My Best Mistake [#1][#WATTYS2016][COMPLETE]

nineteen

{UNEDITED}

        For an hour, we sat in total silence. Matthew’s arms wrapped around me in a protective hug, every fibre of my body was telling me that I should have pulled away by now, but I didn’t want to leave the warmth and protection of his arms. They seemed to calm me down and helped release all the tension I was feeling without too much effort.

        It seemed that, being in just his company now was enough to set my thoughts off with every kind of ‘what if’ humanly possible. It didn’t matter what he did, he was always on my mind and he was constantly clouding my judgement about even the simplest things. I didn’t want to like it but I couldn’t help it, it was the first form of proper stability I had for a very long time.

        It was only when my phone started ringing that I pulled away from him, checking the caller ID before answering it. I wasn’t surprised to see that it was my father, probably wanting to know where the hell Matthew and I had got to because he was stood in the middle of some store waiting for the two of us to arrive.

        I, personally, didn’t see the point in getting my wedding dress now. In three months I was going to be more than double the size now so, whatever my father picked out for me, wasn’t going to be any use when it came to the wedding. I wouldn’t be able to fit into it and I would be walking down the aisle in my jeans and a hoodie.

        “You should see what he wants,” Matthew chuckled, his hands resting on my shoulders as he looked at the person who was calling.

        “You know as well as I do what he wants. He wants to know where the hell we are,” I laughed, finally taking the time to look around the living room properly. I had been here a couple of times already, so the size didn’t bother me anymore, but I hadn’t looked at what there was in the house.

        The two leather sofas sitting opposite each other with the glass coffee table in the middle. It gave the room a very homely feel and it was somewhere I could imagine living with Matthew and our daughter, somewhere we could make our own and no one would be able to stop us from being what we wanted to be. The TV was too big for my liking, but since my father paid for it, I wasn’t going to complain and throw it out.

        The thing which caught my eye though were the pictures on each of the walls. They created an image which was non-existent when it came to my family. The images of me stood with my mother as  a child were all a lie, the images of my father smiling were nothing more than a façade and the images of us as a family were a creation of someone else’s imagination.

        The only picture I really wanted on the wall was that of Jason and me. I was three years old and he was ten, it was taken outside my Nan’s caravan the year we spent the summer with her. That was the last summer we spent with her because she died a couple of months later, some illness she didn’t tell any of us about because she didn’t want the worry. She just wanted Jason and I to enjoy our holiday with her.

        “I don’t like the pictures. I think they need to go,” Matthew said from nowhere as he realised what it was that I was looking at. He didn’t look too impressed with the pictures of himself which had been put all over the place, he looked just as pissed off as I felt.

        “We can deal with that when we move in properly. I don’t want my parents knowing I’ve been here already,” I replied. “I can show you the nursery while we’re here though. Jason has been working on that, but only because your father asked him to.”

        “Sure. I can judge his taste,” Matthew laughed as the two of us pushed ourselves up from the sofa. I walked up the stairs, ignoring the look of awe on Matthew’s face as we passed several doors before getting to where we needed to be. I still think there are far too many rooms for the number of people who are going to be living here, but at least there is room for people to be able to spend the night rather than sending them home.