Right Now, I'm Anyone's

“So, come on, spill,” Dimitri persisted as we walked over the threshold into our flat. “Don’t even try telling me there’s nothing to tell; I know you far too well to believe it.”

I scowled irritably and rolled my eyes at his words. My panicked fear had steadily risen up to raw anger, with nobody but myself, of course. Unfortunately, Dimitri kept probing me about what the matter was, and I felt like screaming in his face and telling him to fuck off because he kept making me feel about a hundred times worse. I shook my head and walked to my bedroom without a word, flinging my bag and coat onto the floor before I collapsed heavily onto my bed with a huge sigh. It felt like days since I’d been in my own bed.

“Leila,” he said, using his most imperious voice. “Tell me what’s got your knickers in a twist.”

“Jesus, I don’t want to talk about it right now! Leave me alone,” I snapped. Dimitri looked like I’d slapped him in the face, so I turned my head to look up at the ceiling. He huffed, making sure his annoyance with me was known, before he flounced out of my bedroom and left me on my own. I sighed and closed my eyes, lightly massaging my temples with my fingertips.

Five minutes after Dimitri had gone, I felt so insanely guilty that I wanted to die. First, I jeopardise both my long-term relationship and the rebuilding of a friendship, and then I make one of my best friends angry just because I was so pissed off at myself I took it out on him. Well done, really. Best work you’ve done yet, Leila.

I tried as hard as I possibly could not to think as I got up off of my bed and left the room. I collected a towel from the airing cupboard and walked into the bathroom, locking the door automatically behind me, even though I knew Dimitri wouldn’t walk in on me. I wasn’t too sure if Jake or Georgia were here or not.

After that, I worked completely on auto-pilot; flinging the towel onto the radiator to keep it warm, removing all of my clothes and turning on the shower. Once I got in there, I scrubbed my skin mercilessly, like I thought it could make up for me being so stupid and immature. I scrubbed so hard that my arms were almost bleeding, and I stepped from the shower with my arms, legs and hands a shocking red against the other, much paler parts of my body.

I went straight back to my bedroom, pausing momentarily at Georgia’s room, ready to knock and see if I could talk to her. I stopped myself and kept moving; chances were she wasn’t home, and if she were, Jake could be with her. I couldn’t risk him knowing just yet, not until I’d made sense of it for myself. Once back in my bedroom, I yanked a pair of sweatpants up my damp legs and pulled a vest top on over my bare torso.

I towelled my wet hair dry until it was just a little bit damp, and then tied it up into a ponytail high up on the back of my head. My home was eerily silent when there was nobody here; I’d never noticed before. That was probably because I wasn’t there alone – Dimitri just wasn’t speaking to me. I checked the time on my phone – 1:23PM – and shoved it into the pocket of my sweatpants. The four walls of my bedroom felt like they were coming closer, and I couldn’t take it anymore.

I left my room and walked straight to the end of the hall, tapping lightly on Dimitri’s bedroom door when I reached it. After ten minutes or so, he still hadn’t told me to come in – but he also hadn’t told me to fuck off, which I took as a positive sign. I pushed the door open and stood still in the doorway. He was sat on his bed, his back against the wall and his legs bent at the knee with his reading glasses perched on his nose. His brow was creased up under his black hair and his eyebrows arched downwards; his pissed off face.

“Would it help if I said sorry?” I asked pathetically, my voice quivering slightly. I scolded myself for the lump that rose in my throat when he just huffed and shrugged his shoulders at me. I was slowly beginning to lose my mind, because I needed to talk to him and he wasn’t letting me.

He kept his eyes down on the page in front of him, and my enthusiasm to apologise died just a little bit more. I felt like giving up entirely – which, yeah, kind of dramatic. I didn’t give up though; instead I crawled onto his bed and knocked the book from his hands. Before he could register what I was planning, I launched myself at him and wrapped my arms tight around his waist.

Just when I thought he was going to stay still, his arms came and wrapped around my back. I could feel his chin resting on top of my head and I felt some moisture attack my eyes again. Why is it that I could only cry because of Dean? I never cried when Levi and I argued, but all Dean had to do was kiss me and off I went.

“I’m sorry, Dimitri,” I whispered into his chest. “I was angry and pissed off at myself and you were just in the line of fire.”

I took a deep breath and felt him laugh slightly. I could feel him shaking his head at me. He patted my shoulder and then grabbed my arms, holding me arms length away from him so he could see my face. Dimitri analysed it, before letting go of me and sitting back against the wall again, crossing his legs in front of him. I mimicked his actions.

“Do you want to talk now?” he asked, keeping his voice low and soothing. I put my face in my hands and tried to stop myself from crying – so that when I spoke, my voice wouldn’t do that embarrassing cracking thing it does when I try not to cry. I exhaled a large gust of air that ruffled the pages of Dimitri’s book, which lay open in front of me, and nodded my head from where it was in my hands.

“I think I might’ve wrecked everything,” I sighed as I pushed one hand through my hair. Dimitri raised his eyebrows at me in confusion and stroked my shoulder slightly, trying to keep me calm. Dimitri had seen me cry and – as he often told me – it was not a pretty sight.

“Are you being dramatic or serious?” he asked.

“Do I look like I’m joking?” I muttered from my hands. “I did something really, really stupid.”

Dimitri only had to make a couple more encouraging noises, before I sang like a bird in spring – again. He sat and listened to my entire story. His face didn’t really change until I mentioned Dean kissing me, but I only skimmed over it. He made me backtrack on that part and his jaw dropped. Once I was finished, I had to look at something else, anything else but Dimitri’s face. I heard him choke on a breath and clear his throat.

“Wow,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“I can’t believe you did that,” he sighed. “First things first I suppose, why did you do it?”

I threw my hands up, huffing in exasperation. “I don’t know! I’ve been trying to figure that one out since I woke up this morning.”

Dimitri sat for a couple of minutes in silent thought, touching the tip of his index finger to his chin lightly. He said, “You have a bit of an excuse; you were drunk. Very drunk, if I remember correctly.”

“Dimitri,” I grimaced. “I don’t think that’s a good enough reason to be kissing someone that isn’t my boyfriend.”

“There aren’t many excuses that condone cheating. At the end of the day, you and Dean shouldn’t have kissed, but you did,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “Are you going to talk to Levi about it, or not?”

“I don’t know,” I replied, shaking my head. “As far as I know, Levi hasn’t kept anything from me. I know it’d just eat me up constantly if I kept it from him, though.”

“But you don’t want to tell him.”

I nodded my head and groaned. “I’m a cowardly, slutty excuse of a woman.”

“No, you’re not!” Dimitri said. “You’re in love, you’re young and you made a mistake. I think that as long as kissing Dean didn’t mean anything to you, there’s not a lot of point in upsetting Levi.”

I nodded and kept my eyes down on my knees. In a sense, Dimitri was right; there wasn’t any point in upsetting Levi with something that was meaningless. But something meaningless was the exact opposite of what it felt like kissing Dean Owens again. But, I didn’t tell him that – yes, I know he was one of my best friends and I could trust him with anything, because he was also human. I didn’t want him to think I was a cowardly scumbag.

My phone buzzed loudly from the pocket of my sweatpants, breaking the silence that surrounded Dimitri and I. I stood up from his bed and kissed him on the cheek, before walking out of his room and pulling my phone out of my pocket. The caller ID proclaimed that it was Dean calling me. I stared at the screen of my phone for a minute or so, before pressed the button to reject the call. I threw my phone through the open door of my bedroom, onto my bed.

Where it remained for the rest of the day.

*****

Each of my three designs were spread out on the coffee table in front of me, while I sat cross legged on the couch and stared blankly at each of them in turn. I had both earphones of my iPod plugged into my ears and the volume turned up high, listening to my very own melancholy playlist – made especially for times as desperate as these. It consisted mostly of The Smiths, Joy Division, Belle & Sebastian, Tegan & Sara, The XX and Jonny Craig.

I raised a hand and fiddled restlessly with my nose ring. I couldn’t bring any inspiration to me, yet again, because all I could do was relive the night before, then scold myself for revelling in the memory. I couldn’t think of anything new for Alexisonfire, my mind was so consumed in what I was going to do about my stupidity. After dwelling longer, all I wanted to do was call Levi and ask him to come over and make it better.

I sighed and collected up all of the rejected designs that I’d balled up and scattered around the room in my frustration, heading into the kitchen to dispose of them in the rubbish bin. I returned to the coffee table and gathered up the three designs that I had deemed good enough for Alexisonfire, before heading into my bedroom and putting them away neatly in a drawer. With another sigh, I turned to my bed, where my phone still lay near the centre.

I had three unread text messages, two voicemails and fifteen missed calls. I checked the missed calls first, seeing that seven were from Levi, five were from Georgia and three were from Dean. Just reading his name made me feel ill again. I exited the list without calling anybody back and checked my text messages; all were from Levi, demanding that I answer my phone.

I checked the two voicemails last. I had hoped they were both off of Levi, or one was from Georgia or something. Anything that wouldn’t mean I had to hear his voice again so soon. The first message was:

”Hey, Leila, it’s Dean” – shit –“I’m just calling to check that you got home okay this morning” – he paused for a couple of seconds – “Look, if you really don’t want to speak to me, that’s fine with me. I think we have to talk about what happened last night. I’m going to wait at the Starbucks we were at last week, until five. Hopefully, I’ll see you there.”

I quickly pulled my phone away from my ear, just as the recorded voice of a woman was announcing my second voicemail: 3:58PM. I sighed and deleted his voicemail, before going to the second one:

”Leila, please speak to me” – it was Levi – “I’m sorry about what happened yesterday. I want to see you and sort this out, because I hate not speaking to you. Meet me at the coffee shop around the corner from your place at half past four, just so we can talk properly.”

I deleted Levi’s message and hung up, collapsing back onto my bed and dropping my phone onto the floor beside it. My mind was spinning, mainly because I had to make a decision. It was either go and talk things through with Dean, and miss out on fixing things with Levi – which was what the more selfish side of me wanted to do – or go and talk with Levi, the man I said I loved and cheated on without him knowing, and possibly jeopardise mine and Dean’s chances at ever being friends again – which was what my conscience was telling me to go for.

I sighed and stood up, running through each pro and con in my head as I found my casual pair of dark blue skinny jeans and a dark red vest top to change into. I decided that leaving my hair up in its ponytail was my best option and skipped straight to doing my make-up. Every con I could find also had a compelling pro attached to it, which made deciding who to meet all the harder.

By the time I had my coat on and my bag over my shoulder, it was quarter past four and I had – more or less – made my mind up about where I was going and what I was going to do. I made my mental list about the things I needed and checked that I had them all, before walking out of the front door, hoping that the decision I had made was the right one.