Always Been You

Chapter Three

Three days full of carefully listening out for my home phone to ring went past.

Every time it rang, I ran to it, making sure to answer before anyone else. I didn't want to think about what would happen if mum or Ivy answered the phone and it was a boy.

Ivy got suspicious by the second day. "What's wrong with you?" she questioned me, watching me put the phone back on the wall when I realised it was a spam call, "you never answer the phone."

I insisted it was nothing. She raised an eyebrow and headed off to work. Ivy was on to me!

Why did I expect him to call when he didn't even have my number? It was Thursday. He only had two days to give me the details about the beach house party. Those words echoed in my head : 'I'll find a way'.

A part of me figured I should give up waiting. If he'd wanted to invite me, there was a very simple way of doing it. Mr and Mrs Rivers had my adress and more importantly my house phone number. It would have been simple for him to ask them for it.

I was reluctant to leave for work that day. If he called whilst I was working, I would have been screwed. It would have been so typical that the one day I wasn't able to sit by the phone all day, he actually called.

"Forget about it now," I told myself.

It was true that I was letting myself get too consumed with the idea of how he'd contact me. I didn't know why I cared so much. He was just a boy.

At work, little Rosie was more hyper than usual, something I never thought possible. She was jumping around, rolling on the floor and much to Charlie's annoyance, pulling on his hair.

"What's up with you today?" I asked her, placing my hand on her head.

She shook her head rapidly to release my hand and continued to run around like a headless chicken. Charlie wrapped his arms around her to stop her from running but she wriggled free.

"It's the sugar," Charlie told me, his arms crossed.

How much sugar did it take to get as crazy as that? She must have swallowed the whole sugar bag.

"I. Love. Sugar!" Rosie exclaimed.

With that sentence, I was off the kitchen, filling up a large glass of water. Firmly, I ordered Rosie to drink it. She only took a little sip. A bit of water splashed the floor as she gave it back to me.

"It's like she's drunk," Charlie pointed out.

I laughed. Not that I'd know what being drunk looked like.

At the end of my shift, Mrs Rivers asked me how everything was to which I told her to keep an eye on Rosie.

"Did she eat too much sugar again?" Mrs Rivers asked.

"Yeah, it appears that way."

She told me that Rosie had already done the same thing earlier that week and it resulted in a long sugar crash. I couldn't help but wonder why she hadn't made more of an effort to hide the sugar from Rosie if it had happened before.

On my way home from work, I popped into the shop near my house. I couldn't handle another one of Rosie's sugar rushes. But, I knew how much she liked sweets - and I didn't dare keep them from her - so I picked up a packet of sugar-free sweets just for her.

When I got to my front door, I knew something was up. Mum didn't answer straight away like she usually did. She was definitely in ; the TV was on.

Worried, I got my keys out of my bag and opened the door myself. Inside was something I did not expect to see.