7
7
Saturday arrives and James doesn’t have to go to work. He has a lie-in, lazing in bed and skimming through his Instagram feed, liking his friends’ pictures and watching some reels, until it becomes too late to still be in bed.
He gets up, takes a shower, makes his bed - his mum would be proud of that - prepares something quick for lunch and orders a couple of items online. He also texts Regs but doesn’t receive a reply; is it possible that the guy is so busy? It only gets James worrying that he might be an overworking person and not taking enough time for himself, but it might be anything else. He needs to remind himself more than once a day that he doesn’t know Regs’s life.
He might have a partner, James. Or even a wife, a kid.
Okay, he definitely needs to take his mind off of the guy, so he tries to stay busy; after lunch, he goes to his barber for a haircut - a simple undercut and a trim on the rest of his hair, just so it can remain in order for a bit, not that much can be done with it - and then a quick visit to the supermarket to buy some more beers and snacks for the party.
James is wheeling down the alcohol aisle, absentmindedly skimming through the different types of beer, not sure what brand to pick. He reaches out with his hand to grab a Belgian one - one that he hasn’t tasted yet - when he feels the typical prickling sensation of someone staring at him on his back.
In fact, when he turns around, he sees an elderly woman’s eyes straight on him like burning arrows, wearing a weird kind of expression on her lips, something in between bewilderment and marvel.
She’s clearly interested in him, not anything on the shelf behind him. Just him.
James squeezes his eyes at her, feeling hot and trying to ignore the lady by going back to the beers when she speaks in a soft, patronizing tone. “Oh, look at you”.
“May I help you, ma’am?”
The woman smiles widely, studying James up and down like an interesting object.
“Oh, don’t worry, darling. I am just glad to see someone like you out and about”. She is literally cooing now. “Do you mind me asking what happened to you?”
Oh, so it is about that.
James is not even surprised. It has actually crossed his mind as soon as he realised she was watching him. He exhales a dejected sigh while different scenarios spin around his head; he has a long list of witty, insolent remarks for cases like this one - he made it a few years ago and learnt it by heart - and he could use one or two, except that… He has neither the energy nor the time for a fight or any kind of drama.
If it was any other day, maybe but… No, nope, not today. He’s freshly come out from a hair saloon and he’s happy with his new haircut, he has a free Saturday and a party he is looking forward to with his friends, so it is not the right moment to fight with a narrow-minded Karen who has never seen a disabled person in her life apparently.
And he’s not willing to be her guinea pig.
So, James lets out another sigh, this time exasperated, grabs a few more beers and starts to wheel at the end of the aisle; before taking a turn to get as far away from the woman as possible, he looks up at her. There is an appalled gleam in her eyes now as if she’s offended that he is blatantly ignoring her.
“You know, ma’am, that’s none of your business. I hope you have a good day”. And swivels away without waiting for a replay.
James pays for the beers and goes back to his car, trying very hard not to think about the encounter. Only when he has closed the door of his car and put on the belt, his wheelchair secured by his side, he closes his eyes for a moment and rests his head against the backseat with a little thud. He hates these kinds of situations.
It was not the first time a random stranger approached him on the street or the supermarket or whatever random place to compliment him for going out in his wheelchair or to ask why he can’t walk - one time a woman asked him if she could pray for him - and it always made him distress and angry and frustrated and a bit sad.
And he knows, logically, that he shouldn’t be giving these people two cents of his attention, but they truly have the ability to ruin his mood. Because it’s in moments like this that he becomes very self-conscious and very self-aware. And he can’t phantom the idea that there are people who would stop someone they don’t know to ask them personal medical stuff or to just tell them how brave they are for going out even though they are disabled. As if someone who is disabled can’t or shouldn’t be able to do basic stuff like shopping and working and going to a park. As if disabled people are weird creatures from outer space.
It’s 2022 for fuck’s sake, not the Middle Ages! Even older people should be used to the concept of different people cohabitating in the same society, people who use wheelchairs, canes, walkers, prosthetics, people who are blind and deaf and mute and whatnot. That woman wasn’t even that old, she was maybe in her 50s or 60s.
It enrages him deeply.
And why, why people are convinced that they are owed an explanation of someone’s personal life story?
If he wasn’t in a wheelchair this wouldn’t be happening. Luckily, it doesn’t happen so often but it shouldn’t happen at all.
James feels tears prickling his eyes in frustration but he holds them in. He doesn’t want to cry. He won’t give that lady this power.
He doesn’t even feel sad, just…
Aaaaaarrrrrghhhh!
James turns on the car and starts driving towards home.
~•~
By the time James arrives home, some of the annoyance from the previous encounter has left his body.
Some…
He knows he’s going to feel irked by it for the next few days, but he wants to focus on the upcoming party and have fun with his friends, old ladies be damned!
So when he hears a key being inserted in his door, he immediately jolts in excitement as he knows it’s the first guest arriving.
Sirius opens the front door screeching a high-pitched: “Prongs!”
Remus steps in behind Sirius with grocery bags in his hands and a fond smile on his lips.
“Pads!”
“Heya, James”.
“Hi, Remus. Put the stuff on the table”.
“How are you?”
Sirius starts to empty the bags with beers, various types of alcohol and lots of snacks.
“I’m fine”, James huffs. “Met a nice lady at the supermarket who seemed eager to know about my business. Asked me what’s wrong with me, after complimenting me for doing grocery shopping”.
Sirius lifts his gaze on James, blinking a few times in disbelief. James’s lips quirk up in a smirk.
“Really?!” Sirius utters. “Please, tell me you told her the shark story. Or no, the alien one! That’s fun”.
James chuckles wheeling to the fridge to take other beers. “Nope. Didn’t have the energy for that. I just told her to mind her business”.
“Great! You shouldn’t waste your time with those people”.
James gives a small smile and a nod in acknowledgement and proceeds to open three beers for himself and his friends while distributing the snacks in little bowls.
“Yeah, people can be a pain in the ass. I’ll never understand that”, Remus adds casually. “Like, just imagine you asking them their last blood results or doctor appointment. It would piss them off and rightfully. So why do they think they should know about you?”
James shrugs; he always appreciates his friends’ anger for his sake. “They think they are entitled just because, in their mind, disabled people are something incredible”.
“Well, fuck them. Let’s get plastered tonight”, Sirius interjects, raising his beer for the others to cheer.
The three friends take a sip from their bottles and update each other about their lives, mostly about their jobs: James tells them about the videogame’s reviews, Remus mentions something about expanding his e-commerce of sustainable, ergonomic products and finding new partnerships and Sirius curses about the new social media’s updates and change in perspectives and how social media managing is becoming more and more a chasing-algorithms-and-building-schemes job instead of a creative one.
They managed quite well in life, having the tenacity and the means to follow their passions and lend themselves a comfortable life that they can shape how they want, change course whenever they are dissatisfied or reach out to whatever caught their whim. Not everybody is that lucky, quite few, actually.
It is the doorbell that interrupts their boring, adult conversation and James wheels himself quickly to the door to open it for the new guest.
“Jimmy Jem!” Lily stands on the other side of the door, holding the liqueur she promised James.
“Lils!”
“How are you?”
James moves aside to let Lily step in and she is already walking across the entrance.
“I’m good. You?”
“I’m much better now that I can get plastered. Remus! Sirius!”
Hugs and kisses fly around the house as Lily, Sirius and Remus greet each other.
The four of them fall into comfortable conversation, already musing on beers and picking on snacks.
The next person to arrive is Peter who is followed by Marlene, Dorcas and Mary, only mere minutes apart from each other.
“You are partying without us!?” Marlene yells indignantly.
“Oh, come off it, Marls. We are just warming up”, Lily retorts.
“I want to warm up too. This is unfair”, Mary protests.
“As if you haven’t drunk anything before coming here”.
“Touchè!”
Sirius has sprinted to the radio at some point.
“Come on, lads! Let’s kick this party”.
With all the friends there, the party finally starts; Sirius is the one designated to the music, mostly because he doesn’t accept anyone else choosing the playlists and the bands, but everybody is a big fan of Queen, ABBA, David Bowie and other rock bands of the 70s and the 80s like Sirius so no one has any complaint.
They pull out some board games and go from Scabbers to Pictionary to Taboo, cackling and laughing like maniacs everytime someone says something stupid or makes a fool of himself, mostly Sirius and Mary and sometimes even James.
The booze flows like water in a river after a heavy rain, fridge opening and closing to pull out beers and glasses for shots are taken out, too. At some point, James falls off of his wheelchair, ending with his butt on the floor, and nobody is sure how that happened, but they all have tears in their eyes for how much they are laughing at that non-intended, comedic scene, and the poor lad cannot even get back on his wheelchair because he is laughing too hard and his arms can’t support him, also he is pretty drank, so he remains there rolling awkwardly on the floor. Until Marlene takes pity and helps him get up, almost dropping him on the floor again.
Remus watches all of that crazy shit from a corner of the room, wondering how the hell he ended up with these nuts, while Peter mercilessly registers everything with his phone and puts it on Instagram tagging them all.
When the atmosphere calms down and Sirius chooses a softer piece of music, James wheels towards the kitchen with his jaw aching from the laughter, and takes his phone from the table where he left it. He sees several notifications, mainly from Peter who tagged him in the Instagram stories, but he skips them all to read the text message he received from Regs almost an hour ago.
Regs: my friends dragged me to this kind of pub and… I wanna die!!! Why did I agree to go
out?
James: ‘cause it’s Saturday and relaxing a bit is fun?
Regs: not with all these people. And horrible music.
James: c’mon, it can’t be that bad.
Regs: it is. My friend can’t choose a fucking decent pub to hang out.
James: I am having a party at my home. Feel free to come if that sucks too much.
He seriously wrote that? Well, he did and he realizes that he doesn’t care that much. Oh, the wonders of alcohol.
Regs: you seriously inviting me? So I can murder you and all your friends?
Regs: how come the police haven’t come yet to arrest you for the noise?
James: ‘cause my house is good at keeping all noise inside ;)
“Jamsieeeee!!” he hears Marlene calling from the living room. “Where did you go?”
James blocks the phone and returns to his friend.
“Who were you texting?” Mary asks, a mischievous gleam in her eyes.
“No one”, the boy replies but the answer comes too fast and too tense to pass his friends’ check. In fact, Mary immediately shrieks, making Lily - who has been lying on Mary’s lap - jolt in fear and surprise. “James! That’s not the face of someone who’s been texting no one”.
“I swear, Mary. It’s no one!”
“Then why are you blushing?” Dorcas asks and James wants to strangle her, the traitorous bitch.
“I am not”.
“Yes, you are”.
“I’m just hot. And I drank too much”.
“Pfff! Excuses!”
“Prongsie, I thought we were best friends”, Sirius whines from the floor, head between Remus’s legs who is sitting on the armchair.
James rolls his eyes slightly annoyed. This is a trait he doesn’t like all that much about his friends, always able to understand what is going on and then becoming nosy.
“Is it a girlfriend?” Marlene quips. “A boyfriend? Are you dating someone?”
James huffs. “No, Marls. I am not dating anyone. If I were, I would’ve told you guys. Obviously”.
“C’mon, guys. Leave the poor guy alone. He’s allowed to have some privacy”, Lily comes to his rescue.
“Thank you, Lils”.
Lily gives him a delightful smile.
“Well, I just thought that we - as his caring and loving friends - should be able to protect him from any kind of devious weirdo that populates this world”.
“Thank you, Mary, I appreciate the concern but I am not texting a murderer”, James says, his mind quickly dismissing the memory of the last message Regs sent him.
His phone buzzes again and the screen lights up, revealing a new text from Regs. That, immediately, catches his friends’ attention and he can’t read it until he’s in the middle of all that lets-find-out-who-James-is-texting business.
“Uuuuuh, look at his eyes! So, eager to reply to the text”.
Now he has the certainty that Mary is just very pissed. Soon enough her words won’t make any sense. He notices, though, that both Remus and Sirius keep a watchful gaze on him, while Peter seems the most disinterested in the whole topic. He’s half-asleep on the couch.
“Look, it’s just a guy who got the wrong number and texted me. I replied that I am not the person he was looking for because I’m polite. And from that, we started texting. I don’t know how it happened. He’s just… Fun, I guess”.
“A guy?” Dorcas utters.
“And it’s not, like, a scammer? Or an old man looking for a sugar baby?”
“Nope, he’s 26. And pretty busy from what I gathered”.
“So you have a pen pal, just, on the phone ‘cause we are… in the digital era and all that”.
“Can we know the name, at least?” Mary asks.
“Nope. I am not giving any name”.
“Mean”.
Luckily, his friends stop insisting after that, but James knows they won’t surrender just like that; they’ll wait a bit and then proceed to pester him again, as soon as they regained some sobriety.
The party has calmed down and the group decides to go home, still a bit lightheaded. James would give them all a ride, just to make sure that they arrive home safe and sound, but he is also not very sober so they’ll be better off either on the tube or a Uber. He makes them promise to text him as soon as they crossed the entrance to their homes, though.
Sirius and Remus stay behind, just to help James clean the house and toss the empty bottles.
“Wanna stay the night, guys?” James asks them, wheeling back to the kitchen after sending Peter on his way.
Sirius and Remus look at each other unsure.
“I’m going to my parent’s for lunch tomorrow, so you are invited, obviously”, James adds as if that’s a reason for them to decide to stay. “Then we can go together in my car”.
“Sure!” Sirius bursts out. “I miss Effie’s pie, anyway”.
They leave most of the cleaning for the next day because they are all dead on their feet, and prepare to go to sleep. Sirius helps James into his bed because the alcohol made him more unsteady than he would like to admit, and James almost tackles him down with him, repeating how he’s “the best friend he could’ve possibly asked for”.
“Yeah, yeah, Prongs. Tell me that again tomorrow when you’re sober”.
“I’ll do that, Pads, I’ll do that”.
Sirius adjusts his wheelchair next to his bed so he can pop on it if he needs it, and leaves the room to go in the other one with Remus.