Lost on You [Lewis Capaldi]

Chapter 24 - surprises

It was just as bad as she expected.

"Keira-Marie, what on earth were you thinking?" her mother's voice instantly snapped down the line. She had never heard her so angry.

Keira already knew what this phone call was about, mainly due to the rage in her mother's voice, an indication that she must have seen everything from last night.

She chewed on her lip nervously, deciding the right thing to say.

"So, did you like my dress?" she asked, hoping it would somehow lighten the mood. That, or annoy her mother even more.

"I don't want to deal with your nonsense right now," her mum said, clearly irritated. "I don't understand a thing that is going on and you're not telling me anything! What, am I meant to believe you're dating a celebrity now? This...Lewis Cap- Ca . . . I don't even know how to say his name!"

"Mum, please, just calm down. I promise I can explain everything," Keira smoothed, her eyes anxiously flicking to the bathroom door, hoping Lewis would be in the shower long enough to miss the phone call completely.

"Well then explain it, because right now nothing is making sense to me," her mother said, and even beneath the anger, she could hear the tiredness in her voice.

"His name is Lewis Capaldi, we met at a concert and I . . . I really like him, mum," she said quietly, picking at the skin around her thumb. A bad habit she'd developed recently.

It was quiet for a long time as Keira patiently waited for her mother to respond. The silence was torture.

Finally, she let out a long breath and asked, "Do you really like him?"

"Yes," Keira replied quickly, sitting up a bit straighter against the headboard of the bed. "Yes, I really do."

Her mother hummed down the line. "You promised you'd focus on your studies . . ."

"And I do! With the amount of work I've been putting in my lecturer says I'm on track to getting a First," she said with a flicker of pride.

She heard a faint gasp on the other end of the line and a few excited murmurs that she couldn't quite make out. Then her mother was talking again.

"That's incredible, Keira."

Her eyebrows shot up at the rare compliment. Her mother almost never gave her praise. That was just something she'd learnt to get used to. But now, Keira couldn't quite believe the words coming out of her mother's mouth.

"So," she said cautiously, "Does this mean you aren't mad?"

"By the sounds of it, there's nothing to be mad about," her mum replied, and just like that, Keira could breathe again. "I only wish that you'd told me what was going on."

"I'm sorry," Keira said, closing her eyes.

"Trust the first boyfriend you get to be a celebrity," her mother said with an unexpected laugh. It was such an unusual sound to hear.

Despite everything, Keira couldn't stop herself from laughing too. "It's really not like that-"

"Nonsense," her mother interrupted, "Your sister was saying how he won awards last night. Maybe I should start listening to his music?"

"You don't have to do that," Keira said, but she couldn't stop grinning. It was all so surreal. Never in a million years did she imagine her mother to be this accepting of them. The same mother who had once gone a whole month without speaking to her after finding out she had gone to a party without asking.