metulji - jan peteh

Brunch

When I awoke, the apartment was alive with sound and energy. Loud conversations echoed down the corridor, water fell heavily from the shower and collided with the floor in the bathroom. Rustling came from the room next to me; I didn't know who's room it was, but I sensed that they'd just woken up, too. Something felt different to last night - both the fact that I was now facing the window, and the way Jan was no longer in the room. I assumed he'd rested with me, and then gotten up earlier. I was surprised he hadn't roused me - I was a very light sleeper, it didn't take much for me to jump out of bed in the mornings.

When I rolled over to where my phone sat, I had to check the time to work out whether my instincts or the noise from around me had caused me to stir. 11:07AM. A usual time for me, nothing out of the ordinary. But, maybe slightly late for Jan, who would message me anytime from 9AM, usually. Sometimes even earlier.

I stretched as I sat up, black clouding the edges of my vision as stars invaded my eyeline. Iron deficiency, probably. A wave of nausea hit me as the stars dissipated, and although I wanted to lie back down, I pretty much catapulted myself from the bed, hoping that I wouldn't fall over. Sure, I wasn't too steady, but nothing that a few seconds clinging to the wall couldn't fix.

I think someone must have heard me; shouts in Slovenian followed my rising and, before I had a chance to open the door, it had been opened for me. Jan.

'Can I come in?'

'It's your room.' I laughed, stepping out of the way to let him enter. 'Where did you go?'

'I slept with Bojči.' he replied, sitting down on the bed and reaching down to a drawer, which was full of clothes.

'No you didn't.' I replied playfully, but when I realised he was serious, I was unsure of whether to be happy or upset. He left me to respect my privacy, I was drunk last night and my words could not be taken as fact, but I was also upset that he didn't stay with me. I made my mind up that it was a good idea on his part, but my face must have still fallen a little, because he turned back to me and immediately looked away, clearly feeling at least slightly guilty. To make him happier, I went to sit behind him, wrapping my arms around his waist and resting my head on one of his shoulders. He immediately loosened up.

'Let me take you out, get you away from the group.' he offered. I backed away slightly; that had been my idea.

'No, let me take you out.' I bantered.

'I offered first.' he shrugged.

'I thought of it first.' I fought back.

As we continued going back and forth, a strange silence rose from the apartment. I carried on, determined and arrogant.

'Ooh, lovers' quarrel.' I heard Bojan mock from outside in a terribly fake, posh British accent. It was muffled, but I could still make it out. 'They definitely just fucked.' he added, slightly quieter.

'Condom's still on the table.' observed Nace.

That caught me totally by surprise. Condom? Jesus. Already? I wanted more time to think about that, but my mind was quickly wiped clean when a huge bang on the wall absolutely shocked me. Jan turned his head to face the door, just as Jure crashed into the bedroom, straight onto the floor.

'What the fuck, Jure? Get out.' Jan near-shouted, getting up and covering up his laughs by smothering him with a pillow from the bed, before helping him up and shoving him through the doorway. He stood, looking at Nace and Kris in slight annoyance for pushing him inside, but mainly in jest.

'I don't think they fucked yet, guys. False alarm.'

~0~

After me and Jan cleared up our little not-argument, I gave in and let him lead me out. He said his goodbyes to the boys; I only saw Nace, who was sat at the dining table. When I glanced over to him, he suddenly clammed up, looking especially suspicious. While maintaining very uncomfortable eye contact, he grabbed a small, blue package from the centre of the table and slid it under his hands, concealing it from me completely. Once he'd done this, he returned to his casual self.

'What's that?' I asked, looking clueless, despite knowing much better.

'It's.. mine.' he covered for Jan, smiling nervously. It only took me intensifying my stare slightly for him to crack. 'I gave it to Jan. He left it here.'

I sighed. 'Great to hear. I'll see you later, Nace.' I muttered.

He tried to wave, to look carefree, but in reality I could see his disappointment in himself for breaking so easily. I felt bad - my intent hadn't been malicious, just to see if Jan was the one thinking about sex. Clearly he wasn't, if Nace was one to be trusted. As I started contemplating how to make it up to him, Jan entered the room, and my focus shifted entirely.

He looked so effortlessly beautiful; he apologised for 'how bad he looked', despite being incredibly handsome. I knew my jaw had dropped at least slightly when the confidence on his face levelled out, and he broke into a smile. All I wanted to do was rush over to him, to rake my hands through his hair and drag him into a passionate kiss, but my instincts could not win today.

I held back my urges until we fully left the apartment, and had reached the wait for the elevator.

I looked at him.

He looked at me.

Within seconds, we were almost on top of each other. Our hands travelled to each other's waists as he held me up, the adrenaline making me wobble almost off my feet. After a few seconds, I unlocked my arms and moved them up into his hair, curling one particular strand around my finger, pulling on it gently. There were the butterflies again - stronger than ever, increasing my heart rate dramatically, almost forcing me to stop and catch my breath. I almost forgot where I was, at least until the elevator pinged, and we were back in the room.

The shock on me and Jan's faces was clear when the doors opened to let us in. My heart skipped a beat as they slowly (and incredibly agonisingly) parted to reveal what I hoped was nobody.

Much to our relief, there wasn't a single person inside.

Coming down from the high of the last 30 seconds, we broke into nervous laughs, both eternally grateful that nobody had had to witness our little makeout session in the middle of the hotel corridor. We stepped inside the lift, trying to remain serious, and then immediately laughed again once the doors fully closed, trying to fix our hair. A girl always carries a comb, and I quickly forced mine that I'd retrieved from my stash the night before through my hair, before handing it to Jan so that he could do the same.

We weren't lucky this time with the lack of crowd, rather there was a group waiting to board the elevator as we hit the bottom. I still had my comb in hand, and the pair of us stood looking totally guilty at the people in front of us, evacuating the elevator incredibly awkwardly.

Once we'd left the hotel, everything had returned back to normal - the pheremones had dissipated into the cool Liverpudlian air, and we were over the incident with the lift. Everything was calm, nice, peaceful. We reached Jan's choice of restaurant within a few minutes, and headed upstairs to where we were quickly served by a polite barista. Reaching our table, we sat down, ordering a pair of mimosas to start the brunch.

'You look perfect today.' he told me, looking lovingly into my eyes. I blushed a little, and tried to hide it, but before I had the chance, the red had stained my face. He stared even deeper into my face, his expression melting like hot butter, softening gently.

'You look perfect, always.' I countered, longing to see his smirk again, although he'd only just put it away. It quickly emerged again.

'You're lucky we're sat across the table from each other.' he confessed. Maybe his pheremones weren't quite gone. Yet, my will to lean over to indulge myself in his taste was not completely gone either.

'I wish we could be like this, every day.' I told him. It was a pointless statement - we both had lives, his evidently more interesting than mine, but still lives nontheless.

'I wish so too.' It looked like he was about to add something extra to his sentence, but he just cut himself off suddenly. Strange, but I ignored it.

Just as suddenly as Jan finished talking, I heard an all-too-familiar sound of a huge squad of people coming up the stairs.

'It was nice to speak to Kris last night.' I remarked, trying to distract him from looking at the entrance, but he insisted on not listening and keeping his head orientated that way, alerted to the sudden burst of noise.

Emerging from the staircase was Kris.

And then the rest of them.

Fuck.