’t out tonight; he has to work in the morning.”

I nodded. “And what does Christopher do, exactly?”

“Oh, he’s a male-escort.”

I felt my eyes go wide. “What?!”

Dimitri started laughing, almost sending himself to the shabby carpet on the floor. “I’m kidding, idiot. He works in Urban Outfitters.”

I made a happy noise and uncrossed my arms from my chest to put them on the round table in front of me. “Maybe I can get a discount.”

Dimitri nodded like he was agreeing with me before he said, “No.”

I rolled my eyes and pouted again while Dimitri laughed and ruffled up the hair on top of my head. I narrowed my eyes at him and said, “Go and get me another drink, slave!”

“But it’s your round.”

“But you’re my slave,” I said. “Therefore, go.”

Dimitri laughed and gave me a look that said something along the lines of ‘I’d actually shoot you in the face if we weren’t best friends’. Or maybe it said something like, ‘you are far too drunk for your own good’. More than likely, he’d intended his look to say both.

“Okay,” he laughed again. “But you might want to check that little Johnny’s alive.”

Dimitri stood up from his seat and swept over to the bar as gracefully as he could manage after the four or five mint mojitos he’d downed in our time here. I swivelled around in my seat so that my back was to the bar and saw Johnny curled up in the corner of the booth; eyes shut, mouth wide open and knees curled up into his chest. I laughed for a good five minutes before holding my hand over his mouth, waiting until I felt the warm, dense gust of his breath before I pulled it away.

“Could you keep your eye on him for one minute?” I asked Craig as he slid into the seat opposite mine.

“Sure, no problem Leila,” he answered, putting his fresh pint down on the table in front of him. I smiled in thanks and shuffled out of the booth seat. I stood on wobbly feet and walked to where I remembered the lady’s bathroom being. I pushed open the heavy door and saw that there were already two people in there.

They both could’ve only been at most twenty-two. One looked like she’d spent far too much time on the sun beds – her skin resembled an old, leather briefcase – and the other girl had more natural looking, bronzed skin and gorgeous dirty blonde hair that reached the centre of her back. She was stroking her friends much more fake-looking white blonde hair while she cried, mascara tracks running down her cheeks and off of her chin. I mumbled a quick apology and went into the nearest stall, placing my bag down at my feet.

Once my business was done, I exited my stall and went over to the spare sink – the one the over-tanned girl wasn’t sitting in – and washed my hands as thoroughly as I could, before drying them and wiping away some smudged make-up. I fluffed up my hair a little bit and glanced to my right, at the crying girl. She’d stopped, and she was staring at me. At the back of my mind, I was picturing her mugging me for my phone or something.

“You’re really pretty,” she mumbled, each word running into the last one.

I smiled awkwardly, trying to mask my slight shock. “Um, thank you. Are you okay?

She shrugged her shoulders and laughed breathlessly. “Probably, you know.”

I laughed with her friend, who introduced herself as Olivia. I told them my name after the girl that was crying had told me her name was Danielle. Danielle kept telling me random short stories about herself, which weren’t really that comprehendible, since they often faded into mumbled words with a side of slight manic laughter. Olivia caught my eye and tried her hardest not to laugh, shaking her head in slight disbelief. I excused myself from the bathroom shortly afterwards and made my way back over to the table.

I approached and noticed that Johnny was leaning heavily on Craig, who said, “Do you think you could help me get him back to our van?”

I nodded my head as confirmation and helped him drag the half-conscious Johnny Owens out of the booth. My legs very nearly buckled under his weight – or should I say, half of his weight – as Craig flung one of Johnny’s arms over my shoulders and he took the other. I tried looking out for Georgia to let her know I’d be back, but Craig was seemingly determined to drag Johnny out of there, with me behind him.