The Little Things
Oscar sat shirtless, with his legs hanging off the side of the armchair and a lit cigarette in his hand. A cloud of smoke hung over the kitchen, suffocating the small plants that crowded the shelves, crammed between mugs and jars full of tea bags, ground coffee and hot chocolate, and bowls that were meant for fruit but were full of oddments like paper clips, nail varnish and spare change. The chair itself was old and too wise to be infected by Oscar’s chain-smoking. It was a faded blue with chipped oak legs and smelled, for some unknown reason, of the sea. The chair had come with the apartment, tucked away in the back corner of the kitchen underneath the window. Carrie had wanted to throw it out, Peter had wanted it in the living room, but Oscar knew that the chair belonged only in the kitchen. So it stayed, and steadily they had all grown to love it, more than anything else in their home.
Carrie came out of her bedroom, wearing her underwear and a floral kimono. Her short hair was messy but in a supermodel kind of way. If only she walked like a supermodel, but Oscar had no such luck. Carrie stomped over to him, shooting him a glare that would make grown men cry. She reached over his head, and he could smell her perfume despite the smoke, and violently pushed open the window. Almost immediately, the smoke drained out the room, and Oscar imagined the plants sighing with relief. Carrie made a noise of disgust before going over to one of the shelves above the cupboards and went about making a pot of coffee. She added milk and four teaspoons of sugar to one, milk but no sugar to the second, and left the third black. Oscar would never understand why she enjoyed her coffee so bitter, but Carrie was as tough as nails. He couldn’t help but admire her. Not that he would ever tell her that.
When Peter finally emerged from his own room, rubbing a hand over his face and yawning loudly, Oscar had nearly finished his third cigarette, and his coffee (the one with milk, no sugar) lay empty on the table. Carrie was sat with one leg drawn up to her chest, and was halfway through the book she was meant to have read for her lecture last week. Peter mumbled something incomprehensible and slumped into the chair opposite Carrie, greedily draining his own coffee mug. Oscar could not help but feel smug as he watched his flatmates shift uncomfortably on their hard wooden chairs. The armchair was his throne, and he had claimed it before the other two had woken up. He managed this most days; he was a morning person, whereas Peter relied on multiple alarms to even consider waking up, and Carrie never went to bed before two am.
It was Peter’s turn to make breakfast that day. Fried bacon joined the throng of aromas that mingled like socialites at a rich man’s club in the air of the kitchen. Oscar’s cigarettes were barely detectable amongst the scent of perfume, coffee, and the forgotten hot chocolate that had sat on the counter since last Wednesday. Peter stuck the too crispy bacon in slightly stale cobs and presented them with the pride of a five-star chef. Carrie ate it gingerly, and after a single bite, rooted the brown sauce out of the cupboard before drowning the bacon in it. It was never going to be the best breakfast Oscar had ever eaten, but it was impressive for Peter- the last time that boy ‘cooked’ breakfast, he'd chucked weeks old Eccles cakes at them.
As the morning continued, the warm summer’s light lazily streaming in through the open window, they sat in comfortable silence. Carrie read her book. Peter played Candy Crush on his phone with a second bacon cob, a mug of tea, and a banana surrounding him like adoring fans. Oscar lounged on the armchair, his last cigarette extinguished in the overflowing ashtray. No one liked him smoking, and it had placed a considerable strain on the majority of his relationships. His girlfriend was studying medicine and often lectured him, not about how smoking might kill him, but how he was an expensive liability that the NHS could not afford to treat. However, they had worked their way around it, as long as Oscar promised to stop sometime in the near future. He’d chosen next Wednesday, his girlfriend’s birthday.
At ten am, Carrie and Peter left for their lectures. Carrie looked like a supermodel in tight jeans, heeled boots and a floral shirt that Oscar was pretty sure used to be his. Peter, on the other hand, looked like the average uni student; dressed for bed and bleary-eyed- even though he had consumed more caffeine than the other two combined. They had abandoned their empty mugs and plates on the table, along with Peter’s student ID and laptop. Oscar considered running after them, but he was comfy, and Peter would come running back in ten minutes, red-faced and breathing heavily to collect his essentials. Instead, he removed his phone from his back pocket and texted Yaz. She wouldn’t reply- she was in lectures all day. He thought of surprising her with a hot chocolate and a muffin from the bakery.
At eleven, he said goodbye to the armchair and tidied away the dirty mugs and plates. He forgot the hot chocolate that was still on the counter from last week. He styled his hair, put on a shirt and pulled on his shoes. He left his box of cigarettes on the kitchen table as his locked the door to the apartment. Outside, the sun shined brightly and the air smelled of summer. Oscar smiled and shouldered his bag as he walked down the street.
They would all be back home before seven. It was his turn to cook dinner that night. He didn’t know how to make anything besides packet noodles. But today, he was feeling optimistic. Maybe a curry. Not too spicy though, or Peter would end up crying, and they had used up all the milk trying (and spectacularly failing) to make a creamy pasta the night before. Oscar smiled at the thought of the challenge. Tonight was going to be fun; him and his friends, laughing over their lack of culinary expertise, in their pyjamas. They would drink lots of tea and eat shop bought cake. And the armchair would be there, waiting for him. Life, Oscar decided, as he turned the corner, was made for the little things. And he was going to enjoy every single one of them.
