𝐍𝐎𝐍-𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄 𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐆𝐒

It's not my home, it's their home, and I'm welcome no more

ROME, ITALY
6 Weeks later, Christmas Day
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

All babies look the same. Their eyes are what intrigued me the most. There is nothing behind them, cause everything is still to be discovered, and yet they seem to hide something. I was trying to penetrate the secret of those eyes, to understand the effect of fascination they exert on other people, but the sounds, the noises, and the giggles that came out of my twenty-two years old 'proud mummy' cousin's mouth distracted me.

I rolled my eyes. It was Christmas, I was home, surrounded by my family, and I was trying my best not to finish a bottle of wine before lunch.

My cousin's boyfriend asked me if I wanted to hold the baby. I didn't even have to answer, cause Laura spoke for me: "she's not a baby person."

Laura was born only three days after me. We grew up together until we realised we didn't have anything in common anymore and we parted ways. I didn't dislike her, and I supposed she didn't hate me. We were just too different. She quitted school at the age of sixteen, had a child at twenty-one, and moved in with her chavy boyfriend in a squatter house. She named their child Maria, as Jesus's mother – she was so religious. She said her baby was a miracle. I thought it was more the case of a broken condom, but I never told her. Her dream was to be a mum, she was now, so she had no ambitions anymore. There was no energy in her body besides to cuddle her baby. No energy to be funny or clever, not even to be sad. I noticed she started to bat her eyes too frequently, a nervous tic followed by a quick raise of both eyebrows. It was something my uncle, her father, did all the time, but I never noticed it in her before. Now that I was looking at her, they looked alike, more than they ever did. It was almost disturbing, almost like her father was trying to emerge from her, despite her young appearance, his nervous tic, like a curse. She turned to me and spatted her eyes again, raised her eyebrows again and smiled to me, and I smiled back, that polite smile people share when they know nothing of each other. I though she looked happy, quite content with her life. And I? I was pretty messy. But there was absolutely nothing in her life that made me feel envious. I looked at their quiet, comforting, heartening good-looking family, wondering how it was possible that all the people on this planet wished to live like this.

I leaned on the sideboard. In that moment my mum entered the living room to set the table. I took my phone and texted Matty. I just needed a word or two from him so I could get through this day. I couldn't handle five hours of Christmas lunch with my family.

You | 12:15PM
hi

I hesitated a little bit before pressing send. Things were going well between me and Matty. I was the first to be surprised. Pretty much nothing had changed, I still wasn't his girlfriend and he still wasn't my boyfriend. I was in Rome with my family, he had just returned to London after the tour in Australia. We haven't seen each other since Natalie's birthday. But this time, I didn't disappear. This time, we texted and called almost every day. I wasn't sure it was the right decision, I was constantly afraid of turning what we had – whatever it was – into something boring and forced, and I was pretty scared reality wasn't going to be up to our expectations. But truth was, I liked to listen to his voice through late night calls – fall asleep on my phone as a surrogate for when I fell asleep on his chest. I liked to send him pictures and ask him what he thought of my dress so he could ask me to take it off. I liked to laugh at his stupid jokes, let him babble about his tour stories. I liked to share my ideas for the new album with him and listen to what he thought about it. I liked to tell him how happy I was when I saw my friends, and when I found out Martina was getting better, little by little, ups and downs, but still better than this summer. But, as usual, nothing comes from happiness besides vice, so as the days passed, I began to crave something more. What I would have done now to have his kisses and his arms around me. This long-distance relationship that wasn't even a relationship was killing me. I wanted to know if it was the same for him, if he missed me like I missed him.