Author's Note: Thanks so much for the great response to this story! You guys have been so awesome. I've replied to all your reviews and I told you that I would have this posted on Sunday night and I apologize because, well, it's Monday night. I didn't feel comfortable posting it last night because I hadn't had a chance to read it over a few times and add in a few things I knew I wanted to add in.
I'm probably not going to be able to keep up the weekly updates, since university has started up again and I'm really busy this semester - ideally, I would be posting on a weekly basis with 6000 word chapters each week but realistically that's just impossible. So my question for you is would you prefer shorter chapters with more frequent updates or longer chapters posted about every 2 weeks - answer in a review or PM, please :)
And as usual, I don't own or have anything to do with Skins.
Chapter 4: Freedom of Religion
When I woke up the next morning and found Emily's side of the bed empty, I wasn't necessarily shocked or upset. I didn't expect Emily to stay in bed with me, especially not if she had things to do. Actually, I would've been alarmed if I'd woken up to find her laying next to me, watching me sleep. That's just creepy.
I noticed that she'd left a sleep shirt for me on my side of the bed and I could hear banging noises coming from her kitchen, so I pulled myself out of bed and put the simple grey sleep shirt on. It fit me a little short, which I'd expected since Emily was quite a bit smaller and shorter than I was.
I followed the banging and sizzling noises I was hearing to Emily's kitchen, where I found Emily cooking in a grey sleep shirt that matched my own. She was reaching into the fridge and grabbed a carton of orange juice and smiled at me as she placed it on the counter. She looked beautiful, even with her hair piled into a top knot on her head. She was fresh-faced and had obviously washed off her makeup from the night before. I probably looked an absolute mess since I didn't wash my mascara off before I went to sleep and didn't bother to look in the mirror before I came to the kitchen.
"Good morning. Do you like bacon?" Emily asked as she poured two glasses of orange juice and started boiling the kettle. "I know you're not a vegetarian since you ate meat when we went out for dinner the other night."
"If bacon was a religion, I'd join that religion," I replied. Emily smiled at me and handed me a glass of orange juice. She'd set up two places at her counter for us. Emily's flat was a typical London flat, which meant that she had no room for a dining room. As such, her counter had two barstools on one side that served as an eating space.
Emily plated up some bacon, scrambled eggs and toast for the both of us and made us both a cup of tea.
"Does this mean now I officially owe you one breakfast and one dinner? Because I can't cook and I'm pretty sure cooking in my flat could pose some kind of a fire hazard since my flatmate keeps books in our oven," I said as I started eating breakfast. Emily sat down next to me and smiled.
"Well, you don't exactly owe me one breakfast and one dinner but now that I know that you can't cook I think it would be rather hilarious to watch you try to cook...so I suppose the answer is yes, now you owe me one breakfast and one dinner. And it has to be cooked at your flat. And you aren't allowed to remove the books from your oven," Emily smiled as she said that. "So have fun figuring out how you're going to pull that one off."
I frowned while I ate my rather delicious breakfast and contemplated how exactly I was going to manage to cook Emily one breakfast and one dinner without engulfing my entire flat in flames and potentially dying (and also potentially killing both Emily and Effy, either by fire or by food poisoning). Emily was actually quite a good cook, which surprised me, considering Emily didn't really seem to be the type of girl who would be good at cooking. I suppose I just thought that since Emily had such a great career ahead of her that she wouldn't be very good at domestic things, though apparently I was wrong about that.
After breakfast, I actually helped Emily do the dishes. I couldn't even remember the last time I washed a dish. Effy and I eat takeout on a regular basis so we don't really do dishes ever. And after the dishes were done, I helped Emily make the bed. And after that, I helped Emily take a shower. And then Emily helped me take a shower.
That was my favourite part of the morning.
And then I got dressed and left.
I lit up my first cigarette of the day while I was walking home and again, I didn't manage to finish it by the time I got home. I tossed the cigarette to the ground and walked into my apartment building and up to my flat. I let myself in and went straight to my room. I was planning on calling Cook as soon as I got in and trying to sort out having my police record check done, since Emily had said that I would need to provide her with a copy. I knew there were going to be a few issues with it, but the good news was that Cook worked at the same security firm as Effy and would probably be able to sort something out for me.
I wasn't exactly an easy teenager, to say the least, and the "issues" that were going to pop up on my police record weren't exactly small ones, either. They sounded pretty bad if you listed them – robbery...grand theft auto...arson...assault – but they weren't ridiculously bad if you knew the story behind them, and the story behind me. Cook knew all that – hell, he was there for most of them and ended up getting charged just the same as me – and that's how I knew he would have absolutely no problem forging a little police record check for me.
I opened the door to my room and found Effy digging in my closet.
"Effy, what the actual fuck?" I said. I may have shouted and scared her. But I was pretty upset. I hated it when people were in my room without asking me, and hated it even more if they were going through my things.
"I was just looking for that belt you borrowed," Effy replied coolly, though I could tell I'd startled her.
"Why couldn't you just wait and ask me for it when I got home?" I asked as I stormed past her. I digged around in my closet and handed her the belt. Effy looked at me straight in the eye, trying to reassure herself that she wasn't afraid of me and had no reason to be.
"Fuck's sake, Naomi, I just wanted my fucking belt back, okay! No reason to get all worked up over it, it's not like I found your secret stash of porn or any skeletons in your closet."
"Just don't go through my fucking things!"
Effy glared at me before leaving my bedroom and slamming the door behind her. I instantly regretted getting so worked up over Effy rifling through my closet. I didn't want to upset her or get into a huge fight over one tiny little thing. But Effy didn't realize how close she was to finding the proverbial skeleton in my closet, and she didn't know just how important it was to me to hide that skeleton from her for as long as possible. Effy knew a bit about my background, but she certainly didn't know all of it and I wanted to keep it that way.
I moved a few pairs of my jeans out of the way and grabbed the tiny wooden box with a lock on it that held almost every single part of my past that I wanted to keep hidden away. It was easy to deny your past, but there were always traces of who you'd once been, traces of what your life could have been. Things that you just couldn't get rid of, even though you worked hard to forget them. That was what this box had inside it. Everything I wanted to forget, everything I wanted to deny, but couldn't.
It was a stupid place to hide it, really – everybody hides things in their closet. But I didn't really have anywhere else to put it. I had a mattress on my floor as my bed so I didn't have anywhere to hide it under that. I didn't have a dresser or a nightstand. So I simply moved it to the opposite side of my closet and buried it under a pile of shoes and resisted the temptation to open it and go through everything inside it and immerse myself in my past. I had things to do today. I couldn't waste time remembering my past today.
After I spent about 20 minutes making sure the box was completely invisible from any spot in my room, I went into the living room and apologized to Effy for flipping out on her. She accepted my apology and called me a moody cow, which I accepted because I definitely deserved it. Effy and I had learned about each other over these past few years living together at university – Effy knew when she had gone too far and pushed my buttons and I knew when I'd gone too far and gotten a bit too upset with Effy when she didn't really deserve it. We fought often enough to know that we were always going to forgive each other sooner or later. Thankfully, with this argument we decided to forgive each other sooner rather than later.
I called Cook after I made Effy lunch as a form of penance (and by "made Effy lunch" I mean I ordered a pizza that would serve as both lunch and dinner). I told Cook about my slight police record check problem and exactly why I needed a forged copy of my criminal record.
"Fookin' hell, Naomi, Amnesty International? Who'd ya bang to get that job?"
I argued that I didn't need to bang anyone to get any job and that I was a strong, independent and qualified woman who deserved to be hired at Amnesty International...who just happened to bang her boss. But I didn't tell Cook that last bit.
"Okay, fine, I can sort out this police record check thing for you. I probably won't have it done 'till Tuesday though, if that's okay."
"Yeah, that should be fine, I don't think my boss would mind."
"Alright, then, Naomikins, I will see you Tuesday evening to drop off my masterpiece of a forged criminal record."
"Thanks, Cook, I owe you one, mate!"
"Well, we could always-"
"Not that, Cook."
"Fine!"
And with that, our conversation ended and I found myself with nothing to do for the rest of the day. So I ate about ten slices of pizza and I worried about what my first day at work would be like and I wasted time on the internet. And then Effy decided that I had to leave the apartment or I'd go insane with worry, so she forced me to come with her to grab a coffee, where I spent most of my time fidgeting and continuing to worry about my first day at work.
"Maybe coffee wasn't the greatest idea," Effy said as she put her hand on my knee to stop it from shaking. "You need to chill the fuck out."
"I'm just too nervous about tomorrow, what if I'm really shit at being a personal assistant?"
Effy rolled her eyes. "It's impossible to be shit at being a personal assistant."
"What if I wear all the wrong clothes? Do I even own clothes that I could wear to a professional office environment? All I own are jeans and t-shirts. What the fuck am I going to wear?"
"You don't need a ballgown to answer a phone," Effy replied.
"Oh my god, why did I get a job?" I said as I buried my face in my hands. I heard Effy sigh.
"Shut up," Effy helpfully replied.
Effy then dragged me back home and went through my entire closet (though I carefully watched her to make sure she didn't get anywhere near my hidden box) and found something for me to wear tomorrow, all without saying a single word. By the time we were finished, it was almost midnight and time for me to (finally) go to sleep and hopefully stop worrying about the new job. It wouldn't really be that bad. How could it be, when Emily was going to be my boss?
I was glad that Effy wasn't really a mind-reader when I said a little silent prayer to whoever the fuck was up there to ask if maybe the universe can go easy on me for my first day at work. Because if Effy knew that I said a prayer, I'd get the most massive curious, searching glance of all time.
Author's Note: Please don't forget to leave a review and let me know what you thought of the chapter and also to let me know if you'd prefer the longer chapters posted about every 2 weeks or shorter chapters posted every week!
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