The Art of Living

[39] Punctuality

Ellie was sitting on the carpet of her living room, puzzling together the last pieces of her project. She had to be finished by Monday, and she had planned to be finished already. Brian's visit the evening before had messed up her plans entirely. And even now she wasn't able to focus as much as she would have needed to.

Because even though Brian wasn't there, he kept creeping back into her mind, distracting her from deciding on which pictures to include where in her portfolio. Not only did she have to arrange her photographs, she also had to write down facts for each of them. Where it had been taken and when approximately, for some of them she needed to write a more detailed description to give her instructor in insight into how her mind worked when it came to photography.

And yet all she could think about was how long it had been since Brian had left. It couldn't have taken him more than half an hour to go home. Which meant a total travel time of an hour, and then some time to change and shower and whatever he wanted to do. Ellie had expected him to come back after two hours, so they could eat lunch together, possibly do some shopping first so they would have something to eat. But now it was close to 3pm and Brian still wasn't back. Five hours. That was a very long time.

As much as Ellie was aware that before she had freaked out at the idea of spending the entire day with Brian - she didn't bother lying to herself, she had been really freaked out - as much did it bother her that now she wasn't spending the entire day with him. It had been a complete turn. She had gone from freaking out about being close to Brian to missing him. She still didn't know why she had freaked out so much. After all, the evening before they had cuddled on the couch he had been all over her, kissed her cheek and held her close, and during the night she was sure they hadn't exactly been far apart either.

But when he kept wanting to be close to her in the kitchen, or even while eating Ellie had felt the constant need to get up and run far away from him. And now, now that she was far away from him she was longing for him to be by her side again. She really needed to talk to Lynn, or even better Mary, because she wasn't making sense to herself, she was completely lost what her mind wanted to tell her. She hoped one of her friends would be able to decipher her.

Ellie looked at the photographs in front of her and got up with a frustrated sigh. There was no use. She had too much time to think if she wasn't doing something physically engaging. If she just sat there and stared at her pictures it was too easy for her mind to wander, especially because she occasionally found herself looking at a photograph of Brian, one she had taken for them during their gig in Cornwall. That only helped to distract her.

Carefully she gathered everything and placed it in one of the boxes that she had reserved for university work. Once the lid was closed firmly she made her way over to the boxes where she kept her records. She needed some good music to distract herself now, and the radio just wasn't what she needed now. Letting out a rather heavy sigh she pulled out a few records that could possibly help her distract herself while she waited for Brian.

In the end she decided on letting the heavy sounds of Led Zeppelin II fill her flat. It was exactly what she needed, heavy, full of innuendos. It was in moments like this she was glad that her landlady and landlord were mostly on the ground floor of the building and didn't hear so well anymore, that even if they did go up to the first floor they wouldn't be bothered too much. How her landlady had heard Brian that morning still was a mystery to her.

Maybe she had seen him when he had gone out to get milk. That was the far more likely option, because if she could distinguish a male voice, then she wouldn't find it very entertaining what Robert Plant was now singing loudly. Other than Ellie. Ellie found herself nodding along, singing along while she made it her task to clean her flat. All she wanted was to move, but with music it was so easy to clean and it put her energy to good use.