One More Time // Dan Howell

Chapter 1; Back in London

"I'm sorry!" Winnie called out to the angry passenger who was yelling at her for waking him up.
"Sorry my butt, you did that on purpose!" The passenger replied. He was a middle-aged, pudgy man with a black mustache and black hair. He had been yelling at all the other passengers the entire flight and now he was yelling at her for accidentally dropping her headphones on him.
"It was an accident!" She called out again, sitting back down in her seat. Luckily before the man could reply, one of the flight attendants came and asked the man to keep his voice down. Winnie could see that the man was arguing with her. She sighed and lent back in her seat. How much longer was this flight?
As if on cue, a voice rang over the plane, announcing to turn off all electronics and buckle up as they were about to land in London. Winnie turned her phone off and put her seat belt on. As the plane descended, she saw the London landscape and wondered if she made the right decision by coming here.
Oh well, she thought. Too late to turn back now.

Winnie was surprised at how crowded the airport was. It was around 5 am in the morning, so she wasn't expecting this many people.
She scanned her surroundings and was stunned to remember where everything was. She hadn't been to London in 6 years. Walking out of the airport, she once again wondered if what she was doing was right. She carefully placed each of her suitcases in the taxi that she had just hailed, and then quickly sat down, giving the driver the address. As the car sped towards her destination, it started raining.

"Heavy rain out there." The driver said.
"Yeah." Winnie replied. "I can't remember if I've ever seen a cloudless day in London."
"Oh, you've been here before?"
"Loads of times. I actually lived here for a while."
"Although you must be American, your accent isn't British." The driver said in a confused tone.
"My dad was British, my mom's American. I've gone back and forth living in England and the U.S. but I was born in America and I've lived in California for the last 6 years, hence the accent."
The driver continued to make small talk with her until she reached her destination. She thanked him and gave him his fee. The taxi drove away and she was left soaking in the rain with her suitcases by her side. Pulling her luggage behind her, she entered the apartment building in front of her. Her good friend, Hazel, had recently moved to Sydney and she had offered Winnie her old apartment in London, which Winnie happily accepted.
The building was nice. There was a security guard outside the door and inside was a desk with a bored looking girl behind it. The floor had red carpeting and the walls and ceiling were white. There was an elevator and a set of stairs too. Winnie went over to talk to the girl about moving into Hazel's old apartment.
As soon as she got into her room--24D--she crashed onto the sofa. The apartment was already fully furnished. Winnie's body was tired from the long flight, but she wanted to explore the place and she had to change out of her wet clothes. She got up from the sofa and explored the living room. There was a flat-screen TV on the wall and a floor-to-ceiling empty bookshelf next to it. Opposite the TV was the cream colored couch that she just crashed upon, and a little in front of it was a low, glass coffee table. There was wooden flooring and the walls were white. She walked through one of the doors and found herself in Hazel's old bedroom. The bedroom contained a small, walk-in wardrobe.Hazel was fairly rich so she had a nice apartment. Winnie explored the other rooms (which included 2 guest bedrooms, a kitchen, a bathroom and a completely empty room) and after she was done, she decided to unpack and change out of her soaking clothes.

While taking out the clothes from her suitcase and placing them in her now half-full walk-in wardrobe, she started thinking about her life in London 6 years before. She remembered how she used to live with her dad and she got a little sad. She missed him so much, it was a shame that he'd passed away so early.

Winnie spent her time in unloading her suitcases completely and putting everything at its place. By midday, she was done. Jet lag hadn't caught up to her yet, and it had stopped raining, so she decided to go out and re-explore the city. She changed out of the comfy pajamas that she had put on earlier into something much more suitable, tidied up her hair a little and out she went, locking the door behind her. She didn't really plan on going to a certain place, she just wanted to aimlessly walk around.

Winnie walked around the streets of London and saw all of the familiar places. She saw Starbucks and remembered how it was the hang-out place of her then squad. She saw Nandos and remembered how her father and her used to eat there once a week, calling it 'Nandos Night', she saw a movie theater and remembered how her first boyfriend took her there for her first date...So much had happened in her life between the ages 13-18, and all of those moments and memories were right here, in this very city. Living here for almost her whole teenage life, she'd made unforgettable friends, experienced indescribable feelings and faced life-changing problems. When her father died when she was 18, she couldn't wait to get out of this city, the city that was the final resting-place for her dad. And now she would rather be no where else. She found it crazy how life could do that to you.

A while into her walk, she started to feel nostalgic thinking about the past, so she went home. She called her mom back in California and talked to her for a while, then browsed the internet until she finally felt sleepy at about 9 pm. 'Reasonable time', she thought, as she closed the lights and ended her first day back in London.