Lost in You

Chapter 32

The days after I came back from Engelberg seem long and grey, despite Maja's best efforts to cheer me up and both of us already starting to prepare for the next semester. That at least makes me feel like I'm doing something useful. My texts with Marius are sparse and neither of us really seems to have anything important to say. Like we both know to avoid certain topics. Tonight, I planned to get a little ahead on my coursework, but when I opened the book and my notebooks, I can't focus. Instead, I turn my phone in my hands without daring to unlock it. "You two need to talk or it's getting worse." Maja leans in the open door and watches me. I sigh. "I know. But we don't seem to have anything to say to each other lately. So if I call now, there is one way the conversation is going to go and I don't want to go there." I look up to her, begging as if she could make my situation better. "You'll have to go there eventually. Or you call and find out that there was no need for the worrying and you only had one bad day." Without waiting for an answer, Maja leaves and closes the door to give me some privacy. I stop staring at a black display and unlock my phone. Can we talk tonight? As if he'd been staring at his phone, waiting for me to text, I get an answer immediately. Sure. You want to call right away? I'd love to. I text back because there is no point in waiting any longer now that I've started this. I video call him, because if we're going to have this talk and can't do it person, at least I want to see his face while talking. Which hits me by surprise when I actually see him on my screen, already in bed with tousled hair while the desk lamp makes my face look ghostly white and only half-lit. "Do you want to talk about when we'll meet again?" he asks with a grin that almost breaks my heart. I shake my head. "You still think this is a good idea, right?" I ask, leaving him confused for a second while he needs to work out what this is. In the end it may be my serious expression that makes him guess right. "It's not as easy as I hoped it would be," he admits finally. I sigh. "That's what I was thinking. Last weekend already, but I didn't want to ruin it," I say. "That's why it ended so weirdly. I thought it was just me," he says slowly as if he needed to add the new pieces to a puzzle that he's been trying to figure out. "No it wasn't. And I wish I knew how to change it, because—" I stop and look back at the screen again. I swallow. "Because I don't want this to end," I finish, the nails of my free hand digging into the wooden desk. He lowers his gaze, unknowingly giving me moment to breathe and push my books away. "I wouldn't know what we could change. If this is too hard for you." I shake my head like I've already done when Maja was suggesting the same thing. Only hearing it from him makes the words even more painful. And my answer even clearer. "No, I don't want to give us up," I say with as much conviction as I can put into my already shaking voice. The hint of a smile starts on his face. "Good. Then we only have to keep going like this," he says. "Don't you think it's going to be harder when you're back home? When I go back to my normal life?" When there is nothing for us to talk about every weekend? I don't add it because it makes it sound like there is nothing else that connects us but the reason why met in the first place. He shrugs. "Why would it be? We still won't see each other, but we'll still be able to call and text. We'll even stay in the same time zone, unlike two weeks ago," he says and I smile a little only thinking back to when he was in Japan and I almost drove Maja crazy when I talked with him in the middle of the night. "And it's only a two-hour flight," he adds. "I know. It'll be nothing," I joke, but we both know that it won't be soon when we can meet again, once he's back home and I'm back to studying and preparing for my internship. "Exactly. And for now we both should sleep. We need to travel early tomorrow morning." I blink away the tears that gather in my eyes for seemingly no reason and force myself to smile. "Good luck for the next weekend." "Thanks. Sweet dreams." "Good night." When we hang up, I turn off my desk lamp and curl up on my bed without changing into my pajama. When the tears come this time, I don't stop them. Despite the call not going too badly, there was nothing that gave me the hope I'd needed after last weekend. I wish my intuition wasn't so good.