catfish and the bottlemen imagines for rainy days + mondays

Tshirt Weather / Bondy / 1

In the tshirt weather, i remember sleeping till the early afternoons...

You lay on your back in the grass beside your best friend, eyes closed tuning in and out of the radio playing between you. It was one of those beat up old radios from the 90s that she'd found in the garage the weekend before and you had spent every night after school that week lounging around in her back garden, sunglasses on, shoes and socks kicked off just reading your books and lazing away the last few weeks of school in the sun, listening to whatever frequency you could find.

"Times it?" yawned Lily pushing herself up as you rolled over onto your tummy and kicked your legs up behind you swaying them gently to create a breeze.
The heat was stifling, that thick, sticky sort of heat, almost suffocating but not quite.

"Mmm i dont know," you hummed placing your book down in front of you, resting your head in your arms, turning away from her as your eyes fluttered shut.

You didn't care what time it was, all that mattered was that it was Friday evening, you had two days of school free bliss ahead of you. Two days to while away your time doing nothing, lost in a summer haze of a daydream. No responsibilities. Nothing.

"You want ice cream?" she asked pushing herself up, "me brothers got some twisters in the freezer," she shouted from inside, abandoning you in the grass before you'd had the chance to protest and tell her not to go nicking her big brothers ice creams.

"Remember what happened..." you started, about to remind her just how badly it had gone down when he'd caught you both smoking his cigarettes out her bedroom window. Or how well it had gone when he'd caught you drinking his beer, or borrowing one of his CDs.
But Lily had already slammed the door shut and darted off inside to route through the freezer and you knew deep down that even if she had heard you, she wouldn't have cared.

She'd have told you to stop being chicken, that if you were scared of her big brother then you really were a melt because Lily and Johnny had never really gotten on all that well and despite the fact that he was at least five years older than you, Lily was still convinced she was the stronger, more mature of the two.

Still it wasn't that you were scared of him in the conventional sense that had you a little apprehensive to steal from him, it was that secretly you didn't think Lilys big brother was all that bad.

You didn't really mind his scruffy hair and the way him and his friends always seemed to be stoned. You didn't mind all the times you'd be giggling about something with Lily and he would stumble in out of nowhere, sit down between you and pretend to join in and giggle along as if he understood what you were talking about. Usually he would be doing it to wind you up in front of his friends, but you didn't mind that either.
You didn't mind how strangely dishevelled he was, you didn't mind how he never seemed to make any sense. You didn't mind the strange music which would leak from under his bedroom door in the middle of the night when his friends were over and they were getting high in his bedroom.
Actually you quite liked it. Actually sometimes it embarrassed you to admit you were growing rather curious to see what went on the other side of his bedroom door.
Actually that was how he scared you, by drawing you in. By making you feel something strange in the pit of your stomach and the flutter of your heart whenever he entered the room.
But you couldn't admit that.

Not even really to yourself.

So you gave up shouting after Lily and you tried to tune out of the radio which was crackling away. You tried just to enjoy the sun on your back washing over you. The heat which left your eyelids heavy and dopey.

You were half asleep so you didn't hear the back gate open, you only heard the murmur of laughter, two lads talking. But you were too tired to recognise their voices. If you had you'd have probably pushed yourself up a little quicker, you'd have probably snatched your book away before one of them could pick it up.