If I Fell│John Lennon/Beatles FanFiction

Chapter 17 - 23.Dec.1960 - 10.Mar.1961

Chapter 17

December 23, 1960

I was ruined...one kiss had destroyed me.

It had been seventeen days since I'd last seen John. Seventeen days since our bodies had been pressed together, since his lips were on mine. The memory of the kiss was still so fresh in my mind, and yet it felt like details were slipping away, like maybe it had been a dream.

I buried my cheeks behind the collar of my jacket, the wind whipping around me. It was only two days until Christmas, and I still hadn't heard from John. Not that I'd written him either...and I should have, but I just didn't know what to bloody say. Were we going to address the kiss? Or pretend like it never happened?

I pushed my hand into my hair with a heavy sigh and kept walking toward Astrid's flat. My thoughts went through a constant, never-ending loop. One instant, I wanted to remember every moment, every breath, every sensation. Then the next, I tried my hardest to forget, because it had been unwise to kiss John. It had been stupid to let my bevied body do the deciding that night.

But every time I convinced myself how bloody daft I'd been, I remembered how he first brushed his lips against mine, ever so softly...as if he'd wondered for years what it might feel like. I remembered his hands trailing over me, cradling my neck, holding my hip, touching my bare skin.

I tried and mostly succeeded to not allow myself to contemplate anything more than the kiss itself. I didn't want to consider the implications and confusing feelings that my heart desperately wanted to explore. I refused to give much thought to how we might have forever changed our friendship because of one kiss.

One perfect, extraordinary, incredibly stupid kiss.

I slipped through the door and let out a breath I'd been holding, finally finding reprieve from the biting cold. I tried not to get my hopes up as I went to check the mail. In seventeen days, I'd gone from nervous anticipation to total trepidation when I checked our mailbox.

With my lip stuck between my teeth, I sorted through the letters and walked up the flight of stairs, barely looking where I was going. My eyes widened when I saw it, his messy, half-script handwriting on an envelope.

I pushed into the apartment, my smile growing with each step I took. Astrid stood in the small kitchen, the living room filled with travel bags. Her eyes peeked up from the book she was reading, her hair, as always, immaculate.

"How'd it go?" she asked, barely waiting for the door to close behind me.

My grin widened as I slipped my one piece of mail into my pocket before placing the rest on the tiny kitchen table.

"I don't know how or why, but he hired me," I said, my fingers clutching the letter in my pocket like if I let it go, it might somehow disappear. "I start in the new year. Just once a week for now."

"And this makes you happy, ja?"

I pulled my lips into an even broader smile and pointed at them. "Yeah, see, proper pleased."

Her nose wrinkled, but she smiled for me. "I'm happy you're happy, but did you have to get another job in that repulsive district?"

"Of course, I did."

I'd already picked up a job working the morning and early afternoon hours at a small breakfast and coffee spot right down the street from Astrid's place. But I needed more money because I'd enrolled in a photography class, and I didn't want to dip into my backup funds to pay for it.

I wasn't sure why I'd found myself in the seedy and despondent red-light district again. Maybe it was because it was familiar, or perhaps it was my foolish hope that if I kept working around there, John and the others would come back sooner. Either way, I'd contacted Peter Eckhorn of the Top Ten Club. I think it had been me mentioning that I was a good mate of the Beatles that had secured my spot mixing drinks behind the bar and serving bevs. Peter Eckhorn was a fan of theirs despite everything having fallen apart, so he took a chance on me.