Sophia tiredly looked at the clock. It was already noon. She had been stuck in the store for almost an hour, but had not found the right tiles for the bathroom.
The most annoying thing was that she had money, but there was no suitable color. The consultant was smiling wryly.
-“Sophia, go home, let’s look at the catalog on the website,” her husband asked her gently in the phone.
Repairs in the new house created a lot of worries. And Sophia, striving to achieve perfection in everything, was looking for those options that were definitely successful. Her husband Kevin trusted her to choose everything herself, because Sophia worked as an interior designer and knew exactly how to create style and comfort in the room.
On the way home, she kept flipping through tile catalogs on her phone and only when she found exactly the shade she wanted in a warehouse in another city, she pressed the “order” button.
-So now we have to look for a team of tilers? – Kevin smiled.
-Yes, I think the materials will arrive in two weeks and we can start working, – Sophia nodded.
-“Sophia!” the mother shouted from the window. “Go hang up the clothes!
Small and fragile Sophia barely dragged a huge basin with a pile of clothes into the yard and started hanging sheets and pillowcases on the ropes. Sometimes she had to stand on tiptoe to attach a clothespin.
They shared a yard with three old two-story houses. As it often happens, everyone knew about everyone. Neighbors liked to gossip in the evenings on the benches. Men played dominoes on an old table in the center. Children were running back and forth with laughter. In short, an ordinary courtyard of a small town.
Sophia pulled the last sheet out of the basin and was about to straighten it and hang it up, when suddenly her gaze froze, her face broke into a smile, and her cheeks flushed. She was embarrassed and very ashamed.
In the yard on a shiny motorcycle appeared he… Philip.
Philip finished the tenth grade and worked all summer to save up for a motorcycle. He worked as a loader, then at the construction site, then in the gardens.
He was tanned. With a gorgeous smile and dark brown curls. All the girls of the yard and beyond ran after Philip.
And he knew it very well and did not miss the opportunity to walk with one or the other. For a good face, constant help to the school, participation in concerts, performances in the local house of culture, he was given “A’s”, so his studies went like clockwork.
His father wanted Philip to enter a prestigious university to study law, but the boy secretly dreamed of the stage and secretly learned to dance. With such appearance, charm and charisma it was not surprising.
Sophia grew up with Philip, remembered how they played in the sandbox.
So what if he was two years older. When they were little, they were like water, but then he quickly began to move away and stopped noticing his childhood friend.
And Sophia lived with her unrequited love and just sighed, watching Philip smiling dazzlingly at another passion. Thin, small, with sparse white hair, with freckles, she understood that she had no chance. None at all. But a faint hope always loomed somewhere in the distance.
Sophia moved away from pink dreams only when her mother called her again. The girl hurriedly stopped hanging clothes and, looking once again at Philip, hurried into the apartment…
…Sophia met Kevin right after graduating from university. To be more precise, he was her first customer. He paid well for the project, helped her to get promoted, and then courted her for a long time.
Kevin was six years older, ran a small family hotel business with his sister. He turned out to be very patient, understanding the bride’s perfectionism and her somewhat coldness. In the end, Sophia realized that with him she would have a warm, measured and calm life.
And when she was already a well-known and popular designer in the city, they sold the apartment and bought a house.
The selected tiles were sent the same day. Sophia rubbed her hands happily and was already thinking about what kind of plumbing to install.
-“My sister says the crew that was doing repairs in her apartment has left,” Kevin hung up the phone and looked at his wife disappointedly.
-“And my guys can’t do it, everything is busy. We’ll have to look through the ads…
…-Well, let’s go, you’re going to stay at home like glued all summer anyway, – cried Victoria’s girlfriend.
Sophia had been fighting off the offer to go to the country to Victoria’s older brother’s birthday party for several minutes. Victoria was bored alone, and she was squirming as much as she could. Finally Sophia agreed. She warned her mother, quickly got ready, threw a towel, a change of clothes and a comb into her backpack.
A big company gathered at the dacha. In addition to young people, there were also Victoria’s parents, who did not let the holiday turn into an unpredictable direction. The guests were scurrying back and forth, someone was playing volleyball, someone was sneaking sparkling wine from the eyes of adults.
Victoria’s brother stood in front of the grill and fried ten skewers with kebabs at once. At the same time giving instructions where and what to put. He was eighteen years old. He graduated from high school, so the dacha was full of his classmates and boys from a parallel class. Sophia and Victoria immediately saw a lot of familiar faces. When the guests were already seated at a huge table outside, and Victoria’s father began to make a toast, a familiar motorcycle rumbled on the road.
-О! Here comes Philip!” – the birthday boy shouted joyfully and rushed to the gate.
A few minutes later Philip entered the yard with the birthday boy. Sophia’s heart sank. She instantly tried to hide behind Victoria’s back.
-“What are you doing?” her friend whispered to her. “Oh, Philip. Of course.
Philip greeted all the guests, apologized for being late and plopped down on the bench next to the birthday boy.
The party was fun. In the evening, the guys took the TV to the porch and turned on the karaoke. Sophia and Victoria sat in the company of girls and talked. Suddenly Philip came out on the porch, fiddling with the remote control, choosing a song and looking around at the guests, especially lingering on the girls, began to dance to the beat of the music from the speakers.
Philip also sang…
The incendiary hit raised almost all the guests from the benches, they clapped and sang along. And Sophia sat open-mouthed and did not take her eyes off Philip. It seemed to her that he sang only for her. Moreover, the performer himself, as it seemed to her, stealingly threw gambling glances in her direction.
Then Philip sang a few more songs, and then the microphone went to his hands.
-“So, he remembers,” Sophia whispered softly, remembering his look, “So, everything is not in vain.
Suddenly an inexplicable courage awoke in her. Sophia felt an impulse and rushed forward, leaving timidity behind.
When the singers decided to take a break and eat, she followed Philip to the kitchen and snuck in after him. Sophia tiptoed in. Philip was greedily drinking cold compote with his back to her. He seemed like some celebrity from another world, who suddenly had a chance to touch. Sophia, not fully understanding what she was doing, crept up behind him and hugged Philip. The boy instinctively shuddered and even spilled some compote on his T-shirt. Then he turned uncomfortably and looked at Sophia.
-Sophia? How are you here… – he said.
-Philip, I knew it, I believed you remembered,- Sophia looked down at him, feeling her cheeks red as beets.
-“Remember what?” Philip said with a wary smile.
-“That you and I are really together… Since childhood, from the sandbox in the yard, from lemonade in the evenings,” Sophia said, batting her eyelashes.
In response, Philip gave a kind of smile from a mixture of awkwardness, condescension and shame. He gently took her hands away from him, put them on top of each other, and then, looking down at Sophia trembling with embarrassment, said:
-Sophia, you’re beautiful, but you’re not up to it, you know? I have music, a stage. And you have what? A basin of laundry, textbooks, working in a store with your mother? Get down on the ground!
Sophia felt tears running down her cheeks. She wanted to disappear from shame. She backed away and sat down on the couch behind her. Philip quietly left. In a few minutes his loud laughter and cheerful chatter could be heard outside the window.
That evening she slipped out of the yard and, smearing tears down her face, took the last bus to the city. She told no one anything. She hid her resentment behind books, then began to draw, then graduated from school with a gold medal and went to study…
…-Sophia, I laid the tiles in the corridor near the bathroom, and I found the workers from the ad, – Kevin said, entering the kitchen, – They will start working in the morning. And I ran to get ready. My sister can not draw up documents for a new building plot. I’ll fly to help.
-“Fly, assistant,” Sophia laughed.
In the morning, she barely had time to drink coffee, she heard a call. Two men in work clothes were standing near the fence.
-Long live the new bathroom,- thought Sophia cheerfully and went to open the door.
As soon as she saw the face of one of the tilers, her heart jumped, and goosebumps went all over her body. There he stood, Philip, in his overalls and carrying a toolbox…
-Independence is fourteen? – a familiar voice sounded.
Sophia gathered all the willpower not to get excited. At the same time she realized that Philip did not recognize her. Sophia had changed in fifteen years. She grew her blond hair to the waist and dyed it chocolate. Her thin figure turned into a seductive hourglass.
Philip has also changed. The same tan, the same smile. But the stubble on his cheeks spoiled the look. His hair thinned, and his posture gave out not a singer, but a worker. Sophia even thought she caught a faint whiff of last night’s fun.
-“Yes, this is where the bathroom needs to be tiled, come in,” Sophia pointed to the door.
The work went on. And Sophia, wanting to look like a friendly hostess, sometimes offered tea or coffee to the workers. At the same time she waved away unpleasant memories, but with cold pleasure she caught Philip’s interested glances.
-What he was a walker, he still is,- Sophia thought disdainfully.
The work took three days. Philip never recognized his childhood friend. Especially since Sophia’s last name was already different. And she watched with satisfaction, sitting in the open kitchen at the counter and drinking coffee with her laptop, as the once handsome Philip crawled on his knees on the bathroom floor and smoothed the seams between the tiles with a trowel. Where did the charisma and charm disappear? Where did the beauty disappear? She did not know, and was not very interested…
On the third day in the evening, the workers received the payment and began to pack. Philip’s partner urgently fled somewhere after his wife’s call. And he asked permission to clean himself up. Sophia did not object. She stood with her arms folded, looking out the window at the sunset.
-“Sophia, you make excellent coffee,” she heard from behind her, “even better than the coffee shop. Would you like to join me and compare?
Sophia got goosebumps, but she quickly recovered.
-And you Philip, you’re not very good at compliments, – she smiled fake, but Philip didn’t feel the trick.
-“Good,” he smiled back, “Let’s have tea together, for example, tomorrow?
Sophia slowly turned to Philip, tilted her head slightly to the side, squinted without removing her smile. Then she looked carefully into his eyes:
-Together? We?” She took a deep breath, “Philip, you’re good, but you’re not good enough, you know?
The smile slipped from Philip’s face.
-“I have design projects, customers, I love what I do. And you? Tiling, puttying and partying on weekends. Get down to earth!
She would have sworn that she had never seen people so surprised and ashamed in her life.
Philip looked at her, wide-eyed, mumbling something unshared.
He finally saw the familiar bend of her eyebrows and the mole above her lip. Then he hurriedly grabbed a bag with things and tools, jumped out of the door, pulled the gate on himself and disappeared
…Two days later Kevin returned. He could not get enough of his wife’s excellent taste and the quality of work in the bathroom.
And Sophia was quietly proud. Both of the bathroom and of the fact that she had paid for the old insult…
