silver springs {h.s. au}

"not about the things you've done"

May 2018

Life in London had changed. A lot of things had changed in the time that had passed since Willow left. New restaurants had appeared, there was a new prime minister, Willow had new neighbours upstairs that she had met at the elevator one day, and a new doorman out front that didn't tell her a joke in the mornings when she left like the old one had.

Change had crept its way into every corner of Willow's life, and she had to be okay with that.

One thing that still needed to change was her flat. Every box that she had pulled out and halfway gone through had been left scattered on her floors, old clothes thrown over the backs of chairs, piles of haphazardly stacked records, and a row of guitar cases that needed to be properly placed on the racks. She could say she had just been too busy, and Willow had been busy with everything, but not so busy that she couldn't sort out her flat. Her home.

Barefoot and standing encircled by clutter she picked at a hangnail and looked around at everything. If Willow was honest with herself, which she was trying to be better at, there had been a small part of her that had thought this flat wasn't home so why bother. But it was home, this was her home now. All it had taken was walking into an empty house covered in vines with a cracked blue door to make her realise that. That house wasn't going to be home ever again.

So pictures that had been shoved in boxes found their way back into frames and were clipped onto the fridge in the kitchen. Stuff that had been put away into storage had been pulled out, food filled the shelves of her pantry. More coffee had been bought. The laundry had been done and now Willow had throw pillows on her sofa, because adults had throw pillows.

Picking up one of the boxes she had labelled as clothes, Willow walked into her bedroom and dropped it on her bed. Dust flew into the air and she waved her arms around to clear it before walking over and opening the closet doors. Piece by piece she went through all her old clothes she had taken on tour and hung them up. Each dress or jacket made her remember every show she had worn them at, and all the shows they had never played.

The back corners of her closet were a jumbled mess of clothes. Pulling the hangers across the bar Willow looked over all the jackets and sweaters she must have shoved in the back at some point. She was working her way through all of them until her hands grazed across smooth leather.

A breath she hadn't even known she'd been holding slipped out when she pulled the hanger closer.

It had been Harry's jacket.

Willow hadn't even known it had been left here, she couldn't even remember the last time Harry wore it over to this flat.

She ran her hands over the front of it, the metal zipper rough against her skin. It still smelled like him, which made no sense because it had been years now since he wore it. But it smelled like him. Like running through the streets of London on a Saturday night, shots of whiskey at a pub that had just played at, and the cologne Willow had gotten him for one Christmas.

Her arms held the jacket tightly against her chest, but it didn't make her sad. There was almost no point in wallowing about how it had all fallen apart, because no matter what had happened, Harry was always going to be a part of her. For someone that was only meant to be a one off, Harry had managed to weave his way so tightly into her life it would be almost impossible to get him out.

Stepping over the boxes of shoes that she still needed to put up, Willow hung the leather jacket on a rack closer to the front. She gave it one last look before she went out into the living room to grab another box. It was like that box of photos she kept under her bed, that now sat out in the open. Willow couldn't hide it all away, pretend it had never existed. The good and the bad was all there and she couldn't ignore that.