Journey || Erik Durm

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CHARLOTTE:

                        DURING the passage of time between my night with Trevor and the months that would come, my life struggled with maintaining equilibrium. Initially, I had been determined to go searching for my father, but reality unfolded like an array of stark lightning bolts as I realized that I lacked the money and resources to do so. Manilla offered to cover my expenses, but I refused.

With Trevor's help, I managed to attain a cheap apartment deep in East Berlin, and slowly but eventually, the loose strings in my life began to tighten as I began meeting other people, acquired a stable job as a waitress by Capital Beach's pier, and forgot the seam of unfortunate events that had reigned the summer.

It had only taken two months.

Two long, tedious months, but months that had lead to the realization that my life had become a sandcastle, threatened to be submerged in tragedy. A simple tidal wave had the power to eradicate all that I had desperately glued together.

But I had glued something together, at the very least, and I prided myself on this loose thought.

I would read news about my father often—daily even—and I learned a lot about him from the press releases and news reports. He has a man with great honor, the teacher of weltmeisters, and this great presence of prestige in his life made me increasingly reluctant to approach him.

One autumn morning, I sat idly in my empty apartment, aimlessly scrolling through websites on my phone. Awakening, I had been onslaughted with an intense craving for Earl Grey, so I had placed water in a kettle, which screeched in the near distance.

Earl Grey.

Erik's favorite.

Erik.

I sighed, emerging from the wobbly chair and sprinkling a hint of bergamot into the boiling water. To no avail, I tried to dismiss the thoughts of Erik seeping into my mind, but found them solely intensifying.

"Stop," I said to no one in particular, pouring the tea into a plastic cup. "Don't think about him now, Lotte."

Lotte.

What Erik used to call you.

"Jesus Christ, Charlotte Löw, you've gone bonkers," I chastised myself, placing the tea on the countertop. I pulled out my phone once more, and as it unraveled to display the lock screen, I developed a peculiar, inexplicable urge to google Erik, like had had told me to do before.

With a newfound resolve and fingers that shook with longing, I typed each letter carefully, staring at the way his name spelled out, observing the letters, and then feeling incredibly guilty for feeling so passionately about discovering him instead of Marco.

Just as I was about to hit enter, my front door swung open, and I quickly erased what I had written, closing my phone.

"This fuckboys around here are fucking insane, Charlotte!" ranted Amberlyn, my roommate and an old friend of Trevor's, who had introduced us months ago. "I was walking down the street minding my own business when a jackass decides my hair and skin color are exotic, like I'm a damn fruit or something."

Amberlyn's hair was a rich, flaxen shade, and because the skin that complemented the hair was a light brown color, people questioned her frequently. Her father—from whom she inherited her conspicuous hair color—was a German poet, and her mother was from a place within the trenches of the Indian ghetto.

Her background was the epitome of a stark contrast, and she embodied it in her appearance.

A sigh escaped her lips. "Fucking hell," she continued rampantly. "Do I look like a pineapple to you?"