love & war | in progress

19 - pizza problems.

elizabeth

I let out a groan of satisfaction as the oily, cheesy, new york style pizza hit my taste buds.

Angelic chuckled from opposite me. "You guys like it, hm?" He glanced over at Celeste who was ravenging through her pizza. "The owners a friend of a friend."

I rolled my eyes at him and swallowed my food. "You seem to have a lot of friends."

He smirked. "I know you're jealous but you have no need to worry," he winked at me. "You know you're my favourite friend."

"Is it?" I mused.

"It is."

I watched as he quickly looked over his shoulder, scanning his surroundings before he leant over to me and placed a chaste kiss on my lips.

Giggling, I pushed him off of me. "I've got pizza sauce on my lips, Angelo."

"I don't care, baby."

I smiled at him blissfully until i heard a fake groan coming from accross the table. Cel looked at me and playfully rolled her eyes.

"You lot are honestly going to make me sick, so excuse me." She pushed herself out of the booth and walked her way over to where the toilet was.

The way she had picked up on not only the London slang but also the slight accent was amazing to me. I felt a warm hand slide on my thigh and I turned to the man sat next to me.

It was times like this where I forgot myself, where I felt like me and Angelo were truly in a relationship.

And it was the seconds following where I remembered we couldn't be.

Clearing my throat, I excused myself and made up some jumbled excuse to go and check on Celeste. My heels clicked and echoed through my head as I walked through to the door.

Once I pushed it open I scanned the room for Cel, immediately expecting her to be in the mirror taking pictures of herself. But instead i was met with sounds of hesving and coughing.

"Hello? Cel, you in here?" My voice bounced off the walls and back to my ears and I felt a chill run down my back.

A spit and a cough came from one of toilets, then a "Mhm!"
Immediately my big sister instincts kicked in and I moved towards where her voice came from and slowly pushed open the door.

My heart dropped as I saw the sight of her on her knees throwing up repeatedly into the toilet bowl.

I dropped beside her, picked her hair up and helped her as she threw up. Tears were threatening at her eyes and it only made them prickle at mine by result. "I'm sorry, Lizzy I didnt mean to ruin your night."

She only called me Lizzy when she felt like she fucked up. Hard.

"Shh, no Cel it's okay. What's going on? What happened?"

My eyes washed over her face as I tried to figure out what it was going on with her, she hadn't gotten drunk enough to be throwing up. She wasn't that much of a lightweight.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." She kept mumbling the words, it almost felt like she was apologising to herself more than to me.

I patted her back and hoisted her up. "It's okay, you don't have to apologise. Let's get you home."

-

When Celeste woke up, she claimed to have no recollection of the night before.  But i knew she was lying. She had a slight tell. I knew my little sister better than almost anyone, and when she picked at the skin of her thigh that was when she was going to tel a lie.

I dropped the subject, knowing and hoping that one day she would feel comfortable enough to tell me herself.

Our day consisted mainly of lying in bed and binging old rom coms, the pair of us eith tears in our eyes each time the movies would come to an end. I wanted my full attention to be on her. Which was why i left my phone in my drawer on silent.

After about our 6th movie, i stretched up out of my bed and excused myself to go grab some snacks. Her eyebrows scrunched down and I heard her feeble excuses for not wanting anything, but i continued on regardless.

I grabbed my phone and walked down the stairs and quickly checked my notifications. Only to my horror to see 16 missed calls from Anna and 4 from Angelo.

My heart thumped in my chest as my phone begun to ring again, Annalise, the contact read.

I answered.

"Holy fucking shit, where have you been? You need to get down here now."

My confusion was increasing more by the second. "But its a Sunday, i don't work on Sundays?"

"I know but there's been an emergency meeting. Maybe if you checked your phone you would have seen..."

I took a deep breath and grabbed a bag of chips for Cel. "Okay, I'm sorry I'll be there in 15." And then I hung up before she got another word in.

Racing up the stairs, I couldn't help but wonder what this meeting was about. But then I  came to a painful realisation.

What if they know about Angelo and I?

My heart rate spiked up and i threw the bag of chips at Cel, mumbling apologies as i made my way towards the shower.

"Ew, if you're gonna have crisps at least don't get salt and vinegar." I heard her mutter from my room.

I rolled my eyes and had the quickest and most effective shower of my life.

When I was dressed and ready and in the car, I couldn't deny that I was speeding. The 15 minutes I promised it would take me to get there were dwindling and dwindling and all of a sudden I had 3 minutes to make a 10 minute journey.

My foot pressed down on the acceleration as I saw the light change its way to orange. I could not waste a minute at a traffic light.

And I somehow managed to beat the red.

I quickly grabbed my phone and rung my sister. It rung once, rung twice, rung three times before she answered.

I heard a crackle before I heard her voice. "Hey, you okay?"

"Yeah, um. I'm gonna order you a pizza when i get to work, make sure you eat it."

I was swerving between lanes trying to race to work as quickly as possible, I was trying to make my clearly ill sister agree to eat the food I was buying her. My car heating was too hot, my heels were digging into my ankles, my lips were cracking and this was all to much for a Sunday afternoon.

And then, it was black.

---

lazy? lack of effort? will she ever update again?

i guess well find out next episode,

xoxo, gossip girl.

-love u all, gray x