This Love

by Hilaria Alexander

  “Woo-hoo! Now we’re getting somewhere!”

  “Shut up!” we yelled at him in unison again.

  “Let’s not fight anymore,” I hugged her. Hendrick was smart enough not to say anything this time. Ally walked away from me and stopped in front of Hendrick, her face just inches away from his.

  “She’ll work you to the bone, you smart-ass,” she whispered to him in the sultriest tone I had ever heard come out of her mouth. She walked away, wiggling her hips ever so slightly. She knew he’d be looking. I bit my lip, trying to contain a chuckle.

  Now he was really going to need a moment.

  I thought for days about what Ally had said to me. I had to give him a sign I still wanted him, still loved him, still waited to see him come through the door like he did so many times before. I kept debating back and forth what the right thing to do was. I went with my gut and did what I thought might be appropriate. I sent him a sign, just like she had suggested.

  It wasn’t but a few days after, as I was walking home, that I came face to face with Lou. Not in person, but in print. A poster for his show was hanging in the window of a store. He was going to be here in Amsterdam. On July 21st. I looked at his face for the longest time, and my mind went back to the day I was trying to figure out where I had seen him before.

  His hair was the same length as when he was here, his eyes as beautiful as I remembered them. He was looking sideways though, and not straight into the camera like on the magazine Ally had given me. His face was covered in a bit of scruff. It was more facial hair than he ever had when we were together, but it was too short to be called a beard. But damn, if he wasn’t sexy. I exhaled a deep breath and stared at the poster some more. He had a serious expression in this photo and although I liked when he looked pensive, I was longing badly for his smile.

  July was only a couple of months away. It felt like an eternity.

  God, I missed him. My mind would go blank when I’d start thinking of him. The buzzing in my pocket brought me back to earth.

  “Hello? Yes sir, I’m on my way. I’ll be there shortly. See you soon.”

  All I wanted to do was start running toward Ally’s place and tell her about the poster, but I had somewhere to be. I gave the poster one last look and started running toward my destination.

  CHAPTER 28

  During my time in Amsterdam, I had learned I could get a lot done whenever I set my mind to it; the only thing I couldn’t get done in a whole year was forgetting about the person I loved. Maybe it was because I honestly didn’t want to forget him. Thinking about him still hurt, but it was a different type of hurt; it was longing. I longed for the moment when I’d see him again. Thankfully, that was going to be anytime now. And that was the reason why I was on edge. I had been on edge pretty much the entire week. I had no idea when exactly I would come face to face with him again. I had hoped he’d be here by now, but it hadn’t been the case.

  However, his show was tomorrow, so today was the last good day to get in town before the show. I knew him well enough to guess he wasn’t one of those musicians jetting to the venue at the very last minute. Still, I had no clue when I would see him. I knew he had to come around. I could have asked Johan, Helga or Ally, because they sure looked like they had all the info, but they all acted like they were in this secret club I wasn’t part of. I could see their evasive looks to one another. Something was going on, but I wasn’t passed the info.

  Maybe he wasn’t coming around at all, and they were just trying to spare me the disappointment. Maybe they thought I’d be better off not knowing a thing. But it just...couldn’t be. I knew it. Or more likely, I felt it. It was this quiet, resilient feeling humming in my veins. Maybe this was how it felt when you knew you had a meeting with destiny. Meeting him had been fate, getting to know him felt like a privilege, and loving him had been a gift. The hum in my veins got stronger, the blood pulsating from my heart faster and faster. My chest tightened, attacked by the feelings I usually kept restrained, the ones I only allowed to come out in the form of lyrics.

  I went about my day like any other day. I might have taken longer choosing my outfit, or doing my hair and makeup, but I went to work just like I had been doing every day since graduation, I rehearsed with Hendrick in the afternoon and afterwards we headed for the pancake house.

  “You look nervous,” Hendrick said.

  “It’s nothing,” I replied, shrugging it off.

  “Is this about tonight?” he asked.

  “Yeah, it is. I’m freaking out about tonight.”

  “You’re such a bad liar Ella!” he said, rocking his head backwards, his chuckling turning into his awkward, goofy laughter. It made me smile instantly. “I know it’s about him.”

  “Uh?” I said, acting like I had no idea what he was talking about. He bit his lip and gave me a serious look.

  “If you want to know what I think, he’s a fool if he doesn’t show up.”

  My face fell. Did Hendrick know something I didn’t? Was everyone being secretive because Lou was indeed not going to show up?

  “Tell me what you know,” I demanded, grabbing ahold of shirt.

  “I don’t know a thing. I just don’t want to see you getting hurt.”

  “It can’t hurt more than it already does,” I said out loud, not really thinking. I looked at him and I could see the worry in his beautiful blue eyes.

  I exhaled and closed my eyes thinking that would put a stop to the tears rolling down my cheek. I wiped them away instantly.

  “If he doesn’t show up,” I said, trying to sound resolute, “It will hurt, but at least I’ll know once and for all that what I thought we had wasn’t real, and he didn’t care as much as I believed he did. Eventually, I’ll find a way to stop thinking about him. Either way, we have work to do tonight. I won’t let you down, okay?”

  He nodded and gave me a reassuring smile, but still frowned, as he didn’t quite believe me. “We need to work on the set list,” I told him, trying to sound normal, not the ball of nerves I was inside. Hendrick started throwing song titles around and was taking notes on his phone as I said yes or no. I was so lost in our conversation that it took me a second to realize we had gotten to the pancake house. The lights were on. It would have been normal if it had been morning, but it was three thirty in the afternoon and we closed at two. It could only mean one thing. I placed my hand on the handle, but I couldn’t bring myself to open the door.

  “What’s the matter?” Hendrick asked behind me.

  “Nothing.” I let go of the handle, my heart beating out of control as if it were ready to jump out of my chest. I had waited so long for this moment and I couldn’t believe how much I was chickening out. I hated that. The door went flying open, without me or Hendrick even touching the handle.

  I let out a faint scream and my heart started beating even faster. It was just Johan at the door, smiling brightly. I responded with a nervous smile. My eyes diverted to the other side, toward the bar, where Lou and Lieke were playing checkers. I saw him before he saw me. It felt like having seven different moments of deja-vu at once. Probably all the different times I had dreamed of this.

  “Ella! Hendrick!” Johan said excitedly. “What are you doing standing there? Come in!”

  At the mention of my name, his eyes rose from the game and met mine. I had obviously forgotten how good he looked. None of my dreams did him justice. His smile, especially. I had forgotten how powerful, how disarming that smile was. I had looked at him for the total of ten seconds and I was completely gone, gone, gone. Sure, I already loved him, so he might have had a slight advantage. And those eyes. They literally drew me in. As our eyes locked, I felt as if I had been enchanted, summoned to go near him. He stood up from the stool, and he looked at me like I was the most beautiful thing he’d ever laid eyes on.

  We came face to face, just a few inches separating us. I was hoping my smile didn’t look as freakish as I thought. I was grinning like a love fool and couldn’t move my facial muscles. We
didn’t speak for a few seconds, just our eyes engaged in an excited dance. Lieke broke the silence between us.

  “Ella,” she said, reaching for my hand from the stool where she was sitting,

  “Lou kwam terug.” I knew what that meant: Lou came back.

  I turned to her, still in a daze, and I nodded, giving her a smile.

  “Yes,” I said. “He did. He came back.”

  My eyes went back to him, and he pulled out of his pocket the card I sent him months before, when Ally told me I had to give him a sign. I wanted to tell him so many things, but I ended up only writing two words: Come back. And he had.

  It was then that I lost it. I was so happy I couldn’t reign the tears in. I was so disappointed with myself. If there was anything I would have changed about this moment, it was the damn tears. I had promised myself I wasn’t going to cry, but here I was, scrunching up my nose and pursing my lips together, trying to hold back the waterfall. He didn’t seem to mind. Instead, I could almost say I saw his eyes brimmed with tears too. Strong arms enveloped me and he hugged me tight to him. I placed my face in the crook of his neck, breathing his smell; I closed my eyes, letting myself feel everything and memorize this moment. I felt shuffling and footsteps all around me. I heard Helga shushing people in Dutch, saying something I didn’t understand. I heard the doorbell and the door close right after. When my tears subsided, I looked up around us and noticed we were alone, at last.

  I breathed out a laugh.

  “I guess it’s just me and you now,” I said, still sniffling.

  He looked down at me, wiping the tears from my eyes.

  “God, you’re so beautiful. Even when you cry.”

  He swept my hair out of the way, and kissed my forehead. I closed my eyes and sighed. If this is how it felt to have him kiss my forehead, I was going to be a jumbled mess soon. He kissed my temple, my cheekbone, then my cheek and my jaw, making his way to my lips. Impatient, I wrapped my hands around his neck and dragged him down to me. A moan escaped my mouth as his lips touched mine, the sensation as heavenly as I remembered.

  I had thought so many times about his beautiful, soft, pink, kissable lips. I licked his upper lip and his tongue captured mine, eager and demanding. God, yes. My knees were buckling, and I felt my balance waver, but he wrapped an arm around my waist and steadied me. I was pressed against him and I could tell already this wasn’t just a kiss. It was the prelude to something bigger. And harder. Mother trucker, I had forgotten how it felt to have him just rubbing against me.

  This was the moment when I realized I had been so utterly stupid. I had convinced myself I would have been alright without him, that things would have just been grand if I never saw him again. I was wrong, so wrong.

  He kissed me softly again.

  “You missed my graduation,” I teased him.

  “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he replied, scratching the back of his head, “I came as soon as I could,” he replied with a disarming smile. “Didn’t you get my flowers?” he asked.

  “I did. They had no card though. How was I supposed to know they were from you? At least I signed my lame two-word note!”

  “Well, I thought a lot about what I wanted to say, and it would never fit in a card. And besides, it would have been a card typed by some flower shop employee, so I just decided not to say anything,” he said, taking a strand of my hair in his fingers. “I guess I could have told you ‘I’m coming back,’ but I didn’t want to ruin the surprise. So I just sent the flowers waiting for the right moment to say what I had to.”

  “And what would that be?”

  “That I never stopped thinking about you ever since we parted. All I could look forward to was the hope that someday soon I would be with you again. And your two-word card wasn’t lame, it was just what I needed to know for sure I was doing the right thing. I had been planning this European tour for months, just so I could come back and see you.”

  Talk about making a girl swoon. A sigh escaped my mouth and I’m pretty sure he heard that. He stared into my eyes and then kissed me again. I parted my lips, my tongue all too impatient to welcome him again.

  It took a while for him to be satisfied and honestly, I couldn’t complain. I had dreamed of this for too long, I never wanted to stop. Eventually, I had to catch my breath, and apparently, he did too. But even when weren’t kissing, the way his hands ran all over my body turned me on and made me feel crazy with desire. And his eyes. His eyes roamed over my face and my body in such a sweet, reverent way.

  The way he looked at me, made me thirsty for more.

  I wanted to cry for joy and ravish him at the same time.

  “I knew you were still in love with me,” he said, making me freeze on the spot for a few seconds. His hand was cradling my cheek and I couldn’t look into his eyes. I was too busy catching my breath and trying to slow down my heart that was beating faster than ever. I knew you were still in love with me. We had never declared it to each other before. It was true that I loved him, but why did it make me feel so vulnerable, the fact that he was so sure of my love? He didn’t say it in a pompous manner, there was something sweet in his voice, and yet, I couldn’t help fire back something. His words made me feel exposed. He shouldn’t have been talking about my feelings for him, he should have been talking about his feelings.

  I brought my arms around his neck and looked up into his eyes, “Well, that’s a little presumptuous, Mr. Rivers, isn’t it?” I asked him jokingly.

  “You know I didn’t mean it that way. Stop turning things around, Razor Tongue. I’m here because I love you.” I exhaled as if his confession surprised me. I knew he loved me, I just never heard him say that. I looked at his lips, and kissed him hard. After a while I stopped, so that I could get lost in his eyes. They looked so bright, so happy. I longed for him for months and months, and now that I could see him in front of me, I had the proof he loved me just as much as I loved him.

  “I want to hear you say it, Ella,” he smiled, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear.

  “I love you, Lou,” I said, kissing him briefly. It felt good to let that out, but somehow it didn’t seem to be enough. There was so much more that I need to say. Too many feelings I had kept to myself for too long.

  “I think I started crushing on you the first time I saw you smiling at me in the street. It sounds crazy, right?” I told him, smiling, “I knew I was in too deep when I heard you play the piano and when you started showing up every day…and when you kissed me in the street, I just couldn’t believe my luck. Maybe there was the smallest chance you wanted me as much as I wanted you.”

  I took his face in my hands and kissed him, slowly, tenderly, savoring his tongue around mine; the kiss deepened, leaving me breathless. We stopped and stared at each other and then he gave me a small peck. He started kissing me on the neck, but I wasn’t nearly finished. There was more I had to say.

  “The first time we made love…it was like nothing I had ever experienced before. I didn’t know I could feel such a connection with anyone. I wanted to tell you, but I was scared and I was worried you didn’t feel as strongly as I did…plus we had to say goodbye soon and I didn’t want to complicate things…”

  “I should have told you how I felt. I wanted to, so many times—”

  “Being with you made me realize I had a lot of work to do. I had to get started and I had to focus on that.”

  “What work?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “You’ll see,” I told him with a smirk.

  “Does it have anything to do with those YouTube video of yours?”

  I covered my face with my hands and shook my head. He saw the videos. Not that I ever thought about him watching them. I dreamt about him watching them, I wanted him watching me, but just thinking that sounded like a stupid teenage fantasy.

  “Who told you?”

  “Johan, of course. He’s very proud of his directing skills,” he took my hand in his, going back to trailing soft kisses on my neck.

&n
bsp; Lou stopped kissing me and brought his mouth back to my ear.

  “Actually,” he murmured, “I might or might not have done a google alert for you.”

  “What?” I asked. “You did?” I asked, bursting out laughing, his arms surrounding me as I slightly bent backwards.

  “There’s nothing to laugh about!” he laughed. “How else was I going to see what you were up to? Honestly, I’m a little embarrassed saying it out loud. Sounds a bit stalkerish,” he added. I wondered what he really had found out on his own, but it didn’t matter, because he would see for himself soon enough. “I guess I could blame it on Boyd, he gave me the idea.”

  I shook my head no. “I like it,” I told him, kissing his cheek. And then I gave him a deeper kiss and I took his hand in mine. “Let’s go upstairs,” I said seductively.

  CHAPTER 29

  He chased me up the stairs, his hands circling my waist when we reached my room. I turned around and pulled him in, closing the door behind us. It had been a long, long time. I was somehow nervous, but I wanted him too much.

  His focus, however, was suddenly elsewhere. He was looking at the changes in my room, mainly all the notes, the verses that now decorated the walls. The verses waiting to become songs.

  I saw him focus on a piece of paper that said,

  He doesn’t want to fight

  But he never holds me tight

  And forgot how to be sweet

  If it’s not between the sheets.

  He gave me a questioning look, and I shrugged.

  “Don’t get all worked up. It’s just an idea for a song.” He frowned, looking like he didn’t believe me. “I was actually following your advice,” I added, looking at the note on the wall.

  “I think you told me before you could pretty much write a song about anything, even stuff you overheard from people. So I did that, or at least I tried to do that. If I overheard a conversation, sometimes I would take notes, or I would try to imagine myself in that situation.”