Journey || Erik Durm

♀

CHARLOTTE:

                    "I still can't wrap my head around the fact that you called me," Trevor said as I pulled my luggage out of his trunk. He locked his car, pulling out his cellphone and wallet from the front drawer. "Don't get me wrong, I'm really happy, Lotte, but it's confusing—you're confusing."

"I'll be out of your hair by tomorrow morning," I assured, dragging the luggage to the pathway leading to his front door. As Trev locked his car, I paved my way to the entrance, observing the fluorescent city lights, highlighting the urban tone of the skyscraper that stood before the two of us.

Trevor had come a long way.

"You're always welcome here, bud," he told me, gently ruffling my hair. He stopped transiently to look at me before mincing toward the entrance once more. "It's not much, honestly, but the view is spectacular from the fourteenth floor."

"The fourteenth floor?" I squeaked, agape. "You live on the fourteenth floor?"

He jingled his keys, chuckling. "You don't believe me?"

"Whatever."

Trevor led me to his foyer, which was judiciously mediocre and stenched of ashy cigarettes and vintage booze, but as we neared his apartment, the malodor transformed capriciously to a more pleasant, natural smell.

His apartment was dimly lit with a soft flame from his fireplace, and the distant lights from the other skyscrapers were our only source of light as Trevor placed his belongings on his coffee table and reached to turn on the lights. I told him not to—that this room was relaxing as it was—and he shrugged, leaving them shut for the time being.

I left my luggage near the door and walked toward the window, trailing my palms through the windowpane, where there lay an array of wax melts. The smell—Trevor's smell—was coconut, I realized, and when I stirred my head, raising it to the glasses of the window, I gasped.

A clink, of glass meeting glass, emerged from behind, and I tersely wheeled around. "Everyone always ends up there," Trevor was saying, but I lazily eyed the beer that he had placed on the table.

"Is that for me?" I digressed.

A faint, jocular smirk materialized on Trev's lips. "Maybe."

"I doubt you bought two bottles for yourself," I retorted, turning back toward the window, arms folded across the chest.

He leisurely strolled over to where I was, offering me a bottle.

I took it, thanking him.

Trevor pressed his lips tightly together, hesitating for an instance before asking, "So, what's the deal, anyway?"

I swigged the beverage, clearing my throat. "The deal, huh."

"You're running away from something again, Lotte," he deadpanned with dignity. "That's why you came to see me, right? Why else?"

"Just revisiting old places."

He chuckled lowly. "Revisiting? You'd never left."

"Don't play mind games with me right now, Trevor."

"You're sadder than I remember you," he murmured, placing his beer on the windowpane. A sharp noise encompassed the quiet room as his beer greeted a vase. "How's Coralie these days?"

Out of the blue, the room appeared much smaller, seeming to confine Trevor and I, enveloping the two of us. Due to the increasingly pooling heat on my cheeks, I savored a mouthful of the beverage that I had been given, heaving out a sigh. "I would've invited you to her funeral," I said faintly, "but I couldn't find you anywhere, Trevor."