You Feel Like Home [h.s.]

In Which the Word "Date" is Used Lightly

"This was a stupid idea—I'm not going."

Ryan is staring at her complexion in the vanity mirror as she swipes another layer of mascara over her dark lashes. Her mobile is balancing between a glass bottle of foundation and an eyeshadow palette, with Fiona's wide-eyed expression staring back at her. When she gasps, Ryan's dark eyes dart down to the grainy image of her best mate who looks as if she's about to reach through the screen and shake Ryan repeatedly until she gets her head on straight.

"You're absolutely barking," Fiona scoffs. Ryan places the wand back into the mascara bottle, running a shaky hand through her freshly-dried hair as she tries to remember why she even said yes to Harry in the first place.

When she thinks back on it now, she'll blame it all on a rare moment of bravery. Or quite possibly, amnesia. Because for some strange reason, her brain momentarily short-circuited, completely forgetting about every other time she's been in Harry's presence and how she rarely can get through a few sentences around him. Now that she's agreed to spend an entire evening with him, on his own turf, under the watchful eyes of his observant toddler?

Ryan can already feel the bile rising in her throat.

"Fiona, I don't know what I was thinking. I'm not even sure I was thinking!" She's panicking now, pacing back and forth on the navy blue tiled floors of her bathroom to try and quell the thumping of her heart. "He definitely doesn't think it's a date. I'm just making a fuss, because he didn't even use those words! He only invited me over because he feels bad that I had to watch his kid for a few hours. That's it. Nothing else."

She isn't even sure who she's trying to convince at this point, but she is sure that her pacing is causing her breath to come out in uneven spurts, her chest rising and falling as she slowly pushes herself to the brink of a full-blown panic attack.

"Ry, will you please stop moving? You're giving me a bloody migraine," Fiona calls out. Ryan acquiesces, coming to a stop once again and leaning forward on the countertop of her vanity so that Fiona can see the redness tinge her cheeks and her mouth fall open as she tries to catch her breath.

"I can't do this." Her voice sounds shaky and fragile, the same way Jackson's did whenever he mentioned his mother in the past tense a few hours earlier.

Suddenly, Ryan wishes she was somebody like Fiona. Somebody who didn't overthink every situation she fell into. Somebody who didn't have a near panic attack at the trivial notion of making pizzas at her attractive next-door neighbor's flat. Somebody who could just be normal, without the added pretense of anxiety and social awkwardness that sometimes felt all too crippling.

"Will you stop with that? You can do this. You will do this, even if I have to drive all the way to Hampstead during a lockdown and drag you five meters to his fucking door." Ryan frowns at Fiona through the screen, wishing for the first time since moving out that she was in the room across the hall from her, close enough so that she can hear her friend's words of encouragement in person instead of through the tinny speakers of her mobile.

"Okay," Ryan says quietly, reaching for her mascara and beginning to unscrew the wand before she stops abruptly, an afterthought on the tip of her tongue. "He probably doesn't even think it's a date anyway."

Fiona groans loudly, frustration etched on her freckled face. "He wouldn't have invited you over if he didn't want to spend time with you, Ry."

"But Jackson will be there, too. And he even called it 'a proper thank you,' so there's really no need for me to be freaking out, right? I'm not even sure why I'm putting makeup on in the first place," Ryan huffs, dropping the mascara on the countertop before releasing her forehead into her hands, feeling overwhelmingly exhausted.