As soon as we set foot in Daniel’s apartment, we were greeted by his cat. Daniel crouched to scratch her head, “Hey, do you remember Damian?” The cat meowed in reply and scampered off.
After taking off my coat and boots, I walked cautiously to the living room, remembering the first time I had been here. How ridiculous I had felt then, how ridiculous I still felt now. A couple of lights were turned on and Daniel appeared by my side, “Would you like something to drink?”
We stood face to face. He was so beautiful. He was always beautiful, but bathed in the dim light, his eyes seemed to give off a golden glimmer of their own. I had something to say that I couldn't say just yet. I took his hand in mine. Daniel smiled down at me, amused. "What is it?" He knew, he was just teasing me.
If I had been given the ability to choose one moment in my life, and stretch it so that it could last forever, without hesitation I would have chosen this one.
"Daniel, I'm in love with you." He didn't move or say anything for a few seconds, he just kept his eyes on me.
"Me too, I love you."
He bent down slowly and pressed his lips on mine, his warm fingers woven in my hair. It could have been an eternity, it could have been the blink of an eye, but for that moment, I forgot about the whole world. When we parted to breathe, I hung to his shirt for balance, although he was just as unsteady as I was. I loosened his tie and undid the first few buttons of his collar. My fingers caressed the skin exposed there, his neck, his collarbone. His hand pressed mine on his chest. I felt his pulse against my palm, it was racing like my heart had been racing for the past few months whenever I saw him. “Are you sure?” he said. In my unfocused mind, I wondered why he would be asking such a question. I had no breath left for an answer, so I just brought our mouths together again. He parted my lips with his tongue and pulled me against him with more heat, like he couldn’t hold himself together anymore.
That night, Daniel lay underneath me in his bed, his skin burning under my touch. I brushed a hand across his forehead to remove a few strands of damp hair from his eyes. He laced his fingers behind my neck and brought my face close to his. We breathed each other’s breath, tasted each other’s skin. Just before I lost it and my mind became blank, I pressed my mouth to his ear and murmured, “I would die for you.” He kissed my shoulder, closing his arms around me, “Never say that again.”
It’s only a while later that I realised why he had needed to ask that question like he did. It was as if we each stood on one side of a two-way mirror: he was aware of everything, while I knew next to nothing about him, about myself. He could have been lying to me this whole time. But then, Daniel fed a fire I didn’t know I had in me. I needed him to keep it going.
A ray of sunlight filtering through the curtains woke me up the next morning, or rather, early afternoon. I turned around to face away from the window. My hand fell on something squishy and furry. It squirmed and I sprang up in shock. I blinked a few times as I made eye contact with the source of furriness. Daniel’s cat looked resentfully back at me, but her owner was nowhere in sight. A pair of sweat pants and a t-shirt had been placed at the foot of the bed. I put them on, reasoning they were probably not for the cat.
I walked into the living room and saw Daniel sitting on the couch with his laptop and piles of papers laid out on the coffee table in front of him. He looked up at me, “Hey, Damian! Did Martha wake you up?” Martha being the cat, of course.
“Oh, no… pretty much the opposite.”
He laughed and I sat beside him. It all seemed like a dream from which I hadn’t properly woken up yet. I grabbed his arm and rested my head on his shoulder. Not a dream. Everything was real.
“Do you mind if I stay for a while?”
“Stay as long as you want. You left so quickly last time.”
Was he referring to that episode when I got passed out drunk within an inch of my life? He had that twinkle in his eye that signaled he was teasing me again.
I left later that afternoon. I was meeting with Clara and some other friends in the evening. I would have gladly ditched them all to spend more time with Daniel, but it would have been a thoughtless thing to do, wouldn’t it? Daniel saw me off in the doorway, “You’re leaving for the holidays tomorrow, aren’t you? I guess I won’t see you again until the New Year…”
He looked at me thoughtfully for a few seconds, then broke his silence, “When the new semester begins, I’ll help you find a job in someone else’s lab.”
“I don’t want another job…”
“It wouldn’t be appropriate for me to keep you as an employee… Until then, let’s be discreet about us.”
I wanted to hide my disappointment, but it must have shown on my face because Daniel gave me a fond smile. He pulled me tightly in his arms before letting me go.
My mind was pretty distracted on my way back to my place, as you can imagine. That must be why I only became aware of someone walking behind me when I neared the door of my building. As I turned toward the entrance, I saw from the corner of my eye a man in a dark winter coat, with the hood pulled low over his face, walking a few paces farther. When he noticed me catch his glance, he promptly looked away and kept walking past me. Maybe this was all in my head, but I had the uneasy feeling that this man had been following me for a while. I shrugged. Following me… How many people were walking down that street everyday? He was probably minding his own business, just like I was.
Clara and Nicole had decided to organise a get-together that evening to celebrate the end of the semester. The plan was to eat at a restaurant and go for drinks afterward. Since I had been assured Manbun would already have left to visit his parents on that day, I thought it might be fun to show up for once.
So imagine my surprise when, as we were all sitting at the table of some all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant – Clara, Nicole, Jose, a few other of Clara's victims, and myself – I saw Manbun walk in. I spat out the water I had been drinking and whispered to Clara, "What the hell is he doing here?"
She waived at him to catch his attention, "Change of plans, apparently."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"What? Why?”
Manbun spotted us and approached our table, dusting the snow off his coat.
"Hey Eric, so glad you could come!" Clara said.
"Yeah, me too."
He grinned at everybody before sitting just beside me. What followed were some of the most awkward minutes of my life. I expected at any moment to feel his hand on my leg, or that he would start saying weird things to me. To my surprise, he didn't do any of that. He appeared to genuinely be here to socialize with our bunch. He chatted with the others, laughed at people's jokes, and made some funny comments just like a normal person. What was wrong with him?
At some point, I noticed he ate holding his chopsticks with his left hand. He wasn't actually clumsy, but it did look a little uncomfortable for him. I found myself stealing glances at the crooked index finger of his right hand. It seemed completely healed, so the injury must have been a few years old. One of Clara's friends, whose name I can't remember, tore me away from my reflections, "Hey, why are you sulking?"
I didn't know what to answer. I just opened my mouth, then closed it again, feeling exactly like a goldfish. Thank god Jose was there to save me.
"He's always like that."
Everybody burst into laughter. I shook my head and let it slide. Manbun chuckled silently beside me. The comments kept going for some time and ceased eventually. Once I was out of everybody's crosshair, I asked Manbun in as unconcerned a tone as I could manage, "You're not really left handed, are you?" A caustic smile stretched his lips.
"So what?"
"What happened?"
He didn't turn to look at me, but he lowered his eyelids, giving me a sidelong glance.
"What do you think happened?"
My heart thumped in my chest. I didn't have the chance to press him more on the subject. His eyes locked themselves on the restaurant's front window, his jaw clenched. He almost jumped from his seat.
"Hey, what's up?" Clara asked.
"I... I need to put money in the parking meter."
"You have a car?"
"I'll be back soon!"
He was already off, throwing his coat over his back as he hurried out of the restaurant.
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