Soon, My Friend (Currently Editing)

June and I

I was nearly sure that after my mother's visit and after things started working out for June I would feel better, but stop holding on to the hope that life would be a bed of roses. I did though wish everything could finally go in my direction. 

But the fact that my mum sooner or later brought up the subject of Harry Styles, made me so mad. A Friday morning a few days later, I sat in the bathtub without actually taking a bath, with Station to Station on the speakers and tried to collect my thoughts. 

The late shifts at the pub would be the death of me, but at least I had something to keep me busy. June worked in the New Age shop not far from Covent Garden and kept complaining on this colleague of hers who apparently wasn't able to shut up.

I lay in the tub wearing a summer dress and had originally planned to shave my legs, but it was so lovely to just lay there with cold and chilling porcelain against my back, arms and legs. We still hadn't got the electric light in here to work, so the only thing that gave the room a little colour were the golden and hot flames from the candles at the end of the bathtub and on the sink next to it. 

I looked carefully around the small bathroom without moving my head. We surely needed to clean in here, it was pretty dirty and gloomy despite the living candles. Probably I'd do it since I didn't even bother to ask June to help.

I eventually showered, shaved the areas of my body where I thought it was needed, painted my nails and put on the same summer dress. All of it made me feel so feminine that my boobs might as well could've grown in size. With my knuckles rubbing my eyes I went out to the kitchen and I heard that June had come home from work. I let my hands down the sides of my body and looked in the direction where her voice was coming from. 

My eyes found her blonde head outside the house at the end of the hall, which incidentally also was the kitchen and living room and basically consisted by furniture full of clothes and clutter. 

June was on the phone, the patio doors was open. I grabbed a lighter and went over the dirty carpet in front of the big sofa that almost closed for all passage in the hallway (slash living room and kitchen, as I mentioned).

It had rained a bit during the night before - made the stones on the ground in the small garden wet and cold against the skin under my feet. I picked up June's pack of cigarettes and pulled one out, lit it and leaned my back against the window behind me.

"Yes, I know, Christ, bitch needs to calm down..." June clearly talked with one of her friends, smoked her cigarette deeply and quickly. She closed her eyes facing the sunlight.

I looked in the garden around me. It was small, this backyard, filled with empty planters, soil and an old, white wicker chair was placed under the trees. Did anyone really sit in it at all? The garden was framed by walls of gray bricks with moss, and it was quiet in the neighbouring gardens. 

I enjoyed a few puffs of my cigarette, heard June's rasping voice ramble on, dogs barking in the park not far away, cars driving on the street on the other side of the house, children laughing, birds chirping, a man shouting something in a foreign language...

"OK, but I've got to go now, I have to change." June's voice woke me up from the little moment I'd zoned out.

"Talk to you later? Alright, babs, bye."

She hung up and put the cigarette butt in the ashtray on the plastic table. As she pushed her phone down in the back pocket of the denim shorts, she smiled at me.

"How's your day been?" I asked and inhaled the last drag of my own cigarette.

"Dull. Three customers, or somethin'." June scoffed. I looked at her and saw that she considered another cigarette, but chose supposedly to refrain. I nodded in response.