Oxygen (Catfish And The Bottlemen/1975)

Benji

"I don't think you give the place enough credit," smiled Katie looking out at the sea from the edge of the pier. The breeze was a lot stronger out here, whipping up her loose hair so that it billowed like a flag at half mast.
"Yeah?" I raised my brow, "and whos lived here all their life?" I asked with a teasing smile drawing a giggle from her lips. She did something which surprised me then, standing up on her tiptoes and blobbing the end of her 99 on my nose.

"Oh I don't know?" She asked stepping back to admire her artistry.

"Eyyy look at Blakes!" Cried out Larry from not so far away so that whether I'd wanted them to or not, everybody got to get a good look at me and my ice cream nose.

"Youre a real life ice cream man," smiled Saff earning an eyeroll and a laugh from Fliss who had spent most of the day hovering between her and Van.

"Youre a real something thats for sure," smirked Van poking my nose and swiping the flick of ice cream off, sucking it off his middle finger to earn another wave of laughter from the girls.

"Thats gross!" Exclaimed Fliss, "as if you just did that!" She managed to get out inbetween her giggles.

This was the most alive I'd seen any of the girls since they'd given up the pills. It wasn't that they weren't still fun, and bubbly when they were on a high, it was just that this type of high felt natural. I didn't feel the slight disconnect I usually did around them.
It had never been so noticeable with Katie, she was never quite as far out as the others, never quite as vacant, blurred or delirious with joy and so lying in a bath with her fully clothed, sipping cheap wine and smoking out the bathroom window, was always more thrilling than watching the 'real' party unfold downstairs.

Van had never seen it like that though, I don't think any of the others had, and so I found myself wondering whether I was the only one enjoying our day by the beach more than I'd enjoyed any of our nights in the city.
Of course I enjoyed every moment I spent with them, but there was something about the salt in the breeze and the waves repeating upon the sand and the wooden floor we stood on, that had me feeling closer to Katie than ever before.

Perhaps it was because we were closer. Closer now than we'd been three weeks ago when I'd last seen her. Closer now than we'd been the a few nights ago when I'd last called her.

In the time we'd spent a part I'd gotten to know her absence just as well as I knew her. All the spaces she'd have filled had she not been so far away. The seat she'd have sat in had she not been sitting somewhere else, in a different 24 hour mcdonalds, in a different 24 hour city.
Hanging round town with the girls seemed to give it new life, rejuvenating the shit penny arcades and the rusty ferris wheel at the end of the pier.

"Come on! You're telling me you've lived here for years and not once have you ever gone for a drunken roller coaster ride?" Gasped Alice looking up at us from where she sat on the floor outside the fish and chips shop. Her sunglasses were half fallen from her hair, like a boat slowly sinking below the surface one side jutted up uneven.

"No," chuckled Bob watching her in disbelief.

"What on earth were you doing for 20 years of your life if it wasn't drunk roller coaster rides on the pier?!" She exclaimed waving her arms around, animated to say the least.

"Preparing to take over the world," winked Bondy, struggling to impersonate pinky and the brain. Katie seemed to appreciate that, smirking softly at the ground, gazing off into the arcade across the road, seemingly hypnotized by the lights flashing and the strange music playing like an ice cream van in the evening after school.

"Which is your favourite?" She asked me as the others began arguing about the way we spent our free time.

"What?" I asked turning to her with an amused sort of smirk, sometimes she came out with unexpected lines and took me by surprise so that I had to stop and think a moment before I could answer her. I liked it though.