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Once Sofia has left the room I start to dress. Her favourite song, Citizen Cope’s Somehow drifts in from the living room. Although I’ve heard her play this song many times I’ve never really listened to or thought about the lyrics. Why should I? But those who over-analyse say you can always pick up meaning from the lyrics to the songs someone repeatedly plays. They are letting the music say what they can’t or don’t want to say, to express how they’re feeling.
In the weeks before my ex finally headed out the door, she played a few songs repeatedly, with lyrics that I should have picked up on. All I Wanna’ Do Is Have Some Fun by Sheryl Crowe and Need a Little Time by The Beautiful South were played daily, but I still didn’t pick up on the glaringly obvious. If I’d been just a little more perceptive I might have noticed the fine details and the picture would have eventually come into focus, like one of those Magic Eye prints. The message is always there for you to read, like subtitles on a foreign film. It’s just that for some people, subtitled films are too much like hard work.
Then again, it’s just a song.
I can do without the early morning music. How can she be so fresh and lively at this time of the day, especially after the amount we drank and smoked last night? I’m slightly in awe of her regenerative capabilities. Some people swear by the ‘get up and move about philosophy’ after a night’s drinking, whereas I favour the ‘stay in bed until the threat of vomiting has disappeared’ route. My head is sore but not too bad I guess. Good whisky doesn’t seem to give me a huge hangover, plus the weed imbibed seems to keep the headaches from the door. Caffeine and nicotine will help sort everything out.
Sofia is lying on the sofa, my sofa...at least it was until last night. This is awkward. Do I sit next to her? Is this now our sofa not mine? No, wait, she doesn’t remember that we kissed, that we were about to head through to the bedroom together. So why is she sitting there? Because we shared the bed last night?
In the usual scenario, when a woman has stayed the night I would more than likely be thinking of excuses on how quickly I could get the flat back to myself in order to just relax and recover. Sofia lives here, she’s lying on my sofa in her underwear underneath the duvet, which okay, admittedly doesn’t seem like a bad thing at all.
She looks up at me and I know that she knows I’m deliberating in my head.
“Cal, we shared the bed last night. We can at least share this couch. It’s cold and your quilt is already here.”
I slide under the quilt next to her and she hands me the coffee from the table.
“You okay, poppet?” she asks.
Poppet?
“I’m fine.”
We both sit and watch television and drink coffee.
The silence between us is not altogether uncomfortable.