by Calia Read
Severine made a face before she gestured toward me. “Macsen, have you met Katja yet?”
“I haven’t.” He held his hand out. He was looking at me so thoroughly, as though he was trying to see everything I was thinking. “So you’re Mathias’ Katja … nice to meet you.”
“Likewise.”
An extremely awkward silence circled around our table. I stared between the three of them and waited for someone to speak up.
So when Severine tipped her coffee and the dark liquid seeped onto the table, I lunged for the napkins and gave them to her.
Severine smiled. “Danke schön.”
I smiled and leaned forward anxiously. “You speak Deustche?”
“That depends.”
“On?”
“If knowing ja and nein are the only words in the German language, then yes. Yes, I do speak Deustche.”
“Some is better than none,” I offered.
“I tried to learn for Thayer, thinking that if we ever went to Bavaria I could understand some things. But after a few go-arounds with my Rosetta Stone, I gave up.”
“Learning another language is hard.”
“No, I just don’t have enough patience for it,” Severine said bluntly.
There was a high chance that most people would be put off with Severine’s boldness, but I found it refreshing.
Severine pointed at Macsen. “He knows a good amount.”
“You do?”
He shrugged, as if it was no interest to me. I almost directed my attention to the girls when he said in perfect German: “That’s all my mom spoke to me when I was kid.”
Nostalgia hit me quick and hard at hearing my language. But I was too curious to feel down. I slightly leaned in, anxious to ask him about Laurena. Maybe he would tell me more about their elusive mom.
Macsen looked at me with a hard look in his eyes. Almost identical to the one I was used to from Mathias. He subtly shook his head and I knew he would tell me nothing.
“What did he say?” Severine asked nosily.
“I said that Mathias speaks highly of your piano playing,” Macsen said quickly.
I gave him a quick glance and looked at Severine. “How many people know about me?” I asked wryly.
“All of us,” Emilia replied. That was the first thing she’d said today besides hi.
The conversation changed subjects. All three of them started talking about school and friends of theirs. I absorbed their words and painted a picture of their lives in my mind. Soon Emilia and Severine started to gossip about this person and that. They talked so quickly I could barely keep up. They reminded me of Simone and me. At the thought of her, I slightly cringed. I hadn’t talked to her the past few days and when she’d wanted to know what I was thinking I had no response. Nothing she wanted to hear, at least.
The sound of Severine laughing brought me back to reality. I idly scanned the room and met Mathias’ gaze. He walked through the door, stopping long enough to stomp the snow off his shoes. White flakes were stuck to his hair. Cheeks were red and eyes slightly watery from the icy wind. He almost looked boyish right then. He was dressed in black slacks and a charcoal dress shirt. A simple black tie and a wool topcoat. He stood out in this mostly college-aged coffee shop.
He had my attention and everyone else’s.
He caught me staring and for a millisecond, our eyes held. He made his way over to us. It had been less than twenty-four hours since I’d seen him last. Last night I had tossed and turned, thinking about what my next encounter with him would be like. Awkward? Or intense?
“What’s he doing here?” Macsen said underneath his breath.
“Baby brother,” Mathias placed his hands on Macsen’s shoulders and squeezed to the point of painful. Macsen shrugged him off. Mathias said hi to everyone at the table and then he looked at me.
“Katja,” he greeted in that deep voice of his.
He didn’t pull up a chair. Instead, he placed his hand on the back of my chair. The gesture was possessive and familiar, as though he did this every day. My insides twisted.
“I’m starting to think you’re stalking me,” I said out of the corner of my mouth.
Mathias leaned down; his lips inches away from ear, causing me to shiver. “I was having lunch with a client when I saw you come here. I just finished up and came over here to say hi,” he explained.
“Oh.”
“You sound disappointed, Katinka,” he murmured.
I looked around the table. Everyone else was talking amongst themselves, completely unaware that I was seconds away from turning into mush.
I looked over my shoulder at him. Our eyes locked. I saw the flecks of gold in his eyes. I could smell his aftershave. He had a small cut on the side of his throat, and without thinking twice I reached out and brushed my finger across the cut.
A muscle in his jaw ticked. He tightened his grip on my chair and moved imperceptibly closer.
“What happened? Cut yourself shaving?” I asked.
“Yes.” His one word response came out in a deep rasp.
Someone loudly cleared his throat. Mathias impatiently looked up, his eyes narrowing at Macsen.
“What brings you here, Mathias?” Macsen asked, a sly smile on his lips.
“I wanted coffee.”
“Really?” That was Severine. “I’ve never seen you get coffee here before. Ever. Have you seen him here before, Emilia?”
“I haven’t,” Emilia said quietly.
“Neither have I,” Macsen chimed in.
Mathias narrowed his eyes at everyone at the table. They just grinned back at him.
“I need to be getting back,” I said as I stood up.
“I’ll walk you,” Mathias said.
He didn’t step back as I stood up and buttoned my coat. His body brushed against mine and I tried to ignore the heat of his body.
I smiled at the three of them. “It was nice talking to everyone.”
“Don’t be a stranger, Katja,” Macsen said. “We’ll all have to get together and chat.” He spoke to me, but his eyes were on Mathias. A lifetime worth of secrets were hidden behind his eyes.
“Sounds good,” Mathias bit out.
Good-byes were said and Mathias and I left.
We walked down the street side-by-side. In Germany, he moved with the crowd and no one looked twice. People were focused on getting where they needed to go and that was that. In America, he stood out. Everyone gave him space as he walked by. Maybe it was his height. Or that hard look in his eyes that would make anyone do a U-turn and walk the other direction.
His phone started to ring. He pulled it out and barely glanced at the screen before he turned the ringer off and put it back in his pocket.
“Who was that?”
“No one.” He gave me a devastating smile. “What were you guys talking about before I came in?”
“I was telling them what a dictator of an instructor you were.”
He lit up a cigarette and I gave him my full attention. Smoking. I shouldn’t get a thrill from watching him light up. But I couldn’t help it. Mathias made it look so good. I loved how he tilted his head back and took the first drag, his eyes closing in bliss. I loved the way his soft lips wrapped around the cigarette.
All of it.
He glanced down at me, completely unaware of what was running through my head. “They already know that. Tell me the truth.”
“Nothing important, I promise.”
Mathias nodded. It wasn’t like I wanted to keep things from him, but this was one thing I didn’t want him to know.
“I like them,” I confessed.
“Who?”
“Who do you think? All of them.”
“They like you,” Mathias said.
“I can’t tell if that’s a good or bad thing to you.”
He flicked the cigarette to the ground and stubbed it out with a black dress shoe. “Not a bad thing at all, Katja.”
“What happened between you and Macsen?”
“You miss nothing, do you?”
“It’s hard not to miss the tension between you two.”
“Family stuff.”
I turned my attention on the sidewalk, not in the least surprised that Mathias was holding back the truth. “He reminds me of you.”
Mathias’ head snapped toward mine. He looked horrified. “Not at all.”
“It was just a thought. No need to rip my head off.”
He sighed. “We just have a tense relationship. That’s all.”
“Tell me why you guys hate each other,” I gently urged.
He stared down at me, an indecipherable expression on his face. “Hate’s kind of a strong word,” he mumbled, looking forward. “We just clash … all the time.”
“Still not making sense…”
“When our entire family went to shit, he lived with Laurena and nothing was ever the same.” Mathias stared straight ahead, but he had a faraway look in his eyes, as though he was stuck in the past. “He started to spend less and less time with Thayer and me. And those rare times we were all together he was distant. Laurena brainwashed him.”
“Brainwashed?”
“You’re confused.” He smiled, humorlessly. “Consider yourself lucky; that means you haven’t met Laurena.”
Even though Mathias was a grown adult, there was no masking the hurt and anger in his words. It showed that no matter how much time had passed, painful memories never left. I stayed quiet, worried that if I said anything Mathias would clam up.
“I saw all the fucked up bullshit she put our dad through. I never understood how Macsen would want to stay with her and leave us. And- ” On the road a car honked loudly, yanking Mathias out of the past. He blinked rapidly, looked at me out of the corner of his eye and cleared his throat. “Anyway … this is all petty family bullshit.”
“I don’t know what petty family bullshit is. You have parents that are still on this Earth, and I have parents that are six feet under.”
“Katja…”
I quickly spoke up. “You’re not going to say sorry, are you?”
His mouth twitched. “No.”
“No?”
“No,” he confirmed. “I was just going to say that our conversation is dark and fucked-up and way too morbid for one in the afternoon. Let’s talk about something else.”
He wrapped an arm around me, pressing me toward him. I was so taken off guard I almost tripped. I stared at up at him, but he stared straight ahead. Tentatively, I wrapped my arm around his waist. We walked down the street like a couple. And maybe we were, but I knew we had a short ride.
I knew we wouldn’t last.
Once the building faded into trees, I slowed my steps. “Where are we going?”
“Just go with it.”
“Have you ever said that before in your life?”
“Not once.”
I smiled and when a large park revealed itself in front of us, I broke away and ran forward. The trees may have been stripped of their branches, but with the snow covering the limbs, it truly looked like a winter wonderland. There were no human footprints, just small animal ones. It truly felt like we were in our own world.
I turned around. “This is beaut-”
My words were cut off by a huge snowball. It hit my cheek. The mushy wetness slowly slid down toward my neck. Large chunks fell to my coat. My eyes cut straight to Mathias. He stood there, wiping snow off his hands, not even bothering to hide his shit-eating grin.
“What was that for?”
He shrugged. “Felt like it.”
“You felt like it?” I kept my face solemn. It was hard work and soon it was paying off.
Mathias’ smiled faded. “Katja, I was just kidding.”
He stepped toward me. Quickly, I scooped up some snow. I barely had time to mesh it into circle before I chucked it at Mathias. It hit him straight in the crotch.
The snowball skittered down his pant leg and burst into thousands of pieces when it hit the ground.
Mathias looked between his pants and me. Shock clearly written across his features.
I tried my hardest to keep my face straight, but I failed and snorted. “Oh, Mr. Sloan. That’s highly inappropriate.”
“You think this is funny?”
“Considering it looks like you peed your pants, yes. Yes, I do.”
Mathias stalked toward me. When he continued to move forward with no signs of stopping, I turned and ran.
I heard his footsteps hot on my tracks and laughed breathlessly. I knew he would catch up to me, but I didn’t think he would so quickly.
He tackled me to ground. The air was sucked out of me, as Mathias’ weight pressed into me.
Even so, I couldn’t stop smiling.
Mathias brushed aside a few strands tangled around my face. One look at his eyes and I saw the playfulness of the moment was starting to fade.
“I’m freezing,” I whispered.
His hold tightened and as he lowered his head, he said: “I’m not.”
M A T H I A S
My doorbell kept ringing. I tried to ignore it; I was already late to work. Whoever was there would give up and walk away. And I was right. The ringing stopped. Only for a second, before someone started pounding on the door.
The last vestiges of my patience broke. As I fixed the knot of my tie, I yanked the door open.
Standing there with tears streaming down her face was Rebecca. Her hands were curled into fists, frozen in the air. They slowly lowered and I arched a brow.
“You’re ignoring my calls.”
I shrugged indifferently. “I’ve been busy.”
Rebecca saw right through my words and narrowed her eyes. “If you’re going to end it, at least have the balls to tell me to my face.”
“What is there to end?”
Her cheeks became stained red.
“I’m being honest with you.”
She looked ready to attack me.
“I saw you with her,” she said, and a dark smile appeared.
My brows lifted. “With who?”
“Cut the shit, Mathias. I’m talking about Katja.”
“What about her?”
“You’re with her,” she accused.
I smiled darkly. “No, I’m not. And just because you saw me with her, doesn’t mean shit. I was with Thayer yesterday. Am I with him, too?”
Rebecca brushed past me and entered my apartment. I closed the door and watched as Rebecca circled around the living room, like she was trying to find clues of Katja’s presence. When she found nothing, she faced me.
“Please, make yourself at home,” I said, deadpan.
“Fuck you.”
“Look if this is what you came to talk about, you can go.” I swiped my keys from the counter and gestured to the door. “After you.”
She stayed and I was beginning to think that I would never get her out of here. Rebecca advanced with a vicious look in her eyes.
“Can’t even say her name, can you?”
My eyes hardened. I pointed to the door. “Out.”
“Do you love her?”
“I’m not going to say it again: get out.”
“You love her.” Rebecca smiled slowly, a dark gleam in her eyes. “You love her. It’s easy to see. I saw you out to dinner with her.” My eyes widened. “Yes,” she laughed sadly, “I was having dinner with a friend when you two came in. I thought you might say something, but you never took your eyes off Katja. I was invisible.”
“Look, I’m sorry if-”
“I’m not here for you to apologize!” she snapped.
I kept my lips closed. She was like a crazed animal, ready to attack any person that got in her way.
“I’m here because I deserved more than a brush off.”
“I never brushed you off. Ever. Think back on our time together, did I ever once make you a promise? Did I ever say we had a future together?”
Rebecca’s eyes widened. “You’re such an asshole.”
“So I’ve been told before.”
“I bet Katja thinks you hung the moon.”
There was so much she didn’t know. But I had no intention of explaining anything to her.
“That poor girl … she has no idea what she’s getting herself into.”
That poor girl echoed in my head. I wanted to come to Katja’s defense; she was smarter and stronger than anyone realized.
“Rebecca…” I said in a warning tone.
But she was too consumed by her anger to stop speaking. She walked forward and poked me in the chest. “You’ve ruined me and you’re going to ruin that girl!” Rebecca said. She tugged on my tie and her voice became deceptively soft, as if she was letting me in on a secret that no one else knew. “But here’s the beauty of your fling: she’s young. She’ll bounce back and find someone else. Probably that man who is always by her side. What’s his name?”
I swallowed, trying to contain my fury. “Lukas.”
She smirked. “Lukas. She could be with Lukas. But what about you? You’re stuck in your ways. You’re so fucking stubborn that you can’t even admit you love her.”
Her words struck a chord in me. I tried to keep my face blank. Rebecca saw my reaction.
“She’s leaving soon … on Sunday, right?”
I said nothing.
“What are you going to do when she leaves? Go destroy someone else so you can forget about her? That’s your pattern, isn’t it? I was that woman, wasn’t I?”
“You were one of them.”
She paled. Rebecca would’ve kept going, but I was done with this conversation. I grabbed ahold of her wrists, firmly pulling her hands off of me, and pronounced my words slowly. “It’s time for you to go.”
She jerked out of my grasp and slowly walked toward the door. “Fuck you, Mathias,” she whispered. Her hand curled around the doorknob as she looked over her shoulder at me. “No one will ever love you if you never let them in.”
The door slammed behind her, echoing loudly in the front hall.
My hands curled around the edge of the countertop. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I didn’t need Rebecca to tell me what I already knew. There’d been so many women before Katja, but now I realized that wasn’t possible anymore. I could only see Katja’s face. She was going to leave though, all too quickly, and the thought of her walking out of my life brought me physical pain.