I walk slowly to the bathroom, which still smells of shower gel. I can smell his scent in the air. I try to breathe it in as much as I can, but after a while it’s gone. I look at myself into the mirror and I look absolutely terrible. Smudged, black streaks all over my face creating bizarre patterns with little trickles through them from tears. I splash warm water on my face to wash the worst of it off and all the rest I clean with mom´s cotton pads. Now I´m totally make-upless, natural, just a clean face, the way Tom used to like me. He won´t see me like this anymore. I won´t allow him.
I close my eyes, trying to not to cry again. Enough already! Tears are not a solution for this, I must pull myself together and try to forget. IT´S NOT FAIR! I have not even done anything wrong, I was just trying to fix whatever my predecessor done and now I have to suffer for it.
Those treacherous tears are falling down my face again, but now they have nothing to smear anymore. They can flow as they want and fall wherever they want, I don´t care any longer. With a heavy heart I walk back to my room. I want to lay down for a while to get some energy back before my parents and Davey return. I won´t tell them what happened to me, mom would get unnecessarily scared. I will have a bump on my head, but only I will know of it, nobody else will notice.
I enter my room with my head hanging down when I suddenly feel that something is different. I raise my eyes and the picture I see in front of me must be just a hallucination. I rub my eyes, but the picture remains the same. It’s HIM sitting on my bed and he´s looking into my eyes. Those eyes, they are beautiful, nice, tear-filled, unhappy looking.
„Forgive me,“ he says quietly and turns his eyes down.
„What’s to forgive?“ I ask uncomprehendingly and I keep standing in the doorway, frozen.
„That I ran away… away from you…“ he whispers maybe even quieter than before.
„You had all the right to do so, I shouldn´t have lied to you,“ I answer him with well intended honesty, but also with sorrow. My tears have stopped falling by themselves, maybe of the shock of his presence.
„Yes, but I should have listened to you,“ Tom says apologetically.
Finally I´m able to move from the door and I take a few steps towards him. I kneel down in front of him and look up into his sad face. „I lied because I didn´t want to hurt you, but it didn´t work. I ended up hurting you even more. The only thing I can say in my defense is that everything that happened wasn´t my fault. I was just trying to understand it myself and fix it. But you should have heard it from me and not from TV,“ I finish my explanation and I wait eagerly for his reaction to my admission.
„Thanks for the text messages, they kept me going the entire time.“ He smiles tentatively and stretches slowly his hand towards me. He strokes my face, the face he wasn’t going to see like this anymore. It was my decision, the decision that is crumbling down under his touch.
I cover his hand on my face with mine and kiss his palm. He gets down off the bed on and kneels in front of me. His fingers are carefully brushing my hair and he starts to lean closer, targeting my impatient lips.
I wrap my arms around his waist and press him against my body. Our eyes are fixed at each other and our lips meet, brushing against each other tenderly. I press my lips against those soft pink cushions and lick at them gently. He opens them and our tongues meet halfway. We absorb each other with as much tenderness and passion as only we are capable in this moment. We cling to each other as frightened puppies being afraid of being separated.
„I love you,“ he whispers when we pull away from each other after a while. „I promised to you that I would never leave you and I usually keep my promises,“ he adds and he starts to kiss me tenderly again.
I stroke his back and I enjoy those touches, I voluntarily gave up on just a minute ago in the bathroom. I will never, ever give them up again. I will hold to him and i will never let him go. I was silly when I thought that I could live without him.
„We´re baaack,“ mom´s voice sounds from the garden and we let go of each other. Tom gets to his feet first and helps me to stand up too.
„Don´t tell mom that I fainted, she would get scared,“ I ask Tom quietly.
„Don´t worry, you scared me too. For a while I thought that you were dead,“ he answers seriously. „Are you feeling better though? Don´t you have a headache?“
„No, it´s nothing, it was just because of all the excitement,“ I answer and when I look in the direction of the door I see David with his mouth stained red of wild strawberries. He´s looking at me, then at Tom and then back at me with again, surprised look obvious in his face, just standing there, shyly.
„Well hallo there, how was your trip to the forest?“ I ask him with a big smile and when he hears my voice, he smiles immediately back and runs towards me and Tom. I pick him up to my arms and kiss his forehead. He runs circles around my eyes with his finger. „You cried, daddy? You don´t have black eyes…“ he adds with a questioning look.
I start to laugh when I realize that he is seeing me without my customary make-up for the first time and he might not even recognized me immediately when he entered my room. Only my voice reassured him that it was really me.
„I cried a little bit, because I missed you, but it´s okay now,“ I assure him with a smile.
„I saw a mushroom in the forest and it’s hat was the same as my shoes,“ he says importantly and points at his red and white dotted shoes. „I wanted to pick it up, but grandpa told me e that it was food for animals, so we let it be,“ he talks excitedly about his experiences in the woods.
Suddenly he realizes that Tom´s standing next to us and turns slowly to him. „You are the uncle who is not hungry?“ he asks my brother. Tom gives me an amused look and smiles at Davey. „Yeah, that´s me, little bug,“ he says and ruffles David’s hair affectionately.
„I´m not little bug, I’m David,“ he stresses his distaste for a newly acquired nick name. „Grandma said that you were uncle Tom and you played gui… guir…“ He can´t remember the right word.
„Guitar,“ his uncle helps him with a smile. „Yep, I do, and your dad sings,“ he adds while looking at me.
„You sing, daddy?“ Davey asks with wide eyes and I say yes.
„Daddy plays also piano. He can play a nice song and he will teach me to play it too, right?“ he informs his uncle proudly about our first mutual encounter in Ladybird.
„Yeah, sure… daddy can play piano.“ Tom starts laughing hysterically and nudges my side with a grin. „Daddy can do everything,“ he adds, almost dying of laughter.
„Heeey! Don´t laugh, you… uncle,“ I tell him, half offended because he doubts my skills but my eyes are shining like stars. Davey is watching us with interest but after a while he lets me know he wants to get down from my arms and runs back to his grandma and grandpa.
We stay in the room alone and Tom is watching me with strange eyes.
„Why are you looking at me like that?“ I ask nervously and I push my hair back from my face.
„You look so fine… for a father figure.“ He smiles at me and presses my body against his. „You´re such a sexy daddy. You both look cute together,“ he whispers in my ear, brushing his lips against it gently then kissing me tenderly, aiming at a spot right under my ear lobe.
I tremble with longing, it´s exactly that spot that always makes me weak in my knees. And he knows it very well.
„Not now, Tom. We are not alone. I will come to your room in the evening,“ I promise to him and plant one last kiss on his pouted lips. He looks like a child whose toy was taken away. „Don´t be naughty,“ I slap his butt lightly when he tries to kiss my neck again. I press him to me tightly and I´m happy that I have him back again. I already stopped hoping and exactly at that moment he changed his mind and came to me. I would love to throw him on the bed right now and fulfill all of his wishes, but it’s not the right time.
I still manage to whisper in his ear quickly how much I love him because I can hear already echo of tiny feet running, approaching us quickly, which means we have to separate.
„Grandma said that you should come down for coffee,“ David tells us out of breath, when he stops by our door with a skid. Immediately he turns around and runs back. We both start laughing at this. He´s so cute and that makes him irresistible.
„He´s a true energy ball, isn´t he?“ Tom asks me and all I can do is just nod in agreement. And he´s still in a shy stage. Once he gets used to us, we will really enjoy being with him. I´m a proud father, now I realize it. I´m proud of my son and it´s a beautiful feeling.
„I will need all your help, Tomi,“ I whisper and kiss him once more before we head to the kitchen.
Four cups of coffee are already waiting for us on the kitchen table, and mom is placing a sugar bowl next to them and a tray loaded with assortment of cookies and biscuits. David is in his chair again and he has a hot cocoa in front of him. He grins and beams with importance when he says, „I am also having a coffee,“ while he stirs his milky chocolate with a little spoon. Gordon is sitting next to him, making sure he doesn’t spill his cocoa all over his lap. „It´s cocoa, you silly-billy,“ he explains to him, and probably not for the first time either, but David doesn’t seem to care; if he wants to pretend to have a coffee, then he has a coffee.
When mom spots her second son, her face brightens immediately and she rushes over to him, throwing herself around his neck, holding him tight in her embrace. „Finally, I thought that you would tell me no again.“ She´s squeezing him tightly and it´s obvious how happy she is that she has her whole family together again.
The rest of the afternoon passes in a peaceful family togetherness and happiness is shining from us all. Mom takes out old photo albums with pictures from our childhood and we have fun watching them. It´s unbelievable, but David really does look more like Tom than me, but I can see it just in his facial expression and in his smile because that has never changed. Apart from that Tom and I looked absolutely the same at that age.
Tom is sitting next to me and I keep having a strong urge to be even closer, to hold his hand, to touch him, discretely feel his body against mine. I’ve missed him so much these three last days and I can´t wait for the moment the door of his room will close behind us in the evening.
We take David to have a look at our old hut, maybe one day he and his friends will have a hut too. Now I finally understand mom´s sadness when she thought that she wouldn´t have grandchildren. When I see my son’s shiny little face in front of me, still struck with curiosity, looking around at everything new, I understand parental love. Even though I wasn´t there for him from his birth, he stole my heart during first ten minutes of our meeting and I hope that he will do the same to Tom.
In the evening, when Davey is ready to go to sleep in his teddy pajama and I’m taking him from the bathroom to my old room, he notices Tom sitting on his bed, playing his guitar. He stops at his door, and after a while he ventures to enter quietly and he sits on the floor in front of Tom.
Tom concentrates fully on his playing that he doesn’t even realize at first that Davey is there and when he finally notices him, he jerks in shock. He smiles though immediately and starts playing a children’s song that we both remember from our childhood. Grandma used to sing it to us. I still remember the words and when I catch the melody, I start to sing.
My son’s brown eyes grow big and he looks at me, listening carefully. I sit down next to him on the floor, put him on my lap and lean against the wardrobe across from Tom´s bed. When we finish singing, Tom puts his guitar down, but when David starts begging with folded hands: „Just one more, uncleeee, just one more,“ he takes his instrument and plays the beginning of the next song.
In the end it turns into a private recital of seven songs and during the last one, a slow lullaby, Davey falls asleep in my arms. Tom puts the guitar away, lifts the sleeping kid from my lap carefully into his arms and carries him to my bed. Hopefully he will learn to love him.
