Sudden decisions

25 - He

Sanem

The sound of the doorbell jolts everyone, my parents are the first to move towards the stairs to welcome the guests while Leyla and I follow close behind with Ayhan and Osman.
I am excited, I struggle to breathe and the frantic beating of my heart almost prevents me from understanding what my father is saying to me once we arrive in front of the front door.
"Open Sanem, it's only right that you should be the one to welcome them."
My parents move to the side to allow me to reach the doorknob while another ringing of the doorbell suggests that those on the other side of the door seem to be quite impatient.
Heart in my throat, I grab the latch and close my eyes for a moment, inhaling deeply to prepare myself for what is about to happen.
I open them again slowly with a bowed head and struggle to make sense of what I see. Breath catching in my throat, my crazy heart seems to miss a beat and then starts beating again at a convulsive pace.
It is not possible, I am dreaming.
The reddish light of the streetlamps seems to take me back to a few weeks earlier, to another place and another time, to that unique, magical moment that I cannot forget.

It is not possible.
Incredulous, I look up at a face that weeks ago, in the darkness of a theatre, was impossible for me to distinguish, and there before me is the most charming smile. I struggle to breathe and I am paralysed by an emotion that I fear will burst my heart.
Can Divit...
I can't believe that Can Divit... is the albatross.
My albatross.
I find myself shaking my head slightly as his deep gaze seems to want to confirm that he is. It's him, it's always been him.
"Can?"
He smiles irreverently.
"Sanem."
Can is him, the man who kissed me for the first time, turning an exchange into a romantic fairytale that has been keeping me awake at night and daydreaming in the day for weeks.
Our gazes remain chained I don't even know for how long, it's just me and him, for a few moments no one else exists then, a discreet cough and my father's amused words come to break the spell we've both fallen into.
"Sanem? Shall we seat our guests?"
I barely recover myself coming back to reality and the realisation that there are other people around us, I step aside and lowering my gaze I whisper.
"Yes, sorry, please take a seat."
Can walks through the front door handing my mother a huge box of chocolates and then, as everyone around us starts to climb the stairs to the upstairs living room, he walks up to me smiling.
He hands me the wonderful bouquet of flowers he brought as a gift and in doing so leans over to whisper softly in my ear.
'These flowers are certainly fragrant, but in no way can they compete with your scent Sanem. I could never forget the essence of wild flowers by which I was literally bewitched one night in the loggia of a theatre. It was thanks to that unique fragrance that I was able to recognise in the new agency employee the mysterious girl I had kissed you know."
His warm breath and the sensual tone of his voice send a shiver down my spine, I lift my gaze to meet his and gaze greedily at that face still unable to believe that my boss, the man I have come to know and appreciate, is actually my albatross.
I struggle to reconcile the two figures even though, I realise in a flash of awareness, they had both been able to make my heart beat at a pace it had never known before.
He moves away from me and extends a hand, inviting me to shake it and follow him upstairs. I look alternately at his smiling face and that hand and, as had happened days before at Mr Fabri's party, I feel I have no choice.
I can only allow myself to be dragged by the evil king into the dark forest and keep hoping that I won't have to come out of it with a broken heart.

Can

The time has come. The door opens slowly revealing a sexy version of Sanem that leaves me speechless. I register in the blink of an eye the tight dress that hugs her form to perfection, the hair loose on her shoulders and the 12-heel pumps. I swallow hard, it is a tempting sight and I can hardly take my eyes off that revealing dress that makes her beautiful and a woman. What I do not want and cannot miss, however, is her expression when she comes to understand.
She remains motionless with her gaze down for an infinite time, or so it seems to my impatient soul, then I see her raise it abruptly to my face in a flash of awareness.

She recognised me, I knew she would.
She is bewildered, I think she would have expected anything from this evening, but certainly not this. I smile at her, happy that now she too knows who the man she was looking for is, the one she called the albatross, the man she had investigated to see who might have kissed her among the participants at the Fikri Harika party.
She was looking for me as I was looking for her, unable to get her soft lips, a woman's body that seemed perfect for my arms and that scent so singular and unique out of my mind.
She shakes her head in disbelief, our chained gazes saying what cannot be said in words as we are both catapulted into the magic of our first meeting, something unique and exceptional. I know that she is shocked, just as it was shocking for me to surprise her in the living room of my house only to discover that I was closer than I thought to the one I had been looking for for days in every woman I met.
Nihat brings us back to reality and together with Mevkibe invites my friends and my brother to follow him to the stairs leading upstairs while I linger on the landing to have a few moments alone with Sanem. With a bow, I hand her the flowers I brought for her, flowers that I wanted to be wild flowers but, as I tell her as I come dangerously close to her ear, they can in no way reproduce the scent that is hers alone.

We stare at each other for a long time, excited about this revelatory encounter and what is about to happen next. She seems to waver for a few moments, but soon her small hand is in mine and together we climb the stairs like that, side by side, hand in hand, together, a prelude to the future that awaits us upstairs and in a few weeks' time.