Right Now, I'm Anyone's

“What time is Jake supposed to be meeting up with us?”

Georgia fiddled around with her bag for a moment – clutching it tighter against her side most likely – before she answered me. “Not until one. He told me that he’d call as soon as he gets in.”

“Ooh,” I said, smiling. “He can’t wait to see you.”

She just hit me with her bag and told me to shut up. Charming.

I rolled my eyes at her and laughed, adjusting my jacket so that none of the wind hit my body – well, as much as it would’ve if I had no coat on. It was around twelve thirty in the afternoon, and Georgia and I had decided the Saturday six days away from Christmas was a good day to go shopping for gifts – wrong, it was the worst possible day if you don’t count Christmas Eve. Georgia kept having a go at me for leaving it all so late, as she had done hers a week or two before we even arranged to go to London. No matter how much I pestered her to tell me what she’d gotten for me, she still wouldn’t budge. It was infuriating.

The day was crisp and cold, despite the fact that I was wrapped up as warm as I possibly could’ve been. The skirt of my black knee-length vintage dress kept flying up whenever the wind hit it, and my sheer brown tights did nothing to keep my legs warm. The only things that weren’t cold were my arms, torso and feet, which were inside my dark brown brogue lace-ups. My coat helped in keeping my torso and arms warm. Georgia was a hell of a lot more practical than I was; she had glanced out of the window at the cold grey sky and the frosted over grass and picked out a pair of skinny jeans, a long-sleeved v-neck, a thick cardigan, her winter coat and her hat-scarf-glove set.

“If you won’t say what you got me,” I said, sighing like I was sparing her. “At least tell me what you bought for Jake.”

She just smiled at me and shook her head. “No can do. You can’t keep secrets to save your life.”

Ha, want a bet?

I didn’t say that though, I just scowled and slapped her arm as I marched past her into Oxfam. It was entirely empty, except for the teenage boy sitting behind the counter, playing with a pen so he didn’t have to address customers until it was crucial, and the middle-aged man with a huge beard sat in the corner of the room, reading a book with the price tag on show for all to see. I had bought the majority of my presents so far, I just had to find one for Johnny. It was actually quite easy thinking of something for Johnny – unlike almost everybody else on my list – and I just walked straight to the back of the shop to the LP cases.

As I started flipping through, looking for something Johnny would love me for, I thought again. After the whole ‘have my babies’ argument the night before, there wasn’t a lot of time for anything to get awkward. I woke up on Friday morning to an empty bed and I felt terrible – I’m not sure why. Five minutes after I had dragged myself out of bed and gotten dressed in a pair of jeans and an oversized grey sweatshirt – that belonged the Levi at some point – the dreaded nausea came back to me again and I had to bolt for the bathroom.

Stephanie found me on my knees in front of the toilet after my fifteen minute long vomiting session, my head still in the bowl of the toilet as I retched to get more up. She did almost exactly what Georgia had done after the first time I had been sick – it was kind of creepy – and felt my clammy forehead. She basically mothered me before giving me a calculating look, frightfully similar to the one I had received off of Georgia.

“Stephanie, don’t,” I said, weakly swatting her hands away from me as I flushed the toilet and stood up off of the bathroom floor. “I don’t want you catching something while you’re pregnant.”

She just waved her hand at me. “Don’t be ridiculous, you need somebody to look after you if...if you’re sick.”

I didn’t pick up on her pause. “If you insist, get Levi or something, I’m not letting you get sick and endangering my little brother’s or sister’s health too.”

I let her lead me out of the room as she rolled her eyes at me. She took me to the kitchen and sat me carefully in one of the stools on my own. Moments later, I heard her calling Levi’s name and telling him to go to the kitchen and speak to me. He came in and we looked at each other for a couple of moments, before I stood up to wrap my arms around him and bury my face into his chest. He hugged me back and stroked my hair lightly, making soothing noises in my ear every time I subconsciously sniffled.

“I’m sorry for last night,” he whispered after a while of just standing there, holding each other. “It was stupid; forget I mentioned it.”

I know I should’ve talked with him about what had happened, but I just didn’t want it to be silent or weird or awkward between us anymore, so I just nodded my head and kept my face buried in his chest as I tried not to cry. I wasn’t sure why I wanted to cry, I just did. He spent the most part of the day comforting me and helping me get to the bathroom whenever I felt nauseas. Truth be told, after the vomiting spree I took when I woke up, I didn’t feel all that sick again – only when I could smell something I didn’t like.

“Got it!” I exclaimed, making the man reading in the corner jump as I lifted one of the LPs out of it’s case with a huge smile on my face. In my hand there was a copy of The Game’s ‘The Documentary’. Georgia pulled the record sharply from my hand to look at it, before she lifted her eyes to meet mine and give me a look like I was going crazy. Maybe I was.

“Obviously, it’s supposed to be ironic,” I muttered, snatching the album out of her hand and shoving it under my arm. I was buying that album for Johnny because when I saw it, it reminded me of the time he and I had spent in that little stall full of LPs in Camden six years ago, criticizing each other’s music taste. She just rolled her eyes at me and turned to the case I had just finished flipping through as I walked over to a section of clothes marked ‘Vintage’ – it was really just a load of old clothes I probably would’ve found in my grandmother’s wardrobe, only more moth-eaten.

Another five minutes or so of wandering around Oxfam and looking through almost every shelf of books and CDs and video tapes – more from the desire of not going back out into the cold than actually being interested in anything in there. I had just approached the front counter – and received a strange look from the teenage boy – to pay for the album I had selected when Georgia’s phone started ringing from inside her bag.

“Hello?” she answered as we stepped out into the crowded street. We walked slowly along the street – because the people pressing in from all sides restricted our speed, mostly – and I fought with the plastic Oxfam bag, trying to get the record into my normal bag, while trying to keep hold of all my other purchases of the day.

“Jake said to come to the Costa just up the road from here,” she said to me, putting her phone back inside her bag and looking around the street, totally bewildered. “Do you have any idea where it is?”

“There’s a sign just there,” I said, pointing in the direction of a maroon coloured sign a little ways up the street. “I can’t really see from here, but that could be it.”

“We can check,” she said, smiling at me and linking her arm through mine so that we wouldn’t be lost in the crowd. The people around us restricted our movement some and most of them grumbled when they saw us blocking almost double the amount of space because we had our arms linked together.

Inside Costa, the heat was absolutely remarkable – and welcomed with open arms by both me and Georgia. We simultaneously removed our hats, scarves and gloves, and she started scanning the room for any sign of Jake. She left me on my own downstairs so I could order us two cups of tea each. Just after I had placed our order and was waiting at the end of the counter for the drinks, somebody tapped my shoulder very lightly.

“Hey!” I was more than a little bit shocked when I turned around and saw Zara standing behind me, dressed in a skinny-fitting black turtle necked jumper underneath a thick black park-style jacket with a furry hood, a pair of blue skinny jeans and black UGG boots. She had her gorgeous, curly blonde hair tied back into a ponytail at the back of her head, with little pieces hanging down to frame her face.

“Oh, hi,” I said, smiling at her as I picked up the two cups of tea that had been put down on the counter. I tried my best to ignore the smell – I’d forgotten how it brought on the nausea more than anything else did. I started itching to run up the stairs and avoid the awkward – on my part – conversation that would ensue.

“You’re Jake’s friend, right?” she asked – I just nodded my head and offered her another sheepish smile. “Yeah, I thought I remembered you.”

“Zara, isn’t it?” Like I could ever forget.

“Yeah,” she smiled, seemingly pleased that I remembered her. “Are you here with your boyfriend?”

I shook my head. “He’s bonding with my dad this afternoon; I’m here with my friend.”

“Oh, that’s cool,” she said, making a little ‘o’ shape with her pretty pink lips. “I didn’t mean to pry, Dean just mentioned him in passing.”

“You aren’t prying,” I said, shrugging my shoulders and getting a little bit more uncomfortable as the seconds went by. I wanted to bolt even more than I had before, but Zara kept talking.

“Is your friend the girl that my cousin just will not shut up about?”

I smiled and rolled my eyes. “That would be Georgia. She’s just as bad.”

“Wow,” she laughed with me, rolling her eyes too. “I walked past her on my way down here, then. Jake’s upstairs with everybody else if you want to go up.”

“Thanks,” I said, nodding my head as she turned to leave. I shook off the weird feeling that overtook me and threatened my air supply. I shouldn’t have even stopped to speak to her too much – I should’ve just excused myself after saying hello and rushed up the stairs to find Georgia. I found it strange that we were laughing together like that – like we were friends. Zara had left the café by the time my foot touched the first step of the staircase.

As escape plans went, my idea to excuse myself and rush up the stairs probably wouldn’t have been a better alternative than staying downstairs and having an awkward conversation with Zara. When I reached the top of the staircase, I stopped and nearly dropped the two cups of tea in my hands – which probably may have resulted in me burning myself somehow, and definitely smashing the crockery. Tucked away in the corner of the large upstairs area was Jake and Georgia speaking to one another quietly, seated on two arm chairs tilted to face the other. Edie was sat on the floor in between two large plush sofas as she played with Johnny and Dean. I felt my heart drop.

Each of them were too engrossed in what they were doing to notice me at that point, so I had a couple of seconds to collect myself with some deep breathing and motivating words – inside my head, of course. I composed my face until it was the sheer epitome of nonchalance and walked over to them slowly, careful not to slop any of the tea over the sides of the mugs – I thought it better to breathe through my mouth than to inhale that sickly smell of tea. When I was less than a foot away from their table, Johnny seemed to sense somebody approaching and lifted his head to look at me.

“Hey!” he called, as he tried to disentangle his hair from Edie’s fingers and stand up from where he had been kneeling on the floor. I put the two cups of tea down onto the coffee table between the two sofas – Dean occupied one as he played with Edie, and the one I had my back to was empty.

Johnny eventually stood upright and beamed at me before he opened his arms for a hug. “Glad to see you kept your promise.”

“Would I lie to you?”

“I know, I know,” he laughed, letting me go so that we could sit down on the sofa opposite the one occupied by Dean – who was hitching Edie up onto his lap because he was too tired to play. “You’ve changed again!”

“What? Since October?” I asked, raising my eyebrow at him as I relaxed back into my seat. “How’ve I changed?”

“I’m not sure,” he laughed, his eyebrows pulling together in the middle as he examined me carefully. “You seem a lot happier.”

Well, I suppose we’ll just go with that shall we? “Um, thanks, Johnny.”

I dropped my bag off of my shoulder onto the floor near my feet and leaned back into the soft cushions of the sofa, feeling my muscles thaw out after being out in the cold for so long. I closed my eyes, and, moments later, felt something tug on the skirt of my dress. I opened one eye and saw Edie smiling up at me as she tugged on my dress. I beamed back at her and leaned down to pick her up.

“Leila!” she exclaimed, lisping on the L’s in my name. “I missed you!”

“Well, I missed you too baby!”

“And so did Daddy!”

I raised my eyebrows and glanced over to Jake, smiling. “Did he, now?”

“Of course, I did,” he laughed, before almost immediately going back to talking to Georgia, his hand curled around hers.

I felt Edie tug lightly at a strand of my hair. “And Leila!”-I looked back at her and smiled-“Deanie missed you too.”

My breath hitched in my throat slightly and I lifted my eyes off of Edie’s face to glance at the people in my group. Jake and Georgia hadn’t even heard what she’d said and Johnny was too pre-occupied with his phone to pay it any mind. It was only Dean that was looking at me blankly, his face a mask.

“Back!” a voice said as it approached our table. I craned my neck around and saw Zara walking back through the tables in the café and peeling her coat off of her body to fling over the back of the sofa Dean was sat on. I turned back around and saw Dean positively beaming at her, before she sat down and he placed a light kiss on her cheek. I tried to control the little pang of hurt that hit me the best I could – or at least ignore it – but it wasn’t something that could be tamed. She took her place beside Dean, his arm wrapped around her shoulders securely as she leaned in to kiss him properly. I didn’t realised I’d been inconspicuously staring through my eyelashes until Edie started fussing in my lap and reaching for Georgia.

I couldn’t help but look at them every now and then when Edie was giggling in Georgia’s lap. I couldn’t help noticing how...perfect they looked for one another. How happy they seemed to be.

Johnny, Zara, Dean and I all started chatting absentmindedly – Jake and Georgia were too busy with each other and Edie had fallen asleep in Georgia’s lap – about small things that I hardly remember talking about. I realised that Dean was now doing his best to not look at me, or speak to me directly – which obviously made me feel even worse. He paused in something he was saying to his brother to turn his head slightly and kiss Zara’s temple; I averted my eyes and leaned forward to pick up the cup of tea that was balanced on the coffee table to take my first sip.

The smell of it rushed up my nasal cavities, and the taste following the scent was more, if not equally, repulsive. I couldn’t swallow it for a moment or two, but then I realised that holding it in my mouth wasn’t helping at all. When I did swallow it, I almost immediately felt my stomach heave and the nausea return – stronger than it had that morning. I just about managed to swallow back the bile long enough to rapidly excuse myself and half-run to the bathroom at the back of the room.

Where I – for lack of a better phrase – threw my guts up.