A taste of the Sun

On the humid Sunday morning of April 10th, I was awakened to the sound of my phone ringing. The ever familiar ceiling glared back at me with all its drab glory. The percussion of “Whirling in rags’’ kicked a familiar rhythm under my ear- asking if I wanted to be pulled under. Unfortunately, the sun glaring at me through the slits of my fancy curtains seemed to disagree. I blinked. I blinked again. There. I got up and pulled out my phone from below my pillow and stared at it for a bit. On the dimly lit screen of my phone I saw her name pop up. I silenced my phone and went to sleep again.

5 minutes later I heard a knock on my door.

“Neil Grayson! Pick up your phone, right now!” My dad’s voice boomed from the other side of it. Oh for fuck’s sake. “How much of an egotistical shit do you have to be to ignore calls from such a sweet lady?!”

I pretended to be asleep.

“Don’t you ignore me mister or I am busting through this door right this second!” My dad threatened. Like he always does. Now for the inevitable-

“Oh no you don’t!” The woman of the house had spoken. “Stop trying to wake up the poor boy and get some work done around the house for once!”

“But!” He started to protest.

“No buts. She can talk to him later when he wakes up.” And that was it.

“...Fine. Neil, I know you can hear me. Answer the damn call, alright?” My dad’s footsteps echoed down the hallway and then the steps below as the chirruping of the birds outside and the creakings of our old house in Tranquility lane came into clarity again. I decided to slowly crawl out of bed.

It was 8 AM on just another Sunday morning when I picked up the phone and called back the number which had filled my logs for a whooping 19 times. I appreciated her commitment to harass me. Even if I thought calling my parents was kinda absurd. Just a tiny bit. On my 2nd ring, she picked up.

“Hellooooooo.” What exactly was the word equivalent for photogenic when it comes to voices? Whatever it was, she had it.

“On the other side?”

“That joke is at least a decade old by now. How are you so behind on pop culture?”

“Oh no, I was just de-ageing myself to catch up to your sensibilities.”

“Uh huh? Remind me who was so incredibly lost when I typed ‘based’ in chat?”

“Based on what?”

“Based on you picking up the fucking phone!” I chuckled to myself as I opened the curtains and let the sunlight fill my room. A shaft of its rays running all the way from my carpeted floors to the visage of my untouched piano. Packed in its cover and sitting on the stand, dust gathered and bounced off of it in a constant state of brownian motion.

“So why the 8-in-the-morning call?” I asked as I changed into my tracksuit. It was a delicate act to pull off. Probably not worth spraining an ankle for. I put the phone on speaker and let it rest on top of my drawer.

“You know what day it is right?” I bounced on my tip toes as I pulled up my pants.

“Sure. It’s monday.” I changed into one of my several mono-coloured white tees and grabbed my bluetooth headphones. I connected my phone and plugged it in my ears only to hear dead silence.

“Oi Hoover.” More silence. I glanced at my phone as I walked down the stairs. Mom noticed me and chucked a banana in my direction. It curved perfectly through the air and met my hands. Athletic as always. She waved at me as I walked out the door and throughout it all, my phone showed a connected call.

“Earth to Hoover? Please respond.” I broke into a slow walk down the well maintained sidewalks, taking shelter from the heat of the Sun under the Japanese Red Maple trees planted liberally all around. My slow walk turned into a jog as I waited for another minute and then disconnected the call. I thought about calling her back but decided to put it off until I had finished running.

I put on one of the daily mixes on Spotify as I turned the corner into River street. This part of town was always a bit eerily quiet but more than any other day, it really did look like a ghost town. Unfortunately that silence immediately amplified the fact that my headphones were in fact, not connected to my phone.

A horrifying realisation struck me.

Under the stifling heat of the Sun, on that morning of 10th April, I felt pure undistilled terror. In another moment I was calling her and apologising as I explained what had happened. Her reaction to all of it was far calmer than I had expected.

“It just can’t be helped, I suppose.” Lily Hoover said with a tone that very much implied otherwise.

“I promise, I was NOT trying to ignore you.”

“I believe you. Idiots don’t lie.” She said it so nonchalantly that I failed to catch it for a moment.

“Oh, so you are mad.”

“Nope. Haven’t been more accepting of a situation in my life.”

“Well… Would you like to tell me again what you said after asking me if I remembered what day it was?”

“Do you?”

“What?”

“Do you remember?” Her voice had a slight tinge of… something to it. I couldn’t quite catch it. It was like a fleeting dissonance in her tone. I must be overthinking it.

“It’s your first day at the workshop, isn’t it?”

“Oh shit, you did remember!”

“You have only been yapping about it for the last week.” I jogged past the ever lovely Cooper Park with its Indian Rosewood and hard Maple trees. A host to the several dog loving folks who came around to walk their pets in the morning. I smiled at the old folk waving at me, their leash in hand. Their faces, a staple of my Sunday morning for a good while now.

“So can I ask why you sound so… physically engaged?”

“I am running.” The highway was coming up fast but before I even saw the road, I heard it. The buzzing of people. The horns of public transport. The rush of commuters on their way out of town or just coming back home after another arduous week of work.

“I am really flattered but you really don’t have to.”

“Oh shush. This has been my Sunday routine for several years now.”

“My apologies. I know it’s hard being a tsundere.” I almost choked when I heard that. Which would have been bad for reasons more than the very obvious ones.

“You know, I am coming to realise that this running thing is kinda hard to do while talking to someone.”

“You are so not getting rid of me.” I could hear her smile on the other side.

It was strange.

How had we gotten so close in less than a week? I felt like I had known her for all my life and yet I knew next to nothing about her. There was just this spark. A static discharge I felt every time we talked. I wasn’t so oblivious that I didn’t know what these feelings were. I was just choosing to ignore them for now. There were far more important things to deal with first.

“But you still won’t let me help one bit when it comes down to it.” I was glad my voice sounded so out of breath. I didn’t want her to hear the desperation in my voice.

“Nope.” She replied. Nothing more. Nothing more than how she replied when she got pinned for any mishap in class. “I am sorry.” She added. The same that she did whenever the blame for someone else’s misdeeds fell on her shoulders.

It was fucking insane how quick things had gone from bad to shit this year around. It was almost like a played out routine. Of course it was. It had been the same with Luce last year. It was just happening far sooner this time.

It had become a game. And she was their toy.

She wouldn’t break like one though. Not even close.

“Don’t you dare say sorry to me.” My voice came out ragged. I pretended it was the soot from the factories on the other side of the river.

“Yeah.” It was quiet again on her end. Main street came along and I stopped alongside several others waiting for the signal to turn red so we could cross. It was sooner than I had thought it would be.

“Hey Lily.” I took a right and jogged towards the hitherto unnamed bridge that served no other purpose than being pretty to look at for visitors coming into town from the eastern parts of the country. With its curved archways and completely over designed girded railings- it looked more like a surreal art piece than a normal bridge sometimes.

“Mmm?”

“Eating?”

“Mmm.”

“Cereal?”

“Mmmm… Mm.”

“I see. I am calling the police.” I heard the sound of something splatting on the floor. Man I hope it wasn’t all that cereal she was totally eating right now.

“Fuck do you mean, call the police?!”

“That was totally the morse code for SOS.”

“Was not!”

“In the form of very distinct and subtly different “Mmm” no less. As expected from the voyeur of eccentric arts.”

“You can be SO obnoxious sometimes.”

“You are welcome.”

“Now then.” There was an audible pause as if she was visibly recomposing herself. “What comes after ‘Hey Lily’?”

“Something that comes after ‘Do you remember what day it is?’”

“Touche.”

“How do you wanna play this, Hoover?” I stopped in the middle of the bridge and looked down at the torrential river flowing down below. Quehenna looked as tempestous as ever. Ready to take everything away with it.

“Well let’s see…” The wind blowing southward downstream had managed to bring down the morning heat by quite a few degrees. It felt comfortable. To stand here with her voice in my ears. I wanted to see her. Why did I want to see her so damn much?

“How about we say it together?” She proposed.

“Deal.” I turned my back to the river and looked at the vast fake-looking blue skies of Willowby. It was as if a child had painted it on a canvas.

“In 3… 2… 1…” She counted down. I raised my right hand. Trying to grab a piece of that blue. As if it would crack and fall into pieces.

“Can I come along with you?” I asked.

“Can you come along with me?” She asked.

We both paused. Then we burst out laughing. Like the world had just gone mad. I saw some people staring at me but I just didn’t care. This was too absurd. This was simply too absurd.

“Man, we are both just the worst, huh?” I finally said as I managed to stop laughing.

“We really did spend a significant amount of time running in circles.” She sounded happy. Genuinely happy. I was glad. “But you know what?”

“Yeah?”

“I know you want to help me out when shit hits the fan. And I appreciate that a lot! But you really do help me enough just by being there for me.” My hands fell to my sides. “Meet me at the pizzeria place near Eagle street. Let’s say around 11 o’clock.”

“Sounds good.” I replied curtly. Like a true gentleman. Definitely not someone who was on the verge of falling apart entirely.

I looked at the banana I was still clutching tight. It had turned into a squishy mess.

I realised it wasn’t that the sky looked fake. It was just everything else that didn’t feel real to me.

I peeled and ate the banana.

It tasted disgusting.

It tasted like the Sun.