Right Now, I'm Anyone's

During the winter time, when it’s far too cold and you feel like shit, there is nothing better than a warm bed and too much sleep. It was Tuesday morning and I was lying awake in my old bed, listening to Levi as he made little snuffly noises in his sleep. I couldn’t understand how I managed to get a decent night’s sleep since Saturday, as I had slept close to twenty hours when I got home. I recalled the whole thing.

After I had finished vomiting into the one and only ladies toilet in Costa – I was just thankful it was free – I rinsed my mouth out with tap water, which hadn’t tasted all that better if I’m honest. A member of staff gave me a strange look as I supported myself against the wall and caught my breath, tentatively asking me if I was okay. I just nodded and took a couple of deep breaths, before walking back into the main room. Johnny was looking at me strangely when I sat down beside him on the couch.

“What happened then?” he asked.

I just shook my head before leaning it against the back of the chair – I felt too tired to speak. I kept feeling my eyes drooping shut and my head was aching. I thought that Levi was right; I was coming down with something.

“Leila,” Zara’s voice sounded distant to me, even though she was speaking normally, just across the table from me. Her next words were not spoken to me. “Oh, she looks awful, Dean. Why don’t you give her a lift home before she passes out?”

“No,” I said, unable to get my voice at a normal level. “I’m fine, don’t worry about it.”

“She’s right, Leila,” Johnny said, moving to put his arm around my shoulders. “You look exhausted.”

I protested again, before I heard Georgia pipe up. “Leila, come on, let me and Dean take you back home.”

“No, Georgia,” I said, opening my eyes and giving her the sternest look I could. “If I go, you’re staying here; you’ve been waiting ages to see Jake and Eeds again.”

“She’ll see me on Tuesday,” Jake countered. “You need to go home.”

“Fine, fine,” I said, rolling my eyes as I gave in. This nausea wasn’t like the last couple of times; the last couple of times, it disappeared as soon as it appeared, but it was sticking around then. I heard the jangle of car keys as Dean pulled them out of his pocket. I stood up, careful not to jostle my stomach more, and started collecting my bags – quickly shoving my hat and scarf set into one of them – before I followed Dean to the stairs.

“I’ll be back in about half an hour,” he said, just before we walked away.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to go home – I was all for that. I just didn’t want to have to be alone with Dean when he was making everything feel so strange. He led me out of Costa and along the street, walking just a little bit ahead of me so we weren’t side by side. He stopped at an old silver Peugeot and unlocked the doors with the fob on his key, before turning to me and taking my bags from me without a word. I found myself huffing in irritation as he shut the back door and walked to the driver’s side.

The drive away from Charring Cross Road was spent in total silence – even the crackling radio couldn’t put my mind at ease. I kept my arms wrapped tight around my sore, bloated stomach and tried to ignore the slight ache in my breasts – swear, it felt like period pains, but about a hundred times worse. I stared out of my window and tried to distract myself by focussing on my surroundings zooming past – rather than the man I may or may not have feelings for sitting less than a foot from where I was.

Reality crashed down around me when I realised the car wasn’t moving anymore. I looked out of the window and saw that the driveway of my dad’s house was empty, meaning that there was nobody home. I took a breath in and glanced to my right. Dean was sat with his hands still on the steering wheel of his car, his eyes blank as he stared into space. He felt my eyes on him and blinked a couple of times, before he glanced uneasily at me.

“Why aren’t you speaking to me?” I asked, pathetically, my voice barely above a whisper. I heard him sigh and I kept my eyes on the dashboard, my arms wrapped around my middle still to ease the nausea more. I glanced to my right again and saw him run a hand through his hair, before he placed his elbow on the lower half of the steering wheel and held his head up with his hand.

“Because I wasn’t planning on seeing you again,” he muttered. “Since that’s inevitable, ignoring you was the next best thing.”

“Right,” I said, managing to keep my voice steady – shocking, I know. “Why weren’t you planning on seeing me?”

“Because it’s too hard,” he sighed, closing his eyes. Suddenly, he seemed about a hundred years old rather than twenty-two. He looked like he’d been through everything he could ever endure; things that made him happy, things that tore him to pieces or saved his life. I bit down on my lip lightly and tried to keep my hormones in check so that I wouldn’t burst into tears. I moved an arm away from my stomach to reach for the door handle.

“I’ll just leave you alone, then,” I said. “Since it’s obviously what you want.”

I felt his hand, warm, on my thigh and he near growled, “Don’t tell me what I want, Leila, don’t you dare.”

I stopped in my movements and took my hand away from the door to place it lightly on top of his. “I thought you didn’t feel guilty about...what happened.”

“I’m not feeling guilty,” he insisted, flipping his hand to squeeze mine for a moment. “For one, I feel bad about how you feel guilty – and don’t try and lie to me about it”-I had opened my mouth to protest against that one-“and for two, I felt bad because Zara was looking forward to seeing you and getting to know you so much. It’s too hard because I can’t keep up the lies if you and her get close.”

I just stared at him, my words escaping me for a couple of minutes. After five minutes, he shook my leg with his hand and gave me a strange look, prompting me to speak up. I said, “You should’ve just told me about it rather than ignored me or avoided me. You had to know I’d try and find you at some point.”

“I know,” he said, shrugging his shoulders as he took my hand in his. “You’re a little too intuitive sometimes – not often, but sometimes.”

I narrowed my eyes and shoved him, laughing as I did so. “Shut up.”

“Edie was right, though,” he said, smiling at me. “I really did miss you.”

I rolled my eyes and felt myself blush slightly. “I missed you too.”

“You have no idea how badly I want to kiss you, right now.”

“O-Oh.” That one knocked the air out of my lungs a little bit. I looked back over to him and he was smiling at me, his eyes glittering in the grey light coming through the car windshield. I wanted to kiss him, as well, but I knew that it was far too risky when we were parked outside of both our homes – each, potentially, holding people that knew we had significant others. I started forming a little plan in my head about Dean and I driving somewhere, but almost as I was about to suggest it, the nausea feeling washed over me in an enormous wave and I clamped my hand to my mouth again.

“Let’s get you inside.”

I sighed and rolled over onto my right side, getting an eyeful of Levi sprawled out on his half of the bed. The small guilty feeling in my stomach had never completely disappeared, but sitting in Dean’s car with him yesterday made it just that little bit stronger – and with the constant nausea, that wasn’t a good thing at all. Levi took out the time on Sunday and half of Monday looking after me when the sickness was at its worst. He’d joke that I had developed some kind of allergy to tea, but still made sure it wasn’t around me during my waking hours, which was pretty lovely.

“Leila?” someone whispered outside of my bedroom door, tapping lightly against the wood. “You awake yet, love?”

I peeled the covers back off of my body, feeling my back ache from the change of position, and walk over to crack open the bedroom door. Stephanie was standing outside in a pair of elasticized maternity jeans and a striped teal and navy blue sweatshirt, her slight bump stretching it a bit. I smiled at her and stepped outside of my room, shutting the door behind me.

“How’re you feeling today?” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Levi says you’ve been getting better.”

“I feel alright today actually,” I said, leaning back against the door as I plucked on Levi’s oversized Joy Division shirt. “A little bit bloated, but good otherwise.”

“That’s great,” she said, unfolding her arms to put her hands in her pockets. “I’m sure you know about this Christmas do at the Owens’ tonight.”

“Yeah, Johnny mentioned it.”

“Doro-Dotty asked me to ask you if you wouldn’t mind heading over early?” Stephanie said, correcting herself on Mrs. Owens name. “Around one, just to help set everything up and ‘have a catch up’.”

I laughed when she air-quoted. “Yeah, that’s no problem. What time is it now?”

“Half past ten. You’re sleeping almost as much as I am!”

I rolled my eyes and laughed. Stephanie excused herself after a couple more minutes of chatting, and I went back to bed for about half an hour. Levi was awake by the time I had woken up again, and was lying on his side with his head propped up on his arm while he watched me sleep. I caught him and blushed, burying my head further into my pillow. I heard him chuckle.

“Morning,” he smiled. “Stephanie tells me you’re feeling better.”

I nodded my head and turned it so that I could look at his face. “I do. I have to go help next door set up at about one.”

“Want me to come help out?”

“Only if you want to,” I smiled. Levi returned my smile and nodded his head, leaning down to press a light kiss to my lips. I kissed him back and we lay in bed together for a while, just like we always used to, and talked to each other. By the time we had finished talking, I felt like I’d fallen in love with him over and over again, and the ever-present guilt was almost completely gone. But, eventually, I had to tear myself away and get myself ready for the day.

I slid out of bed and got a towel from the airing cupboard, before walking along the landing to the master bathroom, where I stripped out of Levi’s shirt and the shorts I had worn to bed and looked at myself in the mirror for a moment or two. The dark circles around my eyes were the first thing I noticed, followed by the slight double chin I had – I couldn’t remember that coming on.

Engrossed in my inspection, I started turning this way and that, examining every part of my body. My arms definitely weren’t any bigger or skinnier than they were before I got here, but I noticed my thighs were generally a lot more jiggly than usual. I scowled at my reflection and turned to the side, paying attention to the fact that my boobs had definitely grown – my bra barely fit me properly and constricted my breathing – and my bum seemed a little bit rounder than its usual flat self. I used my hand to touch my breast lightly and felt a dull ache there. I pulled my hand away and rolled my eyes.

Not even Christmas yet and you’re already gaining weight, I thought to myself. I shook off all of my body hang-ups and removed my underwear before stepping inside the power-shower. I turned it on and got it to the right temperature, before turning my back to the warm jets of water and letting it rinse my body, relaxing all of the knots in my back. While the water worked its magic, my mind wandered. I thought about the Saturday night Dean and I had spent together, over a month ago before he left for home. My body virtually ached for him and I could feel my hormones going crazy as I vigorously washed my hair.

“Are you planning on using all the hot water, or am I going to be able to wash today?” I jumped when Georgia banged on the bathroom door and shouted through it. I rolled my eyes and quickly rinsed the last of the conditioner from my hair, followed by the soap that remained on my legs from shaving. I got out of the shower and wrapped one of my towels around my body while the other went around my hair to stop it from dripping everywhere. I unlocked the bathroom door and Georgia was stood, smiling sweetly at me, on the other side. She sidled into the bathroom through the gap between me and the doorframe and bumped my hip so I’d move out of the way, then slammed the door and locked it.

“Yeah, you’re welcome!” I shouted through the wood of the door. I heard Georgia giggle from inside the bathroom and shook my head as I made my way back to my room. The shower had woken me up quite a bit, and I felt ready to get out of the house after being stuck inside for so long. Since my nausea hadn’t reared its ugly head that morning, I thought I had gotten over whatever ailment I had picked up. Levi was still in bed when I walked through the door, leaning back against the headboard of my bed as he looked around at the painted walls.

“Why do I recognise that?” he asked, jerking one of his thumbs over his shoulder to the wall behind him, where the Protége Moi quote was written in gold.

I laughed and picked my phone up off of the nightstand to check the time; 12:23PM. “It’s Placebo; I’m certain I’ve shown you the song before.”

“Probably,” he said, shrugging as he stretched his arms up over his head – he hadn’t liked Placebo all that much. “Who actually decorated in here, anyway? It’s pretty impressive.”

“I did, Levi,” I said as I rolled my eyes, walking over to the chest of drawers that I had unpacked my clothes into when we arrived.

“You’ve improved a lot, then.”

I laughed. “Because”-I pulled a long, black and white striped shirt with gold buttons on the shoulders from the drawer as I spoke-“I chose to do Art in college and university.”

I turned back towards the drawers to search for my light blue skinny jeans, but felt his arms curling around my bloated stomach. He kissed my bare shoulder and tried to steal my towel away from my body. I slapped his arms and blushed, feeling insecure about the changes I had noticed earlier.

“Hey,” I said, totally on a whim. “Do you think my boobs look bigger?”

He chuckled, but it caught in his throat when I pulled my towel away from my chest momentarily. I glanced over my shoulder at him and saw him staring with his mouth wide open. I rolled my eyes and covered myself back up, before pushing him away from me and laughing.

“Just go and get a shower,” I said. He rolled his eyes once he had managed to pull his face back together properly and walked over to the bed to grab the shirt he had been wearing the day before and pull it over his head. I didn’t notice him hesitating at the door to my room and jumped when he spoke.

“Your boobs are fine,” he said, making me laugh and throw a sock at him. I shook my head at him as he exited the room and I pulled my underwear on before letting my towel drop. My hair was almost dry by the time Levi got back from his shower with a towel wrapped around his narrow waist. He was breathing heavily, so I got the impression that he had ran from the bathroom to avoid my dad or Stephanie seeing him in the all together – bless him and his self-consciousness.

“You ready?” he asked as I was putting the finishing touches to my eyeliner.

“Nearly.”

I leaned towards the mirror to add a thin point to the wing in the outer corner of my eye, while Levi started getting dressed behind me. In the next ten minutes, I had finished my make-up and tied half of my hair up, deciding to leave it curly, and Levi was dressed and ready to go. I put my phone and the spare set of keys my dad had given me into either of the front pockets of my jeans, pulling a thick cardigan out of the wardrobe to protect myself from the bitter cold outside. When we stepped out of Mark’s front door onto his garden path, Levi grabbed my hand in his and we started walking – out of the gate, along the small stretch of pavement and down the path parallel to my dads.

“Leila Cole!” Mrs. Owens shrieked when she answered the door and saw me standing on her doorstep. She practically shoved Levi away from me as she flung her arms wildly around me and said, “It’s so good to see you darling! You’ve grown up so much! How old are you now?”

I cringed away from the numerous appraisals slightly, but kept my face trained into my careful smile. “Hi, Dorothy, it’s great to see you again too”-I paused to laugh slightly-“Twenty-two – same as Dean.”

“Please, call me Dotty!” she said, pulling her body violently away from me and seemingly noticing Levi for the first time. She gave him a brief once over with an edge of disapproval hanging around her features as he stood, awkward and fidgety under her scrutiny. She said, “Who might this be, dear?”

“L-Levi Richards,” Levi said bashfully, holding his hand out for her to shake. “Leila’s boyfriend. Pleased to meet you.”

Again, I noticed her looked at him in distaste. What was her bloody problem? Before he could notice the look she was giving him, she quickly fixed her expression into a slight grimace of a smile and shook the hand he offered her. I kept asking myself what possible problem she could have with him – since she only just met him as I did little chores throughout the house for her. She seemed to be giving Levi particularly difficult tasks – stuff like heavy-lifting – when Jake or Dean would have an easier job doing them.

After five minutes of polishing the mantel piece in the living room, I noticed that Zara was there too – there wasn’t a reason why she wouldn’t be, of course – and I realised that the day would probably go a hell of a lot slower. Dorothy – I still refuse to call her Dotty to this day – had the two of us cleaning the whole top floor of her home while she busied herself in the kitchen, making food for the pre-Christmas party. I didn’t know what any of the men in the house were up to; I can’t say I cared a lot either.

We had finished the majority of the top floor of the house before any of us really talked properly. We were in Dean’s room, dusting at the window sill and the desk and hoovering the carpet when Zara said the first words. “Now, if this isn’t a sight for sore eyes.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, keeping my eyes down on the wooden desk I was polishing – why we even had to clean the bedrooms was beyond me. I turned around and Zara had a photograph in her hands; she rolled her eyes as she passed it to me so I could look at it. I took it from her and felt myself shudder in distaste almost automatically. It was the same photo I found in that room last time I was in there; Dean, with Jay leaning against him, kissing his cheek. I did my best to ignore the whole Jay half of the picture and felt shocked at just how much he had changed. And how my memory hadn’t done the real him any justice at all.

“I could never stand that little grock,” Zara spat, lifting the bin bag out of the small black bin on the floor underneath the window. “I came down here to live with Jake and his parents because he needed extra help with Edie and everything and I started to get to know Dean. When he picked me over her she just got really petty and annoying.”

I just laughed and flung the photo into the black bin. “Tell me about it; she hated me.”

Zara just laughed before we went back to our silence. She was crouched, looking around underneath Dean’s old bed – she mentioned something about Johnny telling her that his brother had an old stash of porn under there – and I took the time she couldn’t see me to look around the room a little more. It was almost exactly as I remembered it – the blood red walls and the black sheets on the bed that was still next to the window. The only changes were the lack of his laptop, games console, television, posters and the photographs that had once been strewn all over the walls. Zara cursed from somewhere under the bed and pulled me out of my little trip down Memory Lane.

“Nothing there?” I asked, putting my cloth and the can of polish down on the desk as I sat down on the crisp black sheets, trying my best not to crease them.

“Nothing!” she sighed, flopping down on the bed beside me. “Either Johnny’s lying about it or Dean’s got better hiding places than his brother knows about.”

We laughed together for a while, each of us throwing little porn related puns into the silence every couple of minutes, before we lapsed into the inevitable silence. I could practically feel each second ticking by, making the air around us more tense and awkward as they slipped by.

“Leila?”

I swallowed the massive amount of air I had just inhaled. “Yeah?”

“Dean told me about what happened with you two.”

My entire body froze in place, and I swear I stopped breathing for a couple of minutes as I registered what Zara just said. I stayed silent and averted my eyes down onto the floor, as she sat up on the bed so that she could look at me. I ran through every single excuse and explanation and apology I could come up with on the spot, dismissing every single one of them as they came. What do you say to a girl – a very friendly, pretty girl – whose boyfriend you’d had sex with? How can you possibly find a way to apologise for that?

“I’m sorry.” I kept it short and simple, seeing as my voice was cracking already.

“I know you tore him apart when you left, but you don’t have to be sorry for it!” she answered, her voice rising with her enthusiasm. “I actually feel like I should be apologising to you for him.”

Hang on a moment. I rewound everything that had just been said; what the hell had he told her about the two of us, exactly? I didn’t speak again; I just lifted my head up and brought my eyebrows together. I think she must’ve misinterpreted my look as bitterness and held her hands up as if to surrender. She said, “I’m sorry – he did warn me that you were still a bit sensitive about it”-about what?!-“All I wanted to tell you is that after he told me he cheated on you with that little dog, I didn’t speak to him for days because – from what Jake and Johnny had told me about you – you’re lovely. And you’re so pretty and funny and...I’m just rambling now, but you get my point. I didn’t meant to offend you or anything – I shouldn’t have even brought it up-”

It seemed like the more flustered she got talking about it, the quicker her words left her mouth. When I figured out what she was talking about, I held my hand up to stop the muddled flow of her voice. “It’s fine, honestly. I’m not offended, I’m not sensitive about it; it’s in the past with us. We’re...friends”-if you could call our twisted relationship friendship-“now, and I forgave him.”

“I’m glad about that,” she said, offering me a happy smile and a squeeze of my shoulder. “You’re a far bigger person than I am, Leila. I respect you for it.”

I felt my eyebrows pulling together again. “What makes you say that?”

“Well,” she sighed, shrugging her shoulders as she moved to lean back on her hands. “If somebody did something like that to me, I wouldn’t let them forget it. I’m a very bitter person when it comes to things like that, and I find it far too easy to find the bad things in people and hate them for it.”

Wow, so maybe I did have a chance of staying in her good books when she found out I was sleeping with her boyfriend – note the sarcasm. “I’m pretty sure you could forgive them eventually, if you loved them enough.”

She just shrugged her shoulders again. “Who knows?”

*****

It was around half past three in the afternoon when everything in the house was appropriately cleaned and arranged to Dorothy’s standards. Levi was exhausted by then, and excused himself to go for a nap back at Mark’s place, asking me if I wanted to join him – I politely declined his offer and stayed with Georgia, Jake and Johnny in the Owens’ household. Dorothy told us that guests would be arriving at about five in the evening, before flapping around and straightening anything that she thought was off-centre. Charles inconspicuously handed her a glass of red wine and told her to relax.

“Leila, are you having any?” Charles asked, a warm smile on his face as he held a wine glass out to me.

I bit my lip, shaking my head. “No, thank you, Charles. Not feeling too well.”

“Ah, well,” he sighed. “Do you want a glass of water instead?”

“That’d be good, thank you.”

Charles offered me another smile, before turning with the glass of wine that had been meant for me in his hand still. It was true, I had started feeling ill shortly after Zara and I had finished cleaning Dean’s bedroom. I decided that it was best to avoid solid food for the time being as well, just until my stomach settled properly.

The Owens’ living room was near empty, with just me, Georgia, Jake, Johnny and Edie sat together. I sat on the couch beside Johnny, while Jake and Georgia sat on opposite sides of Edie as we talked and she played. Zara had excused herself to use the shower upstairs and Mr and Mrs Owens were down in the basement looking through their wine selection.

“I’ll get it,” Johnny said when somebody knocked on the front door. Jake glanced through the open door towards the foyer with a confused look on his face.

“Reckon that’s your dad or Steph?” he asked.

I shook my head. “I don’t think they’re coming, with Stephanie being pregnant and everything.”

“Oh, yeah,” he laughed, shrugging his shoulders as he pulled a face. “Someone must be early then, it’s not even four yet.”

Georgia and I shrugged off his comment – and she slipped her hand into his – as we continued to talk about Christmas and what date we were planning on heading back to Leeds. Georgia said not until she absolutely had to – which would be the Monday after Christmas, the day work started up again – and I smiled to myself, knowing exactly why she wanted to put it off so long. I laughed and said I might just get a coach home the day after Boxing Day, as Levi had to drive home early the following morning to spend Christmas with his parents.

“No! N-look, just get the fuck out of my house!”

Georgia, Jake and I went silent at the sound of Johnny's raised voice, coming from the foyer of his home. Edie looked at the open door that lead to the foyer and subconsciously placed her hand on Georgia’s need. We all heard the door slam, then two sets of footsteps walking to the living room.

“I’m sorry, Jake,” Johnny said, entering the room before the stranger by shoving himself past them. “I tried to stop her from coming in, I really did.”

“Shut up. Hello, Jake,” the stranger spoke, stepping into the room as she did so. Jake’s mouth went slack and the olive tone of his skin paled considerably, like he’d seen a ghost. He just stared in disbelief at the tall, bone-white woman standing in the doorway, her black hair reaching down to her waist. She was beautiful, but in a way that only anorexia sufferers would understand. Her face was gaunt, with hollowed out eye sockets and skin that stretched to breaking point over sharp cheekbones. Her clothes looked far too big on her, but I was convince I couldn’t fit my wrist into a leg of her skinny jeans.

“Hello, baby,” she said when Jake stayed silent, leaning forward to plant her hands on her bony knees as she looked into Edie’s panicked face. “Where’s my little girl?”

That’s when Jake found his voice. He stood up and put himself between this strange woman and his daughter, before saying, “What the hell are you doing here, Lisa?”

Then it was my faces turn to go slack; I recognised her now, from Jake’s description back when I asked about Edie’s mother. I managed to shake off the shock a moment later and I glanced at Georgia, who had her jaw clenched and anger blazing in her eyes. I could tell that if Edie hadn’t repositioned herself so she was in Georgia’s lap with her arms around her neck, she would’ve gouged Lisa’s eyes right out of those scary, hollow sockets.

“I went to your parents place and nobody was home – I just thought of the next place you’d be if you weren’t there and I knew she’d be with you.”

Lisa inclined her head towards the child in Georgia’s arms, a slight menace flashing in her dark, beady eyes. She seemed to just notice Georgia right at that moment and sneered at her, after giving her a quick once over. Jake exhaled and brought Lisa’s attention back to him.

“You know, I thought you had some standards,” she said, raising both of her thin eyebrows at Jake. “But seeing what you’re introducing my daughter to”-she inclined her head towards Georgia-“I think I’ve been proved wrong.”

I stood up and took a place at Jake’s side, feeling the sharpness of my anger in my chest. “I don’t think she’s the one that abandoned her daughter at birth, is she? At the end of the day, she’s always going to be a better mother to Edie than you are, right?”

“Who, or what, are you?” Lisa sneered at me.

“She’s one of my best friends,” Jake growled. “Now, before we get sidetracked further, do you want to tell me what the hell you think you’re doing coming back here after four years?”

“Jake, you still sound like an overprotective mother-”

“Since you aren’t much of a mother, I have to.”

“Save your pointy words, Daniels,” Lisa taunted, smirking as she stared squarely into Jake’s angry face with her hands on her hips. “I want to see my daughter; you aren’t going to be able to keep me from my rights.”

“Your rights?!” he exclaimed. “You lost the right to call her your daughter the day you left her, Lisa!”

“She’s got half my genes, Jake; she’s as much mine as she is yours.”

Jake clenched his hands tight at his sides, while Georgia, Johnny and I watched on. Dorothy and Charles were still nowhere to be seen, and I was surprised they hadn’t heard all the commotion going on. I took a couple of steps back until I could crouch down at Georgia’s side. Georgia handed Edie off to me – who quickly wrapped her little arms tight around my neck – and stood up off of the floor to touch Jake’s back soothingly. He opened his mouth to retaliate to Lisa’s previous statement after he had managed to relax his body more, but the sound of Zara’s voice coming from the foyer cut him off.

“Right, who the fuck let the dog in the house?”

“Oh, my,” Lisa said, a slight tone of mock-surprise in her voice as she turned her head to snarl at Zara as she walked into the living room, taking a place on Jake’s left hand side. “Zara, how nice to see you; Dean kept you around this long, then?”

“Don’t even go there, filthy little smackhead,” Zara threatened, keeping a pleasant smile on her face. “You know my total and undying hatred for you, so you know better than anybody that I’m not afraid to break your legs.”

I remembered that I had hold of a four year old girl, which knocked my sense back into me. From where I knelt on the floor, I tightened my grip on Edie – who was hiding her face in my shoulder – and stood up off of the floor, making way to leave the room before this got too nasty for her to see. Lisa seemed to notice my movement and her eyes snapped onto me.

“Get your hands off of my daughter,” she growled at me, her voice low in her throat and her eyes narrowed. “So help me God, Zara won’t be able to keep you safe from me.”

I just looked at her for a long moment. “You may be able to subject a child – your child – to this kind of thing, but I’m sure the worthwhile people in this room couldn’t bear it.”

I hitched Edie higher up onto my hip and took my eyes off of Lisa’s as I walked towards the door to make my exit. I felt her cold, thin fingers wrap around my forearm as she tried to yank me back into the room – she was surprisingly strong, considering she was so skeletal.

“I deserve to see my daughter,” she hissed at me. “A little, anonymous bitch like you won’t stop me.”

“I think that’s enough, Lisa,” came another voice. I tore my eyes away from Lisa’s burning ones and saw that Dean was standing a couple of inches away from me, in the doorframe of the room. He closed the distance between us and grabbed Lisa’s fragile wrist, pulling my arm out of her grasp. He glanced down at me and jerked his head towards the hallway outside of the room. I scuttled through the door as fast as I could.

Edie clasped hold of my neck tighter and whimpered into my shoulder, before I felt my shirt becoming damp as she started to cry. I kept my arms securely around Edie and tightened them a bit, so she’d know she was okay. I stroked her back and her brown ringlets, shushing in her ear every so often as I bounced to calm her down.

“It’s okay, baby,” I said, rubbing her back some more. “You’re okay; everything’s fine.”

Edie’s crying was what brought Mr and Mrs Owens back upstairs to us. They both hurried towards me after leaving the few bottles of wine they had collected next to the basement door and fussed. Johnny stepped out into the foyer a moment later and walked over to us. He pried Edie away from me and held her tight against his chest, rubbing small circles into her back with calmed her crying down.

“What on earth is going on?” Dorothy asked shrilly.

“Edie’s mum showed up,” Johnny muttered darkly. “Dean already rang the police because she won’t leave.”

We stood, listening in the hallway while the voices in the living room rose with the individuals anger. Most of the curse words were coming from Zara, while Jake couldn’t keep his voice from filling with hatred and Dean kept himself calm; the voice of reason. After another couple of minutes, I heard Zara say something else that was unintelligible and the living room door was flung open. Lisa walked past us, knocking into me on her way out of the front door. Charles, Dorothy and Johnny – with Edie still attached to his front – went into the living room to see what had gone on.

I just excused myself without telling anybody, and climbed up the stairs to use the bathroom. I took my time in there, since the whole thing with Lisa had changed my mood a lot. I did my business and washed my hands for about ten minutes. When I was done, I didn’t so much wander around the upper level as look inside the two rooms I was familiar with. I noticed that Johnny’s room had changed and I thought he might’ve swapped with his parents or something. After that, I paused outside of Dean’s bedroom door, deliberating.

It didn’t take me that long to decide, of course.

The room was almost entirely dark when I entered it – except for the soft yellow light of the street lamps outside the open curtains, making my skin glow a warm yellow colour. I explored the room more thoroughly than I could’ve that afternoon, looking through the wardrobe and rifling through drawers in the desk, inspecting underneath his bed. The wardrobe and most of the desk was empty. There was a suitcase underneath the bed and a single shoebox in one of the drawers of the desk. I pulled out the shoebox in my curiosity and went to sit down on his bed, where I lifted the lid and looked inside it.

The box was filled to the brim with photographs, most of which were covered in dust from lack of use. I grabbed the handful on top of the pile and started flipping through them – they were nothing special, really, mainly just photographs of Dean and his band, Dean and his friends, Dean and Zara, all in various different locations. There were a few of his parents standing outside of the Eiffel Tower and one of Johnny leaning against a barrier next to a river I didn’t recognise.

I shuffled through the rest of the photos, seeing that most were similar to the first handful I had collected. There were two left in the pile at the moment, and it’s safe to say they both made my heart skip a couple of beats. I held the first one up to the dim yellow light coming through the window and looked at it carefully. It was a picture of my bedroom at Mark’s house; taken from an angle so that you could see the Protége Moi quote on the wall and the rose vine encasing it. Dean must’ve taken it after I left – I don’t remember him doing it while I was there. I was shocked my dad had let him, to be honest. To think that he had even been in my room after I was gone was strange.

Well, almost as strange as it felt to find the last photograph.

Looking at it, I saw a girl. She was pretty, but peacefully asleep; her eyes closed against the light with a subconscious smile on her lips. Her thick raven curls were fanned out on the pillow wedged behind her head and her collarbone jutted out from underneath the black duvet. Her arm was bent at the elbow to that the fingertips of her right hand just pressed against her lower lip as she dreamed. She was me six years ago. She was me when everything felt okay.

Without warning or understanding, tears sprung their way to my eyes, making them sting. I left the photograph lying on the bed beside me, all the others back inside the shoebox on the opposite side. I braced my hands behind me on the bed with my arms straight and my head hanging down as I cried silently, hopelessness taking over me. I’m still not sure why I started crying; maybe from the nostalgia, maybe from the realisation that that was a totally different time, and nothing felt okay or easy anymore. Maybe it was because of all the stress that was pressing down on me, suffocating me. Maybe because I missed the old me. I don’t know.

“Leila?” I heard somebody say my name from the landing just outside of Dean’s bedroom door – I knew it was him, what was the point in hiding? “Leila, you in there?”

“Yeah,” I said, my voice cracking as I took a deep breath to calm myself – it didn’t stop the flow of tears dribbling down my face.

The door to the bedroom creaked very slightly as it was opened, and the floor groaned under his weight as he walked inside and closed the door behind him. I felt him sit close to me on the bed, after moving the shoebox out of the way, but I still didn’t raise my head to look at Dean. The almost-darkness wasn’t enough to conceal my damp face and I caught a glimpse of his toffee skin as he reached over to pick the photograph up off of the bed.

He was silent for a couple of moments, before he let the photograph drop onto the floor and put both of his arms around my body, pulling me into him. I kept my hands by my sides as he cradled my face into his chest and stroked my hair softly, murmuring a constant string of apologies into my ear.

“What are you sorry for?” I croaked quietly, my voice cracking as I fought to keep the crying at bay for a couple of minutes.

“For keeping that photo; for you finding it. That’s what you’re upset about isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I whispered. “But not because you kept it.”

He stayed silent, rubbing those soothing circles into my back and hair, loosening my spine up as I tried to keep from looking at him. When he thought I had stopped crying – he thought right – his arms loosened around me and he encouraged me to lift my head up. I looked up into his face – etched with worry and concern – and tried as hard as I could to see just him, alone; not Levi, or Zara or anybody else. I tried to see him, and maybe me with him.

The sad part was that I couldn’t do it.

I looked down again, wanting more than anything to avoid his gaze and the guilt and the pain that came back to me whenever I couldn’t think of just him. I suppose being around Levi alone for so long must’ve destroyed the ability. Dean didn’t seem to catch on to what was bothering me now and tilted my chin up so that I had to look at him again.

His lips came into light contact with mine, but they felt firm. I felt myself melt into him as I kissed back and his arms went back around me. I knew it was all wrong, because the guilt normally disappeared whenever he did something like that; it was eating me alive then, worse than ever. I kept kissing him anyway, hoping against all hope that it would work eventually.

He pulled away from me first. “You ready to endure this party, then?”

I just nodded my head, slightly disappointed – more in myself than him – and kept thinking. I thought the entire time he walked with me along the landing, with his hand curled in mine. I knew I had to make a decision; it had to be the right one, and it had to be made fast.