Boy from the Woods (9781311684776) (19 page)

Julia gently
rubbed her lips and suddenly wished Michael hadn’t been called
downstairs. She wouldn’t have minded kissing him a little longer.
Even though she still had no clue what
triggered his personality change, one thing was absolutely
clear to her now: his feelings for her were real.
She
no longer doubted that.

When her tea
was ready,
Julia sat down at the kitchen
table and took a sip before finally picking up the sheet of paper
to read the poem Michael had written her.

In the background

almost timidly

in a soft and thin voice,

I call to you.

Are you aware of me?

I touch the golden break of day

i
n the cycle of
life.

I am the angel that goes with you

My child, my star

My light, my love

You make me see

Are you aware of me?

Tears pooled
in her eyes. He had written her an amazing poem. It made her feel
as if he’d been with her during the countless hours she’d spent in
the woods, reading her mind as she dreamed and sang and wrote her
own poems. His words were so deep and mystical. She
had
to
tell her best friend. Right now.

When Silke
barged into the room,
Julia quickly put
away the poem.
“Hey, what are you doing here? Having a
break already?” her colleague asked in surprise.

“Uhm, yes.
I was so thirsty, you know?” Julia held up her
mug by way of explanation. “Anyway, I’ll be on my way. I have to
finish up some stuff.”

“Sorry! I
didn’t mean to chase yo
u away,” Silke
called after her as Julia headed back to the stockroom. Besides
finishing her task, she also had to grab her bag from the room
because her cell phone was in there.
Gaby needed to
hear the big news.

‘HAVE 2 talk 2u.
M xx-ed me & wrote me a poem!!! u got time
2nite? x’

It only took
one minute for her to get a reply. ‘
dafuq??? F2F ASAP!! meet u after work.’

Julia put
away her phone, her heart fluttering in her chest. She couldn’t
shake the buzz of anticipation humming through her body. Only two
more hours until lunch break. Would Michael
talk to her, and if so, what would he say? What
would
she
say?

“Hey, you
hermit!
” Donna stuck her head around the
door at half past twelve. “You coming? It’s break time.”

Julia
scrambled to her feet with difficulty. Her knees were sore from
crawling around on the floor, looking for a book on the lowest
shelf in the R section. “Yeah, I’ll be right there,”
she replied, despite not being particularly
hungry. Her stomach was way too tense for that.

Dawdling
behind Donna, she walked to the break room
clutching her lunchbox. Inside, Marco, Michael and Martin
turned out to have occupied the table near the coffee machine.
Silke was pouring some juice at the counter and turned around when
the girls came in. “What do you say we make our own table, the
three of us?” she laughed. “I believe contact between men and women
isn’t being encouraged in this bookstore.”
She pointed
at the ‘men’s table’.

Julia bit her lip.
If only Silke knew how intimate things had been
between some of the employees not too long ago…

“Maybe you’re
drawing the
wrong conclusion,” she
commented. “Personally, I think only people starting with an M are
allowed to sit at that table.”

Donna started
to giggle. “Girl, you’ve gone cuckoo in that stockroom sorting
books all morning. You’re alphabetizing
people,
for crying out
loud!”

Laughing and
chatting, the girls sat down at the other table. Julia stole a
glance at Michael, who followed her with his eyes. She
gave him a hesitant half-smile, which caused him
to give her a high-wattage smile back. Stopping herself from
grinning inanely, she quickly sat down to scarf down her cheese
roll. Her appetite had suddenly returned. Donna and Silke were
chatting a mile a minute, and she chimed in every now and
then.

As
Julia got up to get a refill of juice, Michael
headed over to the fridge and stopped right next to her. “Wanna
join me outside?” he mumbled, holding up a pack of
smokes.

Julia looked
at him nervously. “Uhm, yes, sure,” she stuttered. Admittedly, she
wasn’t a real smoker, but she’d gladly make an exception today for
having the chance to have him all to herself for a few
minutes.

She put her
glass in the sink and followed Michael out the door, ignoring Donna
and Silke both
eyeing her inquisitively.
With wobbly knees, she walked down the stairs and to the back of
the store. Michael pushed open the back door leading to the small
quadrangle that was used for loading and unloading.

Julia
hesitated when he held out the pack of
cigarettes to her. “I don’t actually really smoke,” she was
embarrassed to admit. “I mean, I know I
did
smoke that night I was
at your place, but I wasn’t actually… you know…” She paused,
looking for words. “I wasn’t being myself,” she spoke at last. Now
that she said it out loud, she realized it was true. She’d
pretended to be someone else that night, just to be able to meet
his expectations.

Michael put
away the cigarettes in his breast pocket. “To be honest, I’m not
too fond of smoking myself anymore,” he shrugged.
“Ever since the accident.” He looped an arm around her waist.
“I just wanted to talk to you.”

Julia
rested herself against his shoulder, closing her
eyes and enjoying the moment. “I loved your poem,” she mumbled.
“Thank you so much.”

He lifted her
chin and looked at her searchingly.
“You
really mean it? Are you being… yourself now?”

Julia turned
red. Looking back, the way she had desperately tried so hard to
please him was cringe-worthy.
“Yes, I really mean it,”
she whispered.

He gave her a
sweet smile. “I’m happy to hear that,” he mumbled, lowering his
head to kiss her warmly. Julia clasped her arms
aroun
d his neck and kissed him back, her
heart beating wildly when his hands roamed over her body before
landing on her waist and pulling her into him. When he touched her,
it was like her body was at peace and at the mercy of a raging
storm at the same time. He calmed and comforted her, but he also
made her hot for him. She almost felt like pleading and begging for
a few kisses more when he disentangled himself from their embrace
and stepped backward. “I think we need to go upstairs again,” he
observed, slightly out of breath.

“Too
bad.”
Julia pouted.

Michael took
her hand in his. “I’m only working the morning shift tomorrow,” he
said, hope evident in his voice.
“What about you?
Maybe we can go out in the afternoon.
Like, hang around in the park or something. It’s such nice
weather outside.”

Julia
mentally sorted through her work schedule. “I’ll ask Martin to swap
my Thursday afternoon off for tomorrow,” she replied, beaming at
him. She could swear her heart almost burst with joy and love. He’d
asked her out! And this time, he actually wanted to
go
somewhere – not just hang around in his room to see how far
he could take things with her.

Michael
smiled back happily. “I hope he’ll say yes,” he
said with such a genuine sparkle in his eyes that it seemed
like he was asking her out for the first time.

The
fact that he’d brushed her off after their first
date seemed like a distant memory, but it wasn’t completely erased
from her mind – a small stab of insecurity went through Julia’s
heart. She still had no idea what had changed him so much, but it
wasn’t a very good idea to bring up the question straight away.
She’d ask him later, after they had spent more time together. Or
maybe she shouldn’t. It was also entirely possible he wasn’t even
aware of his character change after that knock to the head, in
which case she should keep her mouth shut forever. She’d rather get
to know the new Michael than bother with his old alter
ego.

When the
clock struck five, Julia left the bookstore in high spirits.
Everything had turned out the way she wanted: Martin had agreed to
her
taking the afternoon off tomorrow,
plus she’d managed to buy all the discounted poetry books she’d
wanted. Her boss had even given her sixty percent off instead of
fifty. Now she’d be able to read Michael more poems when they went
to the park together.
She wasn’t shy about it
anymore.

Donna was
waiting at the bus stop and shot Julia a wicked grin when her
colleague
took a seat next to her. “So.
Time to come clean. Where did you and Michael go during lunch
break?”

Julia blushed. “Outside.
Cigarette break.”

“Sure you were.
I’m not buying it. I bet things got
smoking
hot between you, though.”
Donna elbowed her in
the side.

Julia let out a nervous
laugh.
“Fine, you’re right. Something’s
going on between us.
Again.”

“Sounds good.
Is that why you begged Martin to swap free
afternoons?”

“Yeah.
We’re going to the park tomorrow.” She smiled blissfully.
“I still can’t quite believe it.”

Donna rolled her
eyes.
“I’ll be in for X-rated material
around every corner, won’t I? Romance on the work floor – Mamma
Mia. Don’t make me avert my eyes every time I walk into the
stockroom and you guys are there,
smoking
.”

“We’ll keep
it family-friendly, I promise.” At that moment,
Julia’s bus crawled up to the bus stop. She waved at Donna
before getting on. Her MP3 player had died, so she entertained
herself by reading Michael’s poem so many times she knew it by
heart when she got off at Birkensiedlung.

It was nice and quiet in her neighborhood
after the bustle of the city and her day at work. Birds were
singing in the trees lining the road Julia had to walk down to get
to her house.

As she turned
onto her street, Julia slowed down – acoustic guitar music was
coming from the Ebner family’s yard. Curiously, she stuck her head
around the corner of the hedge lining their lawn and spotted
Thorsten sitting on the grass. He was playing a beautiful melody on
a classical guitar. Julia listened to him breathlessly and
regretted stepping too close when his head shot up and he stopped
playing immediately.

“Sorry to interrupt,” she said guiltily.

Thorsten smiled. “You’re
not interrupting.
I’m just not used to
having an audience.” He shrugged self-consciously.

“I’ll just leave, okay?” Julia mumbled, but
he shook his head.

“No, not okay. I shouldn’t
be silly.
Come, sit next to me. Maybe you
can sing something. I have no lyrics to accompany my song yet.” He
beckoned her to sit down.

Julia
gingerly pushed open the gate. Did she understand correctly that
Thorsten had written the melody himself? That was amazing. She kept
bumping into creative, handsome guys who seemed to like her,
lately.

“I don’t
really write lyrics
to my own music, to
be honest,” Julia admitted when she sat down.
“I
usually just play instrumental piano music.”

When Thorsten
started playing his song again, however, she felt inspiration
bubbling up despite her words. Michael’s poem was still stuck in
her head, and without thinking, she started to sing
it out loud, incorporating the words into
Thorsten’s melody. All the feelings she had for Michael seeped into
the song and it sounded astounding, combined with Thorsten’s
delicate picking of the strings.

Julia gave
him a
surreptitious look full of
surprise. She hadn’t thought making music together would be this
simple. When she had sung the last stanza and the music faded away,
she caught his gaze.
Thorsten stared at her
intently.

“That
was
really beautiful,” he said, his voice
cracking. He put down his guitar and leaned into her.
“
You
are really beautiful,” he softly mumbled.

For a beat or two, they both sat completely
still. Julia’s heart leaped up in her throat when Thorsten’s hand
landed in her neck and he inched even closer. Something in her
stomach fluttered. She knew what he was about to do, but she
couldn’t move, couldn’t speak to tell him no.

Or was it a
question of not
wanting
to?

She had no
time to ponder that question. Thorsten’s warm lips crushed hers.
Julia involuntarily closed her eyes and felt the heat radiating off
his skin from up close. His breath blew softly between her slightly
opened lips and his fingers tangled into her hair, caressing her
neck. He kissed her again, softly, then more passionately, leaving
his taste in her mouth. And then, he slowly let go of her and gazed
into her eyes just inches away from her face.