“I really like you, Ella. You’re as silly as your mom and dad. I like silliness. And you know what?” He moved a little closer and wrapped his fingers around a few of my curls. “You kind of remind me of that little, um...”
“Frodo?” I suggested, looking at my hand in his. How could the simple act of holding hands make me feel so happy?
“Who?” he asked, squeezing a little tighter.
I worked my free hand through my curls. “Dad says me and Mom are his little hobbits, because of the hair,” I explained.
“Ah, The Lord of The Rings. Never watched it.” He let go of my hair.
“No?”
“No, I don’t really like science fiction movies,” he said, wrinkling up his nose.
“No? What kind of movies do you like?”
“I don’t know. Intelligent movies, movies with a strong ... um ... Annie!” he interrupted himself. “You remind me of Annie with the curly red hair and everything.” He smiled at me with his eyes.
“Annie?”
“Yeah, the little girl, living in an or... or ... I can’t pronounce it. I can’t say that word. An orphan, an-”
“-orphanage,” I helped.
“Thanks. I think I’ve watched it like fifty times.”
“Why?”
“Well, I have two older sisters and they always made me watch all of those silly chick movies growing up. But I kind of liked Annie.” He raised his eyebrows and smiled.
“Annie? Yes, very intelligent plot right there,” I teased, nodding my head.
“Come on,” he said, looking at a woman and a little girl getting into a cab. “It’s a clear case: I was ten, she was eight, she was cute, and I was in love. The sun will come out tomorrow.” He sang out the last part and held out his arms, letting go of my soaking hand.
“Huh, you and Annie?”
He nodded. “I guess I have a thing for girls with curly red hair.” He smiled and looked down at his feet and I thought I saw a red tinge creep across his cheeks. Could this boy get any cuter? “Can I kiss you, Ella?” he asked, already moving closer to me.
I think I nodded. I definitely stopped breathing.
He closed the space between us, wrapped his German arms around me, and then he kissed me like I had never been kissed before, well in any kind of way that actually counts. It was soft and warm, and for a second or two it felt like my feet had stopped touching the ground. From that long, first, real kiss, it all happened so fast. We kissed and kissed, and then we kissed some more. We never made it to the Oddfellows café. Somewhere between round twelve and thirteen, he asked me if I’d like to go to his place—a small condo he shared with two other guys, just a few blocks from there.
“You have to come. I have something I just have to show you,” he said, staring into my dizzy eyes.
I nodded, knowing I was about to violate the top three things on the what-a-girl-should-never–do list: Never kiss a stranger. Never go home with a stranger. Never have sex with a stranger. But the weirdest part of it all was that, even for a seventeen-year-old virgin only kissed twice (sort of), it didn’t feel wrong. I guess I was finally ready to live a little, love a little.
Live a little. Love a little.
When we reached the apartment, I instantly got cold feet. His friends were all out, and suddenly I felt so stupid for going home with a strange German guy just because he was cute and symmetric. He could have been an assassin with a Bourne Identity for all I knew, or maybe an undercover agent trying to infiltrate the Salvation Army or something. I excused myself to go to the bathroom to get a few minutes alone and to check out the scene.
Grandma says you can tell a lot about a person by their bathroom: too many soaps, perfumes, and lotions equal a person who can’t make up his/her mind. A basket filled with newspapers and magazines equals a person who is comfortable in his or her own skin, like saying, “Yes, I take a dump here; it’s a bathroom.” Too dirty a bathroom equals sloppiness, and too nice and needy signifies compulsiveness. What would a German serial killer’s bathroom look like?
I smiled at my reflection in the mirror, anxiety clear on my features. Of course, he wasn’t the Manson murderer, but that didn’t make me any less nervous. I was alone with a cute guy, in his apartment, at night, thinking about sex.
The bathroom was nicely decorated and clean (not too clean, though), and I didn’t find any sharp razor blades or suspicious drugs in the cabinets (of course I looked). I did spot three identical blue Colgate toothbrushes, which I found a bit strange. How could they tell which was which? Besides the matching toothbrushes, I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.
A gentle knock sounded on the door. “Do you drink beer?”
“Sure,” I yelled back. “I’ll be right out.” I took a deep breath and surveyed my face in the mirror. Only slightly red. So far. At least I wasn’t wearing a silly see-through hat this time. I reached for the handle and entered the world of loving and living.
Hans was sitting on the couch with a beer in one hand and a picture frame in the other. He had lit a few candles around the small apartment. It was cozy, and romance danced throughout the room, which made me feel both nervous and excited at the same time.
“This is what I wanted to show you. You know what this is?” he said, waving the picture frame in the air.
“No.”
He patted the couch cushion. “Sit,” he commanded. “Look.”
I sat down next to him, not too close but close enough to see the picture.
“This is me in Liverpool, sitting next to Eleanor Rigby.”
I looked closely at the picture and sure enough, there he was, sitting right next to Eleanor Rigby on the bench made by Tommy Steele. He was smiling and trying to wrap his arms around her. He was a lot younger, but there was no doubt that it was him. Easy to pick from a crowd.
“You see, I knew you before I even met you. I guess it was all meant to be.”
“But how come you went there in the first place?” I looked at the boy in the picture. Even back then he was symmetrically delicious.
“My grandmother was born in Liverpool. She is half Irish, half British. She actually went to the same primary school as Paul.”
“As in Paul McCartney?” I looked at him and held my breath.
“Uh-huh,” he said, like it was the most natural thing in the world. “Stockton Wood Road Primary School. I know the name by heart. I have heard the story about a thousand times.” He smiled and grabbed his beer.
“Oh, Mom would have loved this.” I could just imagine the look on Mom’s face when I told her. Hans actually knew someone, his very own grandmother, who had known Paul McCartney. She would make me marry him on the spot.
He smiled and handed me a beer from underneath the coffee table. “But the thing is, she is not that big of a deal in real life, not my grandmother, that is.” He flushed down the smile with his beer and then continued. “The other Eleanor. She’s a lot smaller in real life, and who can blame her for feeling miserable and lonely? I mean, Liverpool of all places.” He flashed a sly grin and perfect teeth as he looked at me intently. I looked away, pretending to take in the décor of the apartment.
It was actually really nice considering it was the apartment of three guys with matching toothbrushes. As far as I could see, there were only two more rooms. The couch we were sitting on was probably one of the guys’ sofa bed—maybe even his.
The kitchen was more of a kitchenette, like the ones you find in hotel rooms. A huge drum was situated in the middle of the living room, and right above it, a mountain bike hung down from the ceiling on some kind of wire. It was definitely a guys’ apartment.
“Mike’s,” he said, looking at the bike. “He’s an avid outdoorsy kind of guy. You know, Washingtonian—always a little bit of mud on his shoes.” He smiled. “You wanna hear some music?” He grabbed the remote from the table.
“Sure.” I nodded.
“Do you like Sting or is that too European and old for you?”
; “Too old?” I looked at him and smiled, just realizing that I didn’t even know how old he was.
“Nineteen,” he said, as if he knew what I was thinking.
“Seventeen—almost eighteen,” I said. “And definitely not too young.”
“Too young for what?” He grabbed his beer and looked at me with eyes I couldn’t quite read. Is he asking me what I think he’s asking me?
“For Sting,” I sputtered and cleared my throat, averting my eyes to the beer on the table. The label said, “imported goods.” Just like Hans. “Sting is not too old for me,” I rephrased. “He’s actually Mom’s all-time favorite, after the Beatles, that is.”
“Your Mom’s?” He smiled.
“Okay,” I said and took a tiny sip of the imported goods. “Enough about my mom and dad.” I held up my right hand like a Girl Scout. “I swear.”
“No, no, no, I kind of like the way you talk about your parents,” he said, not a drop of sarcasm in his voice. “They seem very cool. I guess growing up with them was a lot of fun.”
He was right; I had spent half the time walking from the Oddfellows Café to his apartment talking about Mom and Dad. But I guess it was just so much easier to talk about something or someone else besides myself.
I nodded. “It was. I mean it is actually a lot of fun. They are always so, so ... you know what my Dad always used to do coming home from work?”
He smiled and grabbed my hand.
“Okay, I’m doing it again?” I looked down at our hands. I could feel him nodding. “Okay, I’ll stop now.” I took in his dazzling eyes and smiled.
He nodded and almost whispered, “I know.”
“You know?”
Gently, he removed the beer from my hand and put it on the table. He got down on his knees and moved over in front of me and placed both his hands on my hips. Suddenly I was acutely aware of my pulse—and pretty much everything attached to it—pumping at a very fast pace. Was this a perfectly normal reaction to a pair of German male hands on your hips, or was I having some kind of a heart attack at the age of seventeen? “Well, kissing and talking at the same time is not humanly possible. And I want to kiss you over and over again. And after that, I want to kiss you some more.”
And that was the end of talking about Mom and Dad and the beginning of something that definitely did not involve talking about Mom and Dad.
AS A FIRST TIMER, I didn’t know what to expect, but it was so different from what I had learned from friends back at school, or from what I had read. Hans was gentle, and incredibly sweet and patient. After kissing on the couch for a long time, he rose to his feet and grabbed my hand and we kissed our way to his bedroom. His bed was soft and infused with lavender and ... him. When he leaned over and turned off the little football lamp, I lost a lot more than half of my clothes. Apparently, I also lost all of my self-consciousness about being naked and shy.
Hans whispered, “Are you okay, Ella?” as he ran his hand down my bare back.
I nodded, holding my breath. His hand stopped at the top of my panties. “You want me to take them off?” he said, wetting my ear with his tongue.
Still unable to find my voice, I simply nodded my reply, holding my breath.
He tugged my panties down below my knees at a wonderfully torturous pace and finally slid them over my feet. And just like that I was naked, lying in bed with a naked boy halfway on top of me, kissing me all over. Live a little, love a little.
Just as I closed my eyes and began to let go, he pulled his lips away and sat up and turned on the little football lamp.
“I want to be honest with you before we, um, before we, you know.” A small smile painted his lips as his eyes focused on the blanket. He looked so cute with his blond hair all fuzzy and wet.
I grabbed the duvet cover and covered my breasts and sat up against the wall.
His words came out quick and jumbled, “I never had a chance to tell you with all the, um, kissing, but I want you to know now and not afterwards, I mean, that wouldn’t be fair, that wouldn’t look right.” He grabbed my hand under the cover. I couldn’t quite read his expression. Is he nervous, sad, or both?
As my mind continued to wander, I felt as if an IV of ice cold water had been injected directly into my veins. I was still hot and shivering at the same time. Nausea welled up inside my stomach. Oh, no. What if he’s married? Engaged? Sick? Dying? Does he have Herpes or something?
“I’m going back to Germany in...” He stopped and looked at his watch, “in twenty-two hours.” Both relief and sadness washed over me at once. He’s leaving? It was even worse than the Herpes scenario. He looked up at the ceiling and continued. “My scholarship’s up. I was only here for the spring semester and to stay for the summer, but, um, after tonight ... I wish that I was staying forever. I’m falling in love with you, Ella.” His eyes bore into mine, as if he were speaking straight to my soul. “Being here with you tonight, talking with you, looking at you, hearing you talk about your parents and seeing you blush every time I get a little closer, well, it makes me realize that I’ve never been in love before, not like this. I know it sounds a bit odd coming from a nineteen-year-old boy, but, what can I say? I’m a hopeless romantic. I guess you can thank my sisters for that.” He smiled and ran his fingers through his curly hair. “Actually, it’s even worse than that. I think I fell in love with you the very first time I saw you stepping out of your parents’ car at the food drive—when you turned around and looked at me. And then when we met at Starbucks again... I just wanted to be alone with you, but that girl Susan was all over me.” He rolled his eyes and continued. “And then when I saw you again today, blushing and wearing that silly hat... I just knew. And it almost made me walk away.” He looked down at our hands, hidden under the covers.
“Why?” I said feeling both hopeless and hopelessly in love at the same time.
“Because I knew that if I got to know you better, it would just make things worse, harder for me to leave. And I was right, I guess; I’m so much in love with you that I’m too afraid to even have sex with you.” Without looking at me, he leaned over and turned off the lamp and lay down next to me. “I am, Ella,” he said in the dark, leaning his head up against mine.
I lay there staring up at the ceiling in the dark room. I felt our heartbeats racing one another, and suddenly I couldn’t help crying. I had finally gotten the guts, to not only step out of my comfort zone of old women, old Post-its, and old letters, but to actually go out there and face a totally new world of boys, dating, kissing, and whatnot. Why, then, did I have to meet someone I was about to lose again twenty-two hours later? Why? I turned toward Hans in the dark and said, “I didn’t mean to cry,” as I wiped yet another salty tear off my cheek.
He whispered, “It’s okay,” and caught each one of my tears with a kiss. “Remember, I told you, I have two bigger sisters. A lot of female tears in our little villa.”
I could almost see him smile in the dark. I nodded and kissed him back. “I’ve never ever cried in front of a guy before, let alone a naked guy,” I added with a half-hearted chuckle.
He laughed and pulled me close to him and suddenly—in between a lot of honesty, female tears, and declarations of love—we were back to the kissing and heavy breathing. And if there were ever a time when I felt ready to have sex, that was it.
“I want to,” I said as he moved his hands further down my back.
In a ragged breath he asked, “Want to what?”
I whispered into his ear, “I really want to have sex with you, Hans.” I felt his chest against mine and his heart seemed to stop beating for a second.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes,” I said in between hard, desperate kisses.
His hands shook in mine and he confessed in a fragile voice, “I’m nervous.”
“Me too,” I said, but somehow I didn’t feel that nervous anymore; I felt ... right.
He leaned over on his stomach and opened up a drawer. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you,”
he said as he opened up what I assumed was a case of condoms.
I looked up into the dark room. Thank God. I didn’t have to ask. From what I had heard, this was not really to be expected from a guy. On the contrary, the guys my age would often think that this was a girl’s responsibility and a lot of girls, too embarrassed or insecure to even ask, had taken many chances in the name of love, in the name of fear. But I didn’t even have to ask, and it almost made me cry all over again.
“Thank you,” I said as he made his way on top of me.
“Thank you, Ella,” he said as we slowly moved into foreign territory together.
I closed my eyes and invited him into my personal space, my mouth, and then my body.
Live a little, love a little.
Hasta la vista, baby
It was after three o’clock in the morning when I finally called Mom. She had told me to call her no matter the time of night.
“I can’t have my daughter walking the streets of downtown Seattle in the middle of the night, waiting for a cab,” she said right before we left home the night before.
She sounded wide awake and I could just imagine her sitting in the kitchen, drinking her detoxifying herbal tea, waiting for her little girl to come home.
“I’ll be there in twenty,” she said and hung up the phone. It would take at least forty minutes to get there but twenty sounded better. It sounded more committed: Mom to the rescue!
Without exchanging any words, Hans and I walked hand in hand down to the corner in front of the Oddfellows Café. We had decided to go back to where Mom and Dad had dropped me off earlier. I mean, why state the obvious? Besides, it was three in the morning and re-directing Mom to a different location at this hour would be mission impossible.
We stopped by the sign I had almost knocked over earlier. He leaned over and kissed me. The sweet scent of air freshener lingered in his hair and I smiled thinking back to when he told me earlier the night before how he had accidently used the air freshener in his hair that morning, mistaking it for a hairspray. Now, I couldn’t help laughing again.
Lost in Seattle (The Miss Apple Pants series, #2) Page 18