Dear Leo (An Area 11 FanFiction)

Chapter Four-Shopping

3rd January 2015

In case anyone's not from the UK, I'll put what the named shops are for if you don't know!

"Grace, shopping! Shopping! Now!" Leo jumps on the sofa bed and steals the blanket I was sleeping under. I say sleeping, I was lying on my side sketching a manga figure. I close the sketchbook and sit up.

"Christ Leo, I'm already awake, you didn't need to yell in my ear!" I get up and push him out the room. "Now shove off, I need to get ready!"

Leo had bought me an Area 11 shirt for today, I'm guessing it was already lying around somewhere, so I pull it on along with the jeans from yesterday and my jacket. I quickly pull a brush through my hair and clean my face and teeth.

"Ready!" I fling the bathroom door open and make an Elsa-like entrance to the living room. Leo grabs his wallet off the kitchen counter and leads me to a nearby shopping centre.

"Right, so what do you need?" He asks. I think for a moment before answering.

"Clothes, makeup, a bed, books, stuff to put in my room aaaand... I think that's it!"

"And a phone," Leo adds. "You'll need that."

"Are you sure? I mean, phones aren't cheap-"

"It's fine. I've been saving up for a while, I can afford it," he reassures me. I grin and hug him.

"Thanks! Now our first item on the list is clothing!"

I drag Leo around Primark (clothes shop) and buy two pairs of jeans, five shirts, a skater skirt and a dress. Then I buy a pair of ballet pumps in case I need to look smart.

Next we wander around Superdrug (it's a makeup and body sort of shop) and get some basic makeup: mascara, eyeliner, concealer, eyeshadow and lip gloss. It's funny watching Leo's face, you can tell he doesn't what half the stuff I'm looking at is!

When we go to Waterstones (books) he looks more comfortable. We spend about half an hour chatting about manga and different books we recommend the other should read. In the end we buy Fullmetal Alchemist and some Fairy Tail manga for both of us. I get Eleanor and Park and Inkheart for myself, plus a bookmark so I don't have to fold the corners. After that we go to Costa for a sort of lunch. If coffee and cake counts as lunch.

"So what have I missed?" Leo asks, like a teenage girl wanting the latest gossip.

"Well, I got better at the guitar, had a boyfriend and a first kiss, both of which I don't enjoy thinking about, and developed a love for My Chemical Romance?" I look at him to see if that was enough information.

"What about your GCSEs and college?" he asks.

"A* in english and art, The rest was kind of crappy. I aced my A levels then got a job working in a cafe," I answer cheerfully. "I'm still really unsociable and have no real life friends. It made leaving easier though, no awkward goodbyes or anything." Leo laughs at the last part. "What about you? Anything I should know?"

"Well you know about the band. I've also had relationships, but they ended. I got a lot better at video games and the drums. That's it really, you know the rest." Our conversation continues like this while we drink our coffee, catching up on each others lives. After we're done we leave and resume shopping, heading straight for HMV (music, DVDs, games, etc.). When we leave I have a small collection of CDs and a new pair of green headphones.

Once we're finished shopping I also own a hoodie, some posters and a black iPhone 4. Leo got a call from Sparkles* about halfway through our shopping trip saying he had a spare mattress and bed that I could have so we didn't have to figure out how to get a bed through a block of flats, since it turns out that Sparkles* lived in the apartment across the hall.

"I think that we did pretty well," I say as we get back home. "I'll go put all this in my room."

"Cool, I'll make dinner. Pasta?" I nod in agreement and somehow get all the bags into my room in one go. I glance at the time on my new phone, five in the evening. I swear it felt like we'd only been out for a couple hours. I carefully hang up my new clothes, then Leo yells at me to "come and eat the foods!". We spend far too long attempting to set up my phone before I pass out on the sofa, too tired to even care about the stupid phone. They take so long to set up.