7 July 2012
We sat curled around each other in the window seat of my cluttered apartment, our legs linked around each other for warmth and company. The thick woollen blanket draped across our knees smelt like chewing tobacco and mothballs, and I pulled it up to my face to breathe in its musky scent. You took the frayed corner and pulled it further up my shoulder, tucking it behind my neck. I smiled, and leaned my head on the cold windowpane. Condensation dripped in tiny beads down my temple.
"It's May, for fucks sake, and look at it," I nodded my head towards the grey, drizzly sky that smattered the windows with raindrops and made them rattle. I reached up and picked at some of the filler I had attempted to seal my window pane with. It was still a little damp, so I left fingerprints and curved scars from my fingernails. "Keep your fingers and toes crossed, I'm hoping for a boiling August. If not, I'm migrating," you said, reaching to the coffee table behind you and curving your arm around to get your mug of steaming tea. My heating had broken, so we were drinking as many cups of tea and hot chocolate as we could. Going to your house wasn't possible, because your four house mates were all complete arses, who used to corner me in the kitchen and make dirty remarks. You stayed a lot at mine, because you hated them and you had nowhere else to go. I didn't mind; waking up to you next to me in bed with a bowl of cornflakes was nice company for a lonely university girl like me. Besides, this was the modern ages of 1995, after all, and a girl could live with whoever she wanted nowadays.
I set about carving my name into the soft filler, "Well I'm starting to think it's not worth waiting for August. This is England: it's just going to start raining again in September, and it'll carry on raining until June. Maybe we SHOULD migrate," I sighed.
"Well, if you pay, that's fine. If not, it's going to be mighty lonely," you smiled, tucking your knees to your chest and balancing the free mug from a box of 'Yorkshire Tea' on them. Your brown eyes winked at me... Such fucking long eyelashes. I wonder how both your parents were so ordinary looking (I had seen a photo in your wallet when looking for a condom) produced such a perfect child. You weren't muscly or tanned, you always had bed-hair, but to me, you were nothing but astoundingly beautiful.
"Hmm, maybe not then. I can't afford it either. I can't exactly afford this place either," I sighed, looking back at my tiny apartment. It was small, and the people living above and below me were absolute arseholes, but it was beautiful. I had inherited it from my Grandpa Joseph, who had been a Professor of History in his younger years. The whole flat was filled with antique globes and beautifully bound books. The mahogany polished walls were covered in tapestries and paintings, and every shelf was filled with artefacts and antiques from his travels around the world. My favourite was a 'day of the dead' mask from Mexico which he picked up in a market, when he caught a glimpse of my soon-to-be grandma, and forgot to pay for it when he ended up following her around the market.
It was a tiny apartment - this we both knew well enough - but I loved it more than anywhere else in the world. It had one biggish room with a huge, lumpy four-poster bed which we screened off with a huge wicker fold-away screen which was now folded up against a huge wardrobe which was tall enough to ceiling; a small tv; a sofa; a beat- up old armchair with a heavy blanket over it; and lots of big tasseled floor cushions from India. On the floor, there were lamps and candles scattered about, because the flat was so old there were no overhead lights. There was a tiny bathroom with a toilet and a shower by the front door and if you rolled back another wooden screen to the right of the tv, there was a fridge, oven, cupboard, washing machine and microwave set into the wall. It was small but it was all I needed, and you loved it nearly as much as I did.
"Oh, don't be silly, your grandpas paid for 10 years worth of rent as soon as you turn twenty-one. That's... What... A year and a bit away. Grow some balls and get a job like a REAL adult!" you joked. I reached under the cover and grabbed my slipper, which I threw at your face, laughing at your shocked face as it hit you square between the eyes. You slopped most of your tea down the front of your old jersey, which ran down the front of it.
"Oh... fucks sake!" I gasped between laughs as you set your tea down and smudged the wet stain across your front. I reached forward, shaking with chuckles, and brushed some damp tea leaves off your left collar bone.
"I don't have any more clothes with me! I've worn all the ones I have here, and there is no WAY I'm going home! I haven't been there for a week so they'll all want my head on a pike by the front step!" you said, getting up and pulling the wet jersey off over your head. You threw it over your shoulder and it landed so it was hanging off the canopy of my bed, "Oh god, Isadora, it's gone through to my tshirt! It's on my jeans!"
I uncurled myself and stood up, balling up the blanket and throwing it back on the window seat, "I'll put it in the washing machine!" I said, rushing over to the kitchen screen.
"Oh, I know what you're like with that bloody washing machine..." you said, gesturing to one of the book cases I always kept my clothes in. It contained many slightly pink, misshapen and shrunken cloths to varying degrees.
"Sorry," I said, jutting out my bottom lip like a child, and walking over to you. I wrapped my arms around your neck, even though you were two foot taller than me, and played with the curls on the nape of your neck.
"It's fine," you smirked, sliding your arms around my shoulder blades. I reached down and picked a tea leaf off your neck.
"I promise I'll buy you another one..." I grinned.
"Like hell, will you. Last time when you got that bloody awful maroon paint on my jogging bottoms you promised you'd buy me some more, and you made me a macaroni picture frame and a token for sex and some cheese in toast afterwards," you remarked, trying to be the serious one, but I could see from the creases at each side of your eyes that you were trying not to laugh.
"It was good sex. And alright cheese on toast; for me anyway," I defended myself.
"True, true..." you smirked.
"And the picture frame is the most artistic thing any maths student has ever made! Treasure that! And if there's ever a famine you can boil it up and serve it to your starving family," I squawked.
You laughed, and rested your chin on the top of my head, nestling into the brown curls.
"I love you, Isadora," you sighed.
"You... What?" I looked up at you, wide eyed and startled. No one had ever said that to me before.
"I... Love you. Is that bad? Is it too soon?" you looked alarmed.
"No, I just... It's just... I love you too," I stared, astounded that you, this beautiful, intelligent, funny man... Loved... Me?
I felt like I had filled with warm honey, and the drizzly, dreary rain was parting and flooding the room with sweltering summer sun. I could nearly feel the sun pouring through the shutter which had blown shut in the wind.
"Good," you smiled, "Perfect," laughing, you scooped me up in your long arms, and carried me to the lumpy bed.
I laughed, and didn't even mind that I got tea leaves in my hair, because... I loved you, and you actually loved me too.
Rain In May • Opuss № I