metulji - jan peteh

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TITLE TRANSLATION: You cried the whole night because of me?

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The air reeked of typical British rain, the concrete dark with wetness as I trudged along the pavement. Although the droplets were no longer falling from the sky, the scene was dismal; shop windows were clouded with thick mist, and surface runoff fell from lampposts and collected into puddles on the ground. With each passing car, I winced, worried that I would soon be fiercely attacked with an onslaught of water kicked up by their tyres.

As for me? I was just on my way to Sanjay's house for what was probably at least the third time this week.

It was only Wednesday.

To be truthful, I hadn't exactly been coping well since I left Liverpool. Every morning, I'd woken up, totally drained and devoid of any meaning. All that I wanted was to just curl up and go back to sleep, to act like nothing had ever happened. Yet, every time I turned over to fall back into rest, Jan appeared in my dreams.

'Metulj, what do you want to do today?' he asked, his smile radiating beams of sun as he opened up the curtain, letting light stream into the formerly dark bedroom. I had decided to remain lay down when he had risen from the bed - I had been struggling to get rest recently. He had been so respectful of this, and allowed me lots of time to lie in before he got up to get dressed, to avoid waking me.

'I don't mind, Janči.' I yawned, stretching my arms up before sitting upright, leaning my back against the headboard. He sat on the end of the bed, just looking so happy to be there. I stared into his eyes, a wistful look coming over me - I just wanted to sit here and live exactly like this forever.

'We do only have one day left, remember? So if there's anything you really wanted to do, now's the time.' he looked at me worriedly, like he was afraid of invoking a reaction.

'I don't care. I'll be visiting you back at home. We're not limited by time.'

As I reached the door and pulled the knocker, I began to stress; I didn't want to burden Sanjay with all of my issues, especially given that he had been a big fan of Joker Out before this issue. Although I'd told him parts of the story, I hadn't told him everything; but I'd seen the way he scrolled through concert videos and skipped the ones that focused in on Jan.

'Lils.' he opened the door warmly, bundling me into a tight hug. As he pulled me closely, I wrapped my arms around him. Taking a few steps further into the house, he shut the door, in order to keep the heat in the house; although it was now August, the weather was still acting up horrendously.

Eventually, he released me, and we wandered into the kitchen to join at the table. He brought me a glass of coke - he didn't even have to ask to know exactly what I wanted - before sitting himself down.

'I'm really worried about you.' he said bluntly. 'It's not often you turn up in your pyjamas, and even less often you turn up in your pyjamas and also tired. You're losing sleep.'

'Its not my fault. He's everywhere, Sanj.' I complained.

'I am seriously worried about what he did for you to be acting like this.' he told me, and I didn't know what to say. Compared to anything I'd had happen before, this seemed so minor.

'Jan Peteh just isn't the man you want a relationship with.' I put it simply. 'It would be a lie to say I don't miss him, because I do. It would be a lie to say I didn't really like him, because I did. It would also be a lie to say that I didn't think I was capable of loving him, because I was, and an even bigger lie to say that I wasn't dangerously close to doing so.'

'I wish he did something really irritating so I just had one thing to say. It sounds stupid when it's all broken up into little pieces. He did the damage over time.' I finished the rant, feeling significantly better already.

'So he didn't do anything really bad?' he asked.

I thought about it for a moment. 'I guess not, no.'

'And you're still thinking about him all the time?'

'Well, yeah.' I coughed a little, preparing myself for the conclusion to appear out of Sanjay's mouth, one I'd also considered myself.

'Can I play a situation to you, and you tell me if it sounds familiar?'

'Go for it.'

Whenever Sanjay said something like this, it was about to be a long road of him absolutely flaming one of the people involved in the situation in question. Something about his tone and the way he repositioned his body in the chair told me that I wasn't going to enjoy what he was about to say. For once, it was me he was about to come for.

'So, there's a girl and a guy, as usual. The guy just exists, basically, and the girl decides to pull some red flags out of the air in order to not get herself too attached too quickly. Then, the girl hears something she doesn't like the sound of, and gets scared because of how other guys have acted towards her in the past. Not because of how this particular one acted.' He stopped for a moment to look at me, to see if I was relating. Although I wasn't too sure how my facial expression was being read, I was sure that I probably didn't seem too impressed.

'So she's scared, right?' he started again. 'So what does she do? She brings the red flags from before and throws them back at the guy, however true or not they might be. And then she decides she never wants to speak to this guy again, because of a persona she created in her head, rather than the way he actually behaved.'

Shit.

I was lost for words. I couldn't even come up with a response, just choked on words that stayed stuck in my throat.

'The girl fumbled Jan Peteh, for fuck's sake.' I exclaimed angrily. Sanjay seemed pleased to be victorious, but was more annoyed that I had managed to be so stupid.

'He played a concert last night, you know. In Zagreb.' he informed me. I wasn't sure why, it didn't exactly help.

'Where the fuck is that?' I questioned, still wondering why it was relevant.

'Croatia.'

'So he did lie to me, then. He said he was going back to Slovenia.' I was just coming up with random ideas to justify the situation now.

'Lil, it's been 3 weeks.' Sanjay looked at me like I was an idiot as he said this.

'Shite, it has.' I feasted in the silence, everything slotting into place. 'And he's been calling me and I've not picked up the phone once.'

Sanjay genuinely seemed as though he was going to throw himself from a building.

'I don't even want to talk to you anymore.' he said, picking up his phone and nosying through social media pages. 'He's fucking there, Lilia, in the glasses you chose for him, for crying out loud.'

He flipped the device in my direction, revealing a video of Jan in a deep red blazer, guitar in hand. Over his eyes were, surely enough, the exact pair of red-framed, cat-eye glasses I had bought for him.

'A fan probably gave them to him.' I waved dismissively at the idea that he'd taken them on stage willingly. I was sure he'd burned them, or stamped on them, or maybe just not brought them from the apartment at all.

'Nope. He was wearing them as he came on.'

'Fuck.'

'He was even singing. Singing Ona.' His jaw practically fell open. I was unsure on how to react.

'I'll pretend I know what that is, Sanjay.'

'The point is, Jan doesn't sing. He plays the guitar. And Ona is a breakup song.' he iterated, thinking I was about to catch on.

'Okay, and? What did he sing?' I asked apprehensively.

'Give me a minute.' he muttered, looking intently down at his phone. 'There's the English translation.'

Handing it back to me, I saw the words written:

Know, baby, know
That I cried the whole night because of you
The feeling
That you don't give a flying fuck about me
Is killing me