Perfectly Dysfunctional

I all but ran down the stairs in record time, leaving Nathan kneeling on his bed. I jumped the last few steps and glared at the back of Tom’s head before my eyes fell on Jay, “Jay! How’re you feeling?”

He looked at me then at Max, who nodded, then he looked back at me, “I’m okay...” he said awkwardly, “I’m sorry, it’s just really weird for me, and it’s annoying...” he trailed off and I nodded. He’d said this every time we’d been in the hospital; that he was sorry for making it awkward because he couldn’t remember how close we all were and that it annoyed him. “So this is my house?” he asked and looked around and we nodded.

“Yeah, Jenny and Nathan live here, too,” Max explained and Jay nodded, continuing to glance around.

“It’s nice here,” he smiled, “Homely.”

Just then Siva and Nareesha came in the front door. They both said hi to Jay and he smiled. He remembered Nareesha more than anyone else. I glanced at her and saw that she was watching Jay with half a smile on her face and rubbing her swollen tummy. “Well it’s good to have you home,” I smiled at him and he nodded then Tom started speaking to him. I took this as my chance and pretty much dragged Nareesha to the kitchen when I heard Nathan’s footsteps.

“What the Hell, Jenny?!” she cried but I hushed her quickly then made her sit down at the table.

“I kissed Nathan...” No point in beating around the bush; she’d find out anyway – it was Nareesha for crying out loud! I cut her off as she started to grin by moaning, “It’s not good!” I whisper-yelled making her roll her eyes.

“It is good,” she whisper-yelled back, “You’re just too stubborn to let something good happen to you for once! God, this means we don’t have to live through your tension anymore,” she smirked to herself and I glared at her, “So what happened?” I rolled my eyes and sat across from her, telling her everything in hushed tones, right up until Tom walked through the door. “Damn,” she muttered, “I’ll fucking kill him.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “So what the Hell am I supposed to do now?”

“Uh... fuck him?” she guessed then burst out laughing when my jaw hit the floor.

“You didn’t just say that!” I hissed and fought back my laughter.

“Well-” she stopped when Nathan walked into the kitchen and to the fridge.

“Don’t mind me!” he called over his shoulder as he reached up to the top shelf to grab two beers making his t-shirt ride up at the sides, so Nareesha and I enjoyed the view for a second – and yes she did too, I caught her. We stayed silent and glanced at each other as he looked around for the Coke that was in the fridge. When our eyes connected we both threw our hands to our mouths to stop ourselves from laughing and looked away. Our silence must have unnerved Nathan because he set the beers and coke down on the island with a curious look on his face, “What are you two talking about?” I couldn’t look at him for fear of it being awkward or laughing, so I looked at Nareesha; bad idea. She looked at me and we both burst out laughing hysterically until tears rolled down our cheeks. We calmed down enough to hear Nathan talking, “You guys are fucking weird.” He grabbed a glass then left again.

I giggled then leaned over the table and thumped Nareesha’s arm, “Now look what you did!” I couldn’t tell her off through my laughter so we waited until we were both calm again.

“I done nothing; it wasn’t even that funny,” she finally defended and I scoffed, “Anyway, what you do now is talk to him. It’s not that difficult. I saw the way he looked at you-”

“Shurrup,” I rolled my eyes then stood up, “C’mon, let’s go talk to Jay.”

After an hour of sitting around the living room chatting to Jay, we decided to throw a DVD on – we picked Avatar and told Jay that it was his ultimate favourite movie. Tom ran around closing the curtains and shutting off the lights in one of his hyper moods making Jay question us on how we usually coped with him. Needless to say we were all laughing for the first ten minutes of the film.

I didn’t pay any attention to the film as it played. Instead, I kept my eyes on Nareesha, Nathan and Max. Nathan wasn’t doing much, just watching the film and occasionally glancing at Nareesha or me, but it was nice to look at... It was Nareesha and Max I was more concerned about. At first I noticed it when Max frowned and mouthed ‘what’ in Nareesha’s direction, so I looked at her to see her grinning then shaking her head. Ten minutes later she tried again by stretching back and moving her head in my direction then raising her eyebrows at Nathan. I glared at her the whole time she was doing it. Then suddenly Max’s eyes bugged out of his head and both Nathan and Siva noticed. Nathan let a small smile play on his lips but kept his eyes trained on the TV and Siva asked him what was wrong. He quickly shook it off and grinned. He then claimed he was going to get another drink for everyone, “Jenny, can you help me?” he tried to hide his smile as he spoke to me. I rolled my eyes and stood up, making sure to flick Nareesha’s head as I walked by her then into the kitchen, “So, you and Nath?” he practically pounced on me as soon as I shut the door behind me. Not even a second later Nareesha walked through the door making sure to close it behind her then made her way over to get popcorn from the cupboard.

“Why did you tell Max?” I hissed, “Way to make it subtle,” I laughed and she gave me an innocent look. “And you are such a girl!” I laughed at him and he acted offended.

“Max should know-” She was cut off by a yell from the living room.

“MATE, SERIOUSLY?!” Tom yelled then he was shushed a few times. I threw Nareesha and Max a glance.

“So that’ll be everyone else knowing now,” I sighed and Max nudged me.

“Cheer the fuck up and tell me what happened.” I laughed and quickly told him the story as we made popcorn and got drinks. When I finished he was smiling; “All I can say right now is ‘finally’,” he breathed and my jaw dropped as I looked at Nareesha who was giggling.

“That’s what I said.”

“Did everyone get this but me?”

“And him for a while,” Max said, “But he got there about a month ago, I’d say. You took your time,” he let his knuckles tap against my head.

“I don’t know what to do,” I admitted.

“Well you both like each other, so there’s really nothing else you need. The hard part’s done – eventually,” Max said and I looked up at him. Nareesha poured the popcorn into two bowls and made her way back into the living room.

“I just-”

“Jenny, calm down. Nath probably feels this way too,” he smiled at me then pulled me into a hug, “If I’m honest, there’s not one girl that Nath’s ever met who’s even close to making him as happy as you already have. And I’d rather see him with you over any of them. So just go for it.” He kissed the top of my head and I smiled at him before we went back into the living room and put everyone’s drinks on the table. Everyone looked at me as I sat down and I bit down hard on my cheek as I stared off at the TV screen, but they soon lost interest – or Tom and Siva did anyway – and I mentally sighed in relief even though I still couldn’t relax. I couldn’t take it anymore and I stood up, mumbling my excuse of going to the bathroom before racing upstairs and into my room.

I lay on my bed staring hard at my ceiling as I let the days events play in my mind. Well I say events but what I mean is the kiss and everything surrounding it. When I thought about it my heart raced and I couldn’t control the smile that came to my face. I laughed at myself and how pathetic I must look but shook it off. I thought of Nareesha’s words ‘you’re too stubborn to let something good happen to you for once’, and how right she was. Ever since my gran died, things have just spiralled downwards for me – don’t get me wrong, there have been some really great highs since then, from the really silly little things to the bigger things like moving to London and meeting amazing people. I’d always been good at hiding behind mask after mask after mask and covering up my emotions so well that I’d pretty much lost me. When this realization hit me, it hit me hard. I sat bolt upright in shock as my mind raced. It was the truth; I’d hidden myself so much in the past two years that I’d lost sight of everything I used to be. I’d always been aware of the contradiction I made in day to day life; I always promised to never lose myself despite hiding behind so many things – it just never occurred to me that hiding was going to get me lost. I curled my fingers around the edge of the bed and became angry with myself; how did I even get on to this train of thought in the first place?

I shook my head to rid myself of my thoughts as there was a light tap at my door. “Come in,” I mumbled as I pressed my fingers into my eyelids.

“Hey,” I heard Nathan’s voice say and I glanced up at him, taking a moment to adjust to the light again after pressing my eyes down so hard. I smiled at him as I blinked and he came over to sit beside me, “What’s up?”

“The sky...” I tried and he laughed as I zoned out a little.

“Seriously though, you look like you just saw a ghost.”

After our argument earlier I thought it wise to not disguise what I was feeling, so instead I just came out with it, with everything I’d just thought, and everything I was feeling along the way. Surprisingly he sat and listened; I’d expected him to have some input, or tell me what I was feeling was wrong... I guess we both took the argument on board. I done pretty well with holding back my tears as Nathan only had to lean over and wipe them away once. I took a deep breath when I finished, “I am sick of crying,” I laughed and he smiled.

“It’s cute.”

“I’m glad someone thinks so.”

“C’mon, I want to show you something,” he tugged on my arm and I followed him out my room. I closed my door then he opened his and I heard a shout from downstairs.

“Use a condom!” Siva sung upstairs.

“Just because you didn’t!” Both Nathan and I yelled at the same time.

“Hey!” Siva shouted and I got slight déjà vu. We laughed and I followed Nathan into his room and closed the door behind him as he threw stuff around muttering stuff to himself.

“I would ask... But I won’t.” I jumped on his bed and lay against the headboard as I brought my knees to my chest.

He rejoiced as he finished rummaging about in the bag he took to LA and held his arm in the air holding a small memory stick, “Found it!” He grabbed his laptop and came to sit beside me. As soon as he was there I rested my head on his shoulder and he plugged the stick in and waited for it to load up. Soon enough he double clicked on a folder called ‘Demos’ and my jaw dropped as loads of audio files loaded up. He paused and looked down at me with narrowed eyes, “You shouldn’t know about this...” His face then broke out into a grin, “But you’re special.” It was my turn to narrow my eyes at him. I watched as he quickly looked through all these demos that I found myself itching to hear. That’d be the fan inside of me. There was so many that it hurt my eyes to try and read them. He finally settled on one and let it play. I listened to the lyrics as I picked at the skinny jeans covering my knees.

“It’s really good,” I smiled, “Why’d you let me hear it?”

He shrugged, “When you were saying all that stuff in there it just made me think of this. It’s not about you or anything...” he quickly added, “It’s about pretty much everyone I guess, we all hide and stuff, I don’t know. I just thought you’d appreciate it to know that you’re not the only one who feels like she’s hiding from the world.”

That tugged on a few heartstrings, “Why must you be so amazing with words?” I asked him as I sat up to face him properly.

He smirked, “It’s just another one of those things that I’m ridiculously good at, I guess.”

I rolled my eyes, “And another thing to add to that is ruining moods,” I laughed and he joined in, “No seriously though... Thanks. It’s just right now hit me how good you’ve been to me over the past six months,” I mumbled, “And I know that’s ridiculous to only realize now... But you done a lot for me when no one else would have,” I found myself thinking of all the amazing good deeds he’d done, along with the rest of The Wanted, and couldn’t look up at him, “I feel kinda ashamed that I’m only just getting round to saying this.” I said quietly. “And before you say anything else, I’m sorry that I might have doubted you about Dave at any point. That wasn’t fair… And he’s a psycho. And for the record, I’m with you all one hundred and ten percent on it, now.”

Suddenly I was looking into his eyes as he’d moved my chin up with his finger, “Don’t be so stupid. Firstly, you had every right to doubt me, but I’m glad you stuck with me, and second, I was happy to do it all. Otherwise I just wouldn’t have done it,” his mouth turned up a little and I found myself staring at his mouth which soon turned into a smirk when he clocked me staring. “Jenny...? I’m up here,” he mimicked me from the hospital last week and I smirked and made eye contact.

“I know, but it’s nice to stare.”

“Actually, it’s kinda rude to stare...” he spoke quietly then crashed his lips to mine.