Oxygen (Catfish And The Bottlemen/1975)

Saffron

I wandered the streets of an only slightly familiar city with a cigarette between my lips, sucking in smoke, exhaling smoke, and playing with my hair. My coat was too big, my jumper too and whenever i raised a hand my sleeves slipped down and whenever I didnt they consumed my fingers and kept them hidden away.

Usually i walked with earphones in but today I walked in tune with the traffic. It was a sleepy city, not so much a sleepy city but a tired one. A worn out one. The streets were quiet because no one could really afford to walk them unless they were walking to work or walking home.
It was one of those shitty seaside cities that boasts a coastal path lined with benches dedicated to pensioners and peoples pets. I didnt mind it, i didnt even feel lost among its rows of sleepy grey houses, but the futher I walked the more I thought and i couldnt stop myself from thinking of him.

Of Johnny and of Matty and of Rhys. And it felt strange. It felt stupid. How could i place them all in the same catergory.

Fliss made it look ever so easy. Ever so easy to be in love. She made it look like warm water. Like something you could slip into with your eyes closed. Like something you could lie in and enjoy, revel in the sensation of the waves lapping gentle over your legs.
She made it look easy to be naked in it, to be honest. To show someone every little part of you, no secrets, no hidden tears, no hidden feelings. She made it look easy to say things, any things, the moment you thought them. The moment you realised how you felt.

Now as I walked that was all I could ask myself. Could I be like that? Could I close my eyes and sink into that sensation just as easily. Could i let myself be naked, honest with him? And if I could once or twice, could I be that way all the time?

For a moment in his hotel room I'd felt I could be. For a moment when I was tired, almost lost to the world, over emotional and cloudy. For a moment when he had been tender and gentle and kind. When he'd found a way to unwind me, and been the first person to achieve that in a very long time.

I kept playing and replaying all the little things, the shared, quiet moments, all the spoken and unspoken affections which had passed between us. Heaven or Las Vegas and Into My Arms and all the stupid shit we'd said to eachother. Could any of it really mean all the things I so desperately wanted it to mean? I wasn't sure.

I chewed my cheek as I sat down outside in the smoking area of a pub we'd been to once before when we'd toured with the lads. When me and Fliss had danced on the table to More Than This, when we both still felt young and on top.

Now i wasnt so sure either of us felt like that, but Fliss still wore the same bright, white smile.

Perhaps then it was only me still floating sort of sad, sort of hazy through life. Not really knowing what she was doing or where she thought she was going to end up.

Noel had suggested this pub, he'd seen me leaving with my sullen eyes and said that this was the place he liked to go if ever a sulk took him over in this town.
And I could understand why as I sat outside, cigarette smouldering between my lips, the first half of my first pint warming me through like the sunlight shining down on me. It was one of those strange, winter sunshine afternoons where the warmth took you by surprise, left you sort of stunned, caught between a daydream and the cold around the corner.
If only I'd predicted the kind of cold which was waiting for me around the corner.

I felt my lips curve a smile as I lost myself a little deeper in thought, mulling over all the things we'd said to one another over the months we'd crept closer and closer to one another.
I found myself replaying every moment we'd ever shared together, searching the scenes for a sign that we might be right. That I might be able to fall in love just as easily as Fliss had.