NIKKI & JOE, CASUALLY | updates every monday

41: failed mission "be honest about parents"

            I'm drafting a text to Caleb about his routine for the London Drag Expo pre-qualifiers next Friday, weaving through the traffic of Christmas shoppers at Arndale when someone calls my name. I look up and my heart flutters: Joe is waving at me from one of the round tables of Coffee Break.

She's dressed in a bulky jumper under her denim overalls, her teddy coat crammed onto the chair beside her along with numerous bags. She beckons me over and I pocket my phone, grateful for the short distance—at least I have some chance to tame the spring breeze tickling my insides despite the ice and sleet waiting beyond the heating of Arndale.

Unfortunately, each step closer only makes me giddier.

Joe beams at me. She's bare-faced save for a bit of shimmer in the inner corners of her eyes that gives her an appropriately winter fairy-like appearance with her pointed ears. Even in the fuck-awful lighting of a shopping centre, she manages to be stunning.

I'm lucky I even hear her speak when she does. 'What are you doing here?'

I lift the CeX bag. 'Got my brother a new phone. Which I'm praying they won't break within a week.'

Cece currently has my old phone, which he cracked the screen of nearly instantaneously at the skate park, but by now the model is well out of date. Plus, with the camera quality they might as well be taking photos through a microwave which don't do any service to their art.

'Well, it's not new,' I correct, ignoring the mould rising to my tongue. 'It's used. But newer than the one they've got now.'

'Sit,' Joe urges. 'If you're not busy.'

As if I could be busy when she wants to spend time with me.

She watches me sit down with a sparkle in her eyes that got nowt to do with her makeup. 'I thought you don't celebrate Christmas.'

'I don't. This is more of an "I'm proud of you for making it through a term of school without being expelled" gift. But either way, I buy gifts for my friends for anything they celebrate cause I like buying my friends gifts.'

I thank the Universe that I sat down because the way Joe grins at me then would drop me to my knees in an instant. With a teasing tilt of her head, she scans my face. 'Have you got me a gift?'

'No comment.'

'No comment? So that you can ambush me with it when it's too late for me to get you anything back?'

My cheeks burn and I fidget with the coarse plastic of the CeX bag. 'I don't celebrate Christmas. You don't gotta get me owt.'

'But what if I want to get my friend a gift?'

There's such a tenderness in the way she says it; my friend. I'm her friend.

It should be enough.

I roll the mouth of the bag shut until it balloons and I have to let the excess air out to continue. 'Well... get some for the rest of em. I don't celebrate Christmas. It don't make any sense–'

'You're doing it again.' She don't need to specify what. I'm avoiding attention, refusing to accept back what I give.

Refusing to accept back what I give? Maybe that's the problem. I've always thought—in no small part because it's what Caleb declares each time I managed to get my heart broken—that the problem is that I pick people who have nowt to give me, who wouldn't give me owt regardless of what they had, but maybe it's all me. Maybe they try and I keep my arms folded. Maybe the problem ain't that love is like water—and good luck holding that in your hands!—but that I have my palms flat and fingers spread.