Journey || Erik Durm

♂

ERIK:

                     SOMETIMES, I wondered why Mario sought my company. Like today, for instance, when he had forged an emergency in order to steamroll me to Berlin. He had known that I wouldn't come without cause—the commute was too long—so he'd invented one, although promising that it was genuine, but that I'd have to wait until later tonight to figure out what it was.

We lounged around the diner, assisting Mama and whatnot until eventually, Mario cornered me out on the boulevard. Although night had not yet fallen, he seemed eager, anticipative to drop his secretive act. "Erik."

"Yeah?"

Mario bit his lip, eyes dancing around the diner's fronts; his eyes stilled as they discovered Ann-Kathrin's laughing figure through the glassy windows, and then, in a threateningly low voice, he said, "You see that white honda in front of us?" I did. "Get in it. We're going for a drive."

I gazed at him suspiciously. "Okay."

Once we were safely buckled in the car with Mario on the driver's seat, he apprehensively dropped the bomb; "I'm proposing."

"Oh, me too."

"What?"

"I'm proposing the hypothesis that you're acting weird as hell."

"No, idiot," he chastised, plastering on a forced expression. "I—I'm proposing. I'm asking Ann-Kathrin to marry me."

My lips stirred, forming an o. "You're—wow."

I stared at Mario—really stared at him—and uncannily derived happiness from the trivialities I noticed on his face, like the way his eyes swooned in nervousness, and his lips, which were pursed in expectancy. Mario—the same Mario who had guided me during my first days in Dortmund, the same Mario with whom I'd broken many nights relentlessly playing FIFA, that Mario who had been the cornerstone during my adversities—was going to get married.

"Wow," I extorted, still processing. "You're getting married."

"Not yet. She might refuse."

I tsk'd. "As if. Ann is crazy about you."

"Then you'll be best man?" he requested, his voice laced with hope.

Chucking his shoulder with my knuckles, I said, "Duh. Loosen up."

"You'll have to give a speech."

"I'll wing it."

He heaved out a sigh, a seemingly overdue gesture that had been suppressing for too long. "I'm sort of nervous."

"I can tell. But it's natural, anyway. You're getting married."

"You keep saying that, but she might still refuse."

"As if," I repeated incredulously. "Ann is crazy about you."

He chuckled, rolling his eyes. "Touché."

Silence reigned over the car for a moment's worth, and I nonchalantly unrolled the window, discerning the passing sights. The inbetweens of trees, where there were no leaves, glistened like stars. It was a glorious afternoon for a drive, and with the sky drenched in a delicate palette of scarlet and aquamarine, I contemplated my sadness, wondering if it was realistic to be sad in a world like this, where a beauty so daintily extravagant danced above, disguised within the atmosphere as skies and stars.