- It's all about contrasts! - she says.
T. and I are staring, quite amazed (and a bit jealous), at the screen of her mobile phone, scrolling through beautiful paintings, captured in different fases of the creative process.
Maybe in the meantime we got some gray hair, maybe we wear glasses and complain about back problems, but it suddenly feels like fifteen years ago, when we were all living in that hideous building, full of weird people.
M. was always late. She would pass by my flat on the way to town, wearing a short skirt, trying to tame her black, amazing curls, leaving a sweet trace of Daisy parfum in the elevator. Knowing she should have been somewhere an hour ago, she would lit a cigarette, pour herself a glass of wine and text her friends "I'm on my way".
T. joined us couple of years later. Right after she moved in, couple of people in our building... died, so T. became "Banshee". She invented a squeeky sound and a door-scratching gesture, whenever someone annoyed her. IYKYK.
Everything changed since then, and nothing changed.
Some of us moved abroad, some of us came back to Belgium, bought houses, changed jobs, lost the loved ones.
And still - when we are sipping wine at the terras, it feels as if we have never left that crazy place. It feels like we will have to go to the nightshop any minute from now, to buy some smokes, even though we swore ten minutes ago that we will never, ever, ever...
(Disclaimer: we all did quit smoking some years ago and we finished the dinner before midnight. Reasonable enough :)