behind blue eyes ― jimmy page

vii. SEVEN

︵‿︵‿୨ 1972 ୧‿︵‿︵

     AFTER A WEEK which felt like an eternity, Sunday — Sadie's only day off — finally came. Usually that meant doing one of a few things, including spending the day trying to catch up on a week of lost sleep, feeding her cats, and occasionally walking down to the local park to pluck a few chords on her old acoustic. This Sunday, though, Sadie was just glad she finally had an excuse to be on her own.

     The neon-green clock showed a quarter-to ten by the time Sadie crawled out of her covers to hush her cat's mewling, following the two boys down to her kitchen to fill up their empty bowls. She watched the two of them curl their tails contently as they wolfed down their breakfast, wondering if she should make something for herself too. She hadn't had much of an appetite for days, it seemed, which was far from the ordinary for the blonde, but all she seemed to think about lately was... nope, she stopped herself short.

     "Not today," she said, "today I am declaring a man free day, got it?" Harrison and Presley turned and blinked at her with empty expressions. Satisfied by that, Sadie walked over to her fridge and opened it up, beginning to pull out everything she needed to make some eggs. She switched on the radio while she worked away, tuning it to a station which played the Eagles just softly enough to hum to while she cooked.

     She had just moved the eggs onto a plate when the front door of the apartment buzzed. A frown creased her face and she wondered, for a moment, if she'd imagined it, until: buzz, buzz... again, and buzz, buzz buzz, buzz. "Okay okay I get it!" Sadie mumbled, wiping her hands on a table cloth and going to open the door for whichever impatient person was waiting outside. But as soon as she'd opened the door up an inch, she suddenly wished she hadn't.

     "Sadie, hi..." An awkward hand held a bunch of orange and yellow flowers beneath her nose, and before she could say anything she sneezed all over them and pinched the bridge of her nose.

     "Jimmy," she said in a nasally voice, still holding her nose. "What are you doing here?"

      He held the flowers out for one moment, had second thoughts, and pulled them back again. "I wanted to thank you for helping me out the other night. I was sort of in a rut with those songs and you didn't have to spend your night helping me out of it. So..." he gestured to the orange coloured blooms clutched in his hand. The brown paper they were wrapped in was crumpled from how tightly he clutched them.

     Hesitantly, Sadie uncovered her face and took the bouquet from him — half of her was torn between feeling apprehensive, and the other (less trustworthy) half was making her stomach lurch and soar in a way it hadn't for a long time. She looked down at the flowers and felt a pang when she saw that they were lilies. "I saw the same flowers on the back of one of your jackets once and figured that they were favourites of yours." Jimmy said to fill in the empty silence.