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Full of doubt

We are at the beach, Lucas and I. Each of us is lying on his own sheet, his with a white star on a dark blue background, mine is ruby-colored, my favorite color. He is lying on his stomach, his face turned away from me, his eyes probably closed. He loves to doze off, caressed by warm sunbeams. I can only see his orange hair, natural, not dyed.
I myself am lying on my back, letting the sun shine on my stomach, not really noticing that it is there at all. My feet play in the sand, approach his, only to flee again and rush in the opposite direction. They seem to have developed a life of their own, no longer obeying me. I would never let them get that close to Lucas. For weeks I have been careful not to get too close to him, not physically or otherwise. Distance, I have come to the conclusion, is the best solution to my problem.
Maybe it's not a problem at all, but you never know, I'm not an optimist. What
if...? This question haunts me day and night, no sleep; maybe that's why I'm so irritable and useless.
What if...? I don't want to lose him, he's my best friend. My only real friend, to be precise. Sometimes I feel like no one else understands me.
I can't afford to put our friendship at risk of losing him.
What would I do without him?
I turn on my side, leaning on my elbow. My thoughts race while my eyes scan his soft skin, which always felt so warm when we – used to – sleep over and share the same bed. Like a scanner that records important data so that it can be stored and duplicated, only I don't want to share what I've seen with anyone; the information I've gathered is for my eyes only.
My secret. My nourishment. The nourishment of my dreams.
Every bump is registered, every birthmark, every little injury. Aren't the hairs on his legs a little longer than they were a week ago? When my eyes reach his feet, they dig into the hot sand, using the big toes as mini-excavators to dump the sand on the sheet.
Can he feel my furtive glances? I close my eyes and lie on my stomach too, my face turned towards him. I'm standing in an arena, thousands of people are shouting and screaming incomprehensible things at me. What if... Questions swirl around me, then stop and come at me with aggressive expressions. Claustrophobia overcomes me, panic. Deep breathing, Markus, that calms you!
Can he hear my thoughts, my doubts and my hopes, which, against my nature, keep springing up in me?
Fear and joyful anticipation of what will probably never happen alternate so quickly that I feel trapped in a labyrinth of emotions with only one way out.
“Lucas, I'm...” I whisper so softly that I can hardly hear myself. I don't get to finish the sentence, I feel paralyzed again, standing in the arena again.
Suddenly there is a dead silence, not a soul in sight. I am alone, no one to help me find my way until his voice reaches me from afar.
“I know,” the supposedly sleeping man says, and in a matter of seconds, he unties
the complicated knot that I have painstakingly tied in the last few weeks.
His hand reaches for mine, and he squeezes it. I see a smile as he turns to me and looks at me.
The people in the arena cheer as the last question mark is also overcome. I let them celebrate me, but only briefly, because soon they fall silent and stare with open mouths into space. A hole, to be exact. Somewhere next to me. I turn around and look the hole in the eye. It has two eyes, both brown. One on each side, with a nose in between; a mouth; two lips; teeth flashing at me as he waits, smiling.
For what? For me to take the second step too? And the third? And learn to walk properly? Am I ready for that yet? They say the first step is the hardest, but the second isn't any easier for me.
He notices my hesitation, I look away in shame. He takes the second step, a third and a fourth too. Now he is standing right in front of me, our big toes are touching. He turns my face towards him, looks at me encouragingly. “Markus, you have to take the fifth step,” his eyes say. And they are right.
In a tense slowness, my face approaches his. My feet step on toes, my eyes close, it can only be a matter of millionths of a second before our lips meet. A stunned scream goes through the crowd as my lips are stopped by a fleshy wall. I open my eyes, a hand separates me from my happy ending. It belongs to Lucas.
“Wowowowowow!” He laughs. ”Easy, Markus! Just because you've come out doesn't mean you should throw yourself at the first person!”
Startled, I retreat to my towel, want to drop,
actually fall into deep water. A lake of tears. Tears that must not be shed, I don't want to make myself even more ridiculous than I already am.
He says quietly, “I love Jesse, Markus.”
My lips are burning. The sun, which has long since passed its zenith, stings me with its rays, draining me, greedily and painfully. I feel like dirt because I put my feelings above everything and hurt his in the process. Is our friendship over because of this?
I look up at him, forestalling an answer. “I'm sorry, Lucas.”
He doesn't reply, just shrugs indifferently as if it were nothing. “It's okay. I know I'm irresistible,” he grins at me. “Come on, let's go for another swim.”
The temptation is great, very great, but something is holding me back. ”Let's just go, okay?”
“Are you sure?”
No. Absolutely not. I want to stay here with you forever, just the two of us, without Jesse, without the rest of the world. Just be with you. “Yes. Let's go.”
While we pack our things and walk the few hundred meters back to the car,
neither of us says a word. I don't even dare look at him, I'm so ashamed of acting like a child.
You're twenty, you idiot, a voice in my head says, and the only thing you can think about is love! What about friendship? Are your feelings really worth risking this friendship? You'd only torture yourself and end up losing both your love and your best friend.
“Shut up,“ I hear my own voice as Lucas opens the trunk and is about to put our bags in it. He stops mid-movement.
“I didn't say anything, Markus,” he says, looking at me anxiously.
We get in, he drives. As always when we're together. My car, my chauffeur. All totally normal.
Everything is anything but normal. His stories, which have always cheered me up in any situation, have no effect today. His jokes seem bland to me, his words trivial. I retreat into a dark corner and sulk.
'Damn it!' I hear that stupid voice again, 'pull yourself together and get over it!'
As if I could. I'm sitting next to the man of my dreams and I'm supposed to forget him? Pretend that I don't want to rip the few clothes off his body?
I would be satisfied with a kiss for now, but I wait in vain for it.
Lucas rolls the car to a stop in the courtyard in front of my parents' house, turns off the engine and gets out of the car. He looks at me questioningly, which is unusual for him, who usually talks non-stop at every opportunity. He throws me the keys and then another look. An inviting head movement. Do I drive him home?
We stand wordlessly opposite each other for a few seconds, then he takes his bag out of the trunk and raises his hand in farewell. He turns around and disappears behind the high hedge onto the street. He's gone. And I'm alone.
The front door slams shut behind me, my mother calls something from the kitchen,
the twins' room booms Apologize by OneRepublic. I disappear into my
room and throw myself on the bed. If I'm lucky, I'll fall asleep immediately. It would be best. Switch off, think of nothing, forget about life for a while.
But far from it. No sooner have I closed my eyes than my mother comes and sits with me. She has an instinct for when we're feeling low. Maybe it's the same with all mothers, but it's certainly more pronounced with mine. She pushes my hair back from my forehead and lets her hand rest on my head.
“Quarrel with Lucas?” she asks sympathetically. She plays with my hair and waits patiently for my answer.
“I made a mistake.”
“That bad?”
“Yes. Several. And I don't know which one hurt him the most. They all hurt me, at least that's for sure. If only I had listened to them.”
“To whom?”
“The voice in my head. My mind. But no, my heart has once again taken over and led me into deep sh...” I open my eyes and look at her, seeking help. How pathetic it is to still be so dependent on my mother at my age!
“Whatever it is, Markus, you'll fix it. You've known each other for so long, I can't imagine there's anything you could do to destroy your friendship. You're a good person, my darling, and so is Lucas. Believe me, you'll get through this crisis.”
The great thing about Mom is that she never probes. She's not greedy for information like other mothers, but helps you without trampling on your privacy. She squeezes my hand, then gets up and leaves.
“Mom,” I call, and she stops briefly. ”Thank you.”
I actually feel a little better, the dark clouds on the horizon
are beginning to clear. To distract myself, I get an empty suitcase from the
storage room and look around the room for things that I can pack already.
In a few days I'll be off to university. Freshers. Sounds a bit like first graders. “A new phase of life lies ahead of you,” they told us at the information event last week. How true! The first time away from home for good, the first step towards having your own home, towards independence. Meeting new people, lots of them.
And me, of all people, when I have such a hard time with it.
One CD after the other lands in the open case, along with a few DVDs and a whole stack of books. Science fiction mainly and Shakespeare, especially The Merchant of Venice. After I've arranged everything, about a third of the space is left over, so I grab a few T-shirts and wrap the framed photos I want to take with them. Yes, even in the digital age, there are still people who put photos on shelves the old-fashioned way.
On the first one, Anna and Emma proudly present the award they received last year for an article they wrote for the school newspaper; the next one shows Mom and Dad in front of the Eiffel Tower last spring; then the twins again, this time at a photo shoot for a grimace contest, my final art project.
In the last photo, I can't manage to take my eyes off it. It was taken in London, in Kensington Gardens. With Peter Pan in our midst, Lucas and I beam at the camera, overjoyed to have finally met our hero 'in person'.
Seconds later, we renewed the oath we had made at the age of twelve, on the night we read the last page of J. M. Barrie's masterpiece. The oath to never grow up like Peter. That was two years ago.
I take the picture off the shelf, but instead of putting it with the others in the suitcase, I sit down on the bed with it and stare at it. How little we have changed since then. We have hardly grown at all, millimeters at most. Our facial features, however, have become harder, more manly, less boyish. We both went through a time when we thought it was cool not to shave and to walk around as if we hadn't washed for days. That always made us feel like we were the greatest, because the world couldn't touch us.
But that's exactly what it can do, and what it does. It complicates things that could otherwise be so simple. It forces us to give everything a name and a counterpart: black - white, hate - love, day - night. Either - or. Okay, there's gray and tolerance and... twilight, so a neither - nor. But what about both - and - also? Friendship and love. Just because there is no word for it doesn't mean that it can't exist. That the urge, the inner need is not there to kiss your friend, to get closer to him physically as well.
I wish I was in the arena right now, then I would ask people what I should do and how I should go about keeping my best friend and at the same time not behaving like a lovesick, obsessed teenager in his presence, gazing at his crush uninterruptedly and totally languishing, while indulging in the wildest thoughts and dreams.
But this time, my otherwise helpful imagination lets me down. Instead, a knock on the door brings me back from the security of the past into the uncertain present. Blonde hair, long legs, slim figure, the dream of many men. Her name: Isabella – neighbor's daughter, female buddy and ex-girlfriend.
“Hi,” she whispers in my ear as she sits down on the bed next to me. She takes the picture out of my hand and, without looking at it, puts it in the suitcase with the others. Then she moves closer and brushes an invisible strand of hair out of my face. “How are you?“ she asks in a tone that I would have once called seductive. Today I find it just ridiculous, especially now that she scratches my upper body with the fingernail of her left index finger and has a clear goal.
“Stop it,” I ask her, and at first glance it looks like she's obeying.
But then she gets up, goes to my stereo and puts on a slow song, after which she begins to undress with slow and lascivious movements. Although I'm more annoyed than turned on, I sit back and watch her, hoping it will take my mind off things, which she sees as an invitation to make her dance even more erotic and aggressive.
Soon she is sitting on my lap, dressed only in a thong, bouncing up and down, back and forth, while her hands are busy with the buttons on my shirt.
When one of her hands slides into my pants, she suddenly stops and looks at me indignantly.
And what does the idiot do? He apologizes. “Nothing like this has ever happened to me before.”
Anyone who expects her to hastily put on her clothes and slap me, then walk out of my room, offended and with her chest out, doesn't know Bella. She sits down next to me, looks at me and waits for me to pour out my heart. It's always been like that, even when we were together. We were basically good friends who slept together, and that's different from love, isn't it?
Suddenly she is holding the photo in her hand. The photo. That one. “Trouble in best-friend-land?”
I shrug my shoulders, because I don't really want to talk. ”Female intuition?”
“You clung to it as if your life depended on it.”
Or was it? As if driven by an invisible force, I tell her every detail of what has happened so far, tell her about my feelings, and finally about my confession of love to Lucas. All she says is, “Finally!”
This time, I'm the one with the question mark over my head. I'm sure I look pretty stupid, staring at her blankly. What the heck does she mean? Is she telling me that everyone falls in love with their best friend at some point? That it's a phase, a ritual that you have to go through? So, now you've fallen in love with your best friend, accepted that you can't have him/her, and then you're ready to fall in love for real and have a mature relationship?
“What? Why finally?”
She gets up and starts to get dressed again, while she explains to me what I never realized.
“Have you ever noticed how bad you feel when you haven't heard from Lucas for a few days? Actually, one day is enough and you withdraw even more than usual.”
“Bullshit!” I try to defend myself, but I can't think of an example that would refute her point.
“Really? Last Christmas: Lucas goes to Austria with Jesse and her parents two days before Christmas Eve, you hole up in your room with your headphones on and check your phone every few minutes. You don't relax until he texts you the next day about how cool skiing is.”
“I was worried about him, about all of them! The highways were snow-covered, God knows what could have happened!”
She is not irritated by my interjection, she continues: “Abi-Ball. Karen was your date, how often did you dance with her?”
“I danced with her, at least one dance! The shoes were new and killed me,” I point out with a dismissive hand gesture.
“I had to talk at you for minutes before you finally asked her to dance, and even on the dance floor, you only had eyes for Lucas. You followed his gaze across the ballroom.”
“How would you know? You couldn't take your eyes off Kevin, you had such a crush on him.” The best defense is a good offense, right?
“Our eyes met more than once. Did you even give her a
compliment? I bet not even when you picked her up. And she looked incredible in that black dress.”
“I probably did, I have manners, you know?” But I'm beginning to understand what she
's getting at. Why didn't I realize it before? Why only now? Now of all times?
“He turned you down, didn't he?”
The question surprises me. ”Is it that obvious?”
“Just a little. But... he's not gay.”
“Neither am I. I mean...”
“That's right. When we were together, at least I didn't have to fake an orgasm,
you knew what you were doing.”
I can't help but let out a mocking grin. “What? With Kevin...? ”
She shrugs her shoulders, then nods. “He's so fixated on himself that it's over as soon as he's... done. Which is pretty quickly, believe me! Then he turns away, turns off the light and falls asleep within seconds. He makes these weird smacking sounds, like a contented little baby. Totally weird, I'm telling you.”
She sits back down next to me and puts her head on my shoulder.
“Why do you stay with him then?”
“Because otherwise he's totally sweet. Every weekend he gets up early and makes breakfast and we have breakfast together in bed. And when he goes somewhere without me, he calls me all the time and brings me a little something. And when he drives to work in the morning, he always leaves something on the pillow, a poem, a thought, a flower.”
She looks at me dreamily with her big eyes. “Kevin is sweet and kind and a loyal soul, he reads my every wish from my face, we are perfect for each other. And you don't find someone like that on every corner.”
“Perfect?”
“Mhm. Except for the sex, that's...”
“Unsatisfactory,” I finish the sentence for her.
“Somehow yes.”
Which, of course, explains her appearance earlier. “So you thought, I'll visit my ex and finally get it right again...”
The moment I realize that I've spoken out loud, I would like to slap myself, but that's not necessary, Bella is already doing it for me. The next moment she is already sorry.
“I deserved that,“ we assure each other in unison.
“Admittedly, it was a stupid idea of mine. I just don't really want to sleep alone tonight. Kevin is away with his buddies for the weekend and my parents are visiting Grandma Ruth,” she explains. “Can I sleep with you? At your place, not with you?”
It'll probably be a little weird, but it's not like we just met. “Sure, I'll even share my bed with you.” She jumps into my arms with joy and thanks me with a thousand kisses on each cheek. More or less.
Her arms are still around me when Emma comes into the room after a quick knock and looks at us with a girlish smile. “Mom wants to know if you want to stay for dinner, Bella.”
“Sure, I'll stay,” she replies before taking my sister by the hand and following her into the kitchen. Just like old times, only different.