Oxygen (Catfish And The Bottlemen/1975)

Saffron

I sat out on the front step of the lads hotel watching Fliss and Van winding Katie up where she sat swinging her legs off a wall, trying to smoke her cigarette, trying not to think about the gig we were going to be playing that night.

They all looked so happy, their laughter light, Fliss or Katie shrieking every now and then when one of the lads did something particularly startling.
I watched them with a smirk, enjoying their lackadaisical nature from a distance. They reminded me of school children as I sat their humming away to myself. I'd had the same little song stuck in my head all morning, all weekend. The more I thought about it the longer it felt I'd had it playing on a loop in my mind, the more it felt like it had been running through my veins. I couldn't even remember when I'd first heard it, couldn't remember who had played it and told me to listen to it, really listen to it. Still it must have touched a nerve because even now, when I felt emotionally shot to pieces the sweet little melody was relentless and it soothed my scorched nerves to keep on singing it softly to myself, blissfully unaware that anyone else was listening until they were sitting beside me, their arm slung around my shoulder without a second thought.

"into my arms, into my arms," Bondys voice was soft and low and almost shy as I leant my head on his shoulder. It should have been awkward but it wasn't. I should have been bitterly upset, twisted with heartbreak but I wasn't, I just felt a little sad. A little tired, because I'd always sort of resigned myself to the idea that me and Bondy would only ever be friends, that even if I did love him, I'd never be able to love him good enough, I'd only end up letting him down, only end up seeing our friendship decay and rot the way it had with Rhys, the way it had with Matty. Until he was just another stranger I was scared of.

"whatre you simmerin over love?" he yawned again. Every time he yawned I felt a little guilty, knowing it was me who had kept him up all night.

I kept thinking about the last thing Id said to him. Full of regret. I kept thinking how stupid I must have sounded. How irrelevant that information must have sounded to him. I couldn't believe how wrong I'd managed to get everything. When I'd over heard him talking to Blakes, when I'd assumed he'd been looking at me the same way I'd been looking at him.

"Hmmm?" i hummed looking down at my lighter and my cigarette, pretending I hadnt heard him to give me a little longer to think up a good lie.

"You've got your pensive face on.." he said then, eyes a little too dull for the smile on his lips, "whats up doll?" he asked and I forced a smile and shrugged my shoulders.

"7?"

He let out a slow chuckle, shook his head, rolled his eyes at me.

"Give over," he grinned, jostling me with his elbow, drawing a half hearted laugh from me, forcing me to retaliate. And then he drew in a long drag on his cigarette and the silence between us lingered. The breeze stirred the trees and our friends laughter echoed off the buildings around us. All the parked cars at the roadside watching us.

"I don't think you're fragile Saff," he said surprising, sending my tongue between my teeth as I chewed my cheek. I looked up at him, a little frown, hoping he would elaborate, hoping he understood that I really did already know that. That I'd been too caught up in my own little melodrama earlier that morning, that I'd only been projecting.

It was me who thought I was fragile. It always had been.

"Yeah," i breathed flicking my lighter with no intention of lighting my cig. Instead I breathed in deep on his exhale, too heavy hearted, too let down by this strange turn of events, too anything but serene to bother. "I know that,"

"You know i really wish i hadnt fuckin told yous..." he said making the mistake of thinking that my hunched shoulders and my hollow lungs were the fault of Matty Healy and his midnight moonlighting.