They both preferred to bathe before bed, since it brought them a certain freshness. Clean skin pressed against clean sheets, wet hair wild over a soft pillow. During the Winter months, a certain freezing cold clung to their skin, even when they were dressed in thick sweaters. The best way to combat that chill was to lay hip-to-hip and shoulder-to-shoulder together underneath a nice blanket.
“I missed this,” Daan sighed.
“We slept together yesterday,” Adriaan mumbled. “And eergister, and the years before that.”
“I missed home,” the other clarified. “Despite the cold. It’s strange that, five years ago, we practically lived down the street from here.”
Adriaan tried to remember if he ever saw this exact apartment complex before, all those years prior. It stood ten minutes from his childhood home. From what he could gather, he hadn’t — but that could have been because he didn’t often venture into this part of Hatert. This quiet part away from the trouble. All the important things from his youth — the stores, school, Daan’s home, his own place — were in the opposite direction. There was a playground nearby, and he was certain that he had never played there as a kid. There were so many buildings that looked the same, though, and they all might just have turned into an unimportant blur.
It struck him suddenly — the fact that he could run into his family any day. His mother had a friend that lived nearby, who probably hadn’t moved. It was quite a surprise that he hadn’t already seen any of them. A flow of panic in the shape of his sister, Madelief, crashed into his heart. She had been eight when they left, and he wondered if they would even be able to recognize each other. Maybe he had come across her at some point. Maybe she did play on that playground nearby. Surely, she would know of his existence, of her older brother somewhere in the world. But, by now he could have easily turned into an old photograph in a book, a stray picture his mother sometimes admired alone in her bedroom, a story hesitated to be told. Could she ever understand why he left?
“I’m glad we’re back,” Daan whispered.
Adriaan nodded, his worry not yet gone. Ever since they returned, he had been afraid that a mistake had been made on his part. They had lived a comfortable life in Cambridge, even though their flat there wasn’t much of a looker, despite the fact that work was hard to come by. Both of them had their problems, and yet Cambridge had felt like a certain kind of freedom. They were young, and didn’t yet feel like citizens of the world, their whole life there — which was supposed to be permanent — had felt like a prolonged vacation.
They were outsiders in Cambridge, and nobody really cared when they walked down the street hand-in-hand. And when people did mind, they usually didn’t say anything. All they did was give easily ignored, disapproving looks. Because Daan and Adriaan had the advantage of not being their family and never intending on becoming their friends. At least they aren’t one of us, was the mindset behind other people’s lack of outward hatred.
It had been Aadriaan’s idea to leave, though he never had a proper reason for it. He had no unfinished business, and he never felt very homesick. Just lonely, and a little purposeless. When he finally vocalized this to the other man, he suspected that he would have to pack his bags by himself and that that would be the end of things. He would have to leave alone and allow Daan to remain in their free life. Of course it didn’t play out like that — wherever Adriaan went, Daan followed.
Previous Next