All You Need Is Now

5.

1985, streets of Birmingham

Promises my arse.
How could my mother promise to make sure I was able to move back at the age of 18 when I was finally released out of West Germany at 23? I had no idea what Birmingham was like anymore. I was stuck in Germany for five years. Dad had died of a sudden heart attack and there wasn't any income anymore. We were living off the so-called 'good money' he made there and we managed to do so for two years until I was sick of the lies I was told and fled.
And now I was able to stand on my own two feet again, back in good ol' Brummie.
I stepped out of the cab and paid the driver with the money I had stuck behind the front zipper of my suitcase. He drove off and I turned around to a tiny flat. My apartment was at the top floor, the third. But I didn't know what I was more excited about, my apartment or the memories that came flooding back the moment I set foot in the city.

I unlocked the door to my apartment and sighed. It was small, but enough for me. I was able to buy it with most of its furniture in it so I was pretty much installed right away. I decided that exploring the city was much more interesting than unpacking my suitcase, so I left as fast as I had entered the apartment and walked along the busy streets of Birmingham.
It for sure had changed in those five years, but I still recognised a lot of things too.

My heart stopped for a minute and then began pounding against my chest as my eyes fell on the Rum Runner. The big mirror-like wall at the edge of the street was unmistakable. Even though I worked there for not even a month, a lot had happened there. I still thought about John regularly. I read and heard a lot about Duran Duran and how teenage girls were all over them. They had really gotten far with their music and it made me proud to be one of the first ones to have gotten a listen of their early demos. They were on every radio station, every music channel, their records were on display in every music shop. The Duran mania never stopped and never gave me a break from remembering that those lads were the ones that invited me at their table to have a drink at their young age. And look where they were now. I wondered if they had changed personally. Simon appeared to still be his cocky self like he used to and Nick still had incredibly good taste in makeup. Roger was still shy and Andy was still a ball of energy. And John? I didn't want to know about him because it still made me hurt deep inside. I didn't want to know if he had a girl, or a wife. I wanted him out of my life but he kept coming back because there was no way to avoid him with the world going crazy about them.

I didn't want to be confronted with more of Duran Duran and made my way back to my apartment, deciding that it was better to unpack in the hopes of keeping my mind off them. I was starting to doubt my decision of moving back to Birmingham as I was already struggling on the first day. I hoped it was going to get better with a few days, but maybe I was stuck with them forever.

Once unpacked and settled, my stomach was grumbling like mad and I decided that going for groceries was my next trip. I pulled on my jacket and walked down the stairs for the second time, following the familiar streets until I reached the convenience store. I wasn't going for something incredibly hard to cook, since today had been an exhausting day and I wasn't planning to stand in the kitchen longer that I took to eat it. As I walked along the aisles, the familiar tune started playing over the speakers in the store and I swallowed the lump in my throat. Was this day going to stop confronting me?