„Would you pass some tissues?“ I sob in the direction of his ear. I clean my nose. I haven´t cried this much for a long time. Perhaps I need it, there is so much going on inside of me right now that needs to be looked into, figured out and sorted out and God only knows how much is still there to be discovered.
„You always used to cry when we watched this movie. You are my little emotional darling brother.“ Tom smiles at me and I smile back at him.
„Yeah, yeah, but I have just seen it for the first time, so don´t laugh at me,“ I answer, faking a frown but then I smile at him through my tears.
„Are you ok now?“ he asks concerned and gives me a kiss.
„Yeah, I´ll be in a while.“ I try to calm down, but it seems that the tears don’t hear me. They keep rolling down.
It takes me a while but finally all tears dried up. I can speak normally again. „And what happened next?“ I ask Tom, curiosity detectable in my voice.
„Are you sure you can handle more? Or are you going to cry me a river again? I think that bit can wait until tomorrow, what do you say?“ Tom smiles at me and waits for me to answer.
„But I would like to know now, who knows what’s gonna happen tomorrow,“ I answer.
„Yeah, Sabine is coming over tomorrow,“ Tom replies and I suddenly realize that tomorrow is Friday and the last time Sabine was here was last Tuesday. That snaps me back to reality. I have yet to find out how such a day with her usually proceeds to avoid all unintentional mistakes. I have spent less than twenty minutes with her so far and Tom has not been much of a help to provide me with more information either.
„How does it work? Can you fill me in so that I won’t give myself away?“ I ask Tom.
„Well, Sabine usually calls first and you two settle a date, a time and a place for your meeting. You always have to show up somewhere together so there would be enough of material for journalists and then you come back home in the evening. When Sabine is here, I sleep upstairs in my flat. We made such an agreement early on that it would be for the best and to avoid possible conflicts. Sabine’s room is right next to the bedroom so she would hear practically everything and that we wanted to eliminate right from the beginning. I don’t know what you do after you two come home, because I am not here. I either go out with the guys or I stay downstairs in the studio and do some work. I can only hope that you both go to sleep in your own bed,“ Tom finishes and looks at me with deliberate question mark written all over his face, frowning.
„Why are you looking at me like that? How would I know?“ I glare at him angrily.
„I know, look… tomorrow we´ll see. You will have to manage somehow on your own, I won´t be able help you with this.“
„And how did we get to know Sabine, actually?“ I ask with interest. I want to know why it is her in particular who entered our lives sharing now details of our relationship.
„Well, that´s a complicated story, I have got to tell you about that.“ Tom grins at me cheekily and I lean my head against his shoulder again.
„I’m not going to need to open a new package of tissues, am I?“ I ask as I wonder if this story is gonna be yet another tear jerker.
„No, absolutely not!“ My bro starts to chuckle and when he starts to talk, I understand that this one will be anything else but an emotional story.
„It all started at some private party,“ Tom says and from his expression it´s pretty clear to me that it wasn’t just any party. „We were invited to a friend’s place whom we knew from music business. I dunno if you know him, his name is Manfred and he’s a producer. I think he produced at least one album for us about four years ago. But it’s not important for this story. Manfred doesn’t have any vital part in it anyway, he just took us under his wings for one night. We met Sabine when we were passing a joint. She was sitting in the circle next to me and the higher we got, the more ridiculous grins we were sending each other’s way. That and the alcohol and you can imagine how we ended up. You know what Sabine looks like, right? Tall, slim like Twiggy, long black hair. She looks a lot like you. All three of us were equally trashed and I mixed her up with you couple of times. You didn’t care really. When I and Sabine started kissing you joined in several times. It was really wild. I’m surprised nobody noticed back then, but it was probably because all the rest were either drunk or high or both.“
I can see nostalgia on Tom’s face as he tries to remember.
„When we got enough, the plan was to fetch a cab, to drop off Sabine first and then to go home. It was early in the morning, it was almost dawn. But somehow we weren’t able to explain to the taxi driver how to get to Sabine’s place since we barely knew her and she was fast asleep. In the end we brought her back to ours. We dragged her to our living room, but then all of a sudden she woke up and she seemed extremely energetic. We were in such a bad shape though, barely able to walk so in the end, somehow it happened that all three of us ended up in this very same bed,“ Tom finishes and puts his hand on our bed.
„I know more of this from Sabine´s story rather than from my own memories, but eventually what happened was that instead of a steamy threesome she was hoping for we kind of forgot all about her and made love only to each other instead. Her eyes almost popped out of her head and we were totally oblivious. And so our secret was revealed. She understood clearly that it was not our first time and that she happened to be just an uninvited witness to our forbidden love. She sneaked out quietly to the living room and slept on the sofa.
When we woke up the next afternoon, we didn’t remember her at all. We behaved as if nobody else were in the flat, until she suddenly appeared in the bathroom right in the moment when we were finishing what we hadn’t been capable of in the early morning hours because of the exhaustion. It was terribly embarrassing. I almost killed myself on slippery floor as I jumped away from you and you tried to cover yourself up. It was such an awkward situation, I really don´t like recalling it. Sabine just smiled and went back to the living room and waited until we decided to leave the bathroom. That was the worst five minutes of my life! We were walking to the living room, as if a bomb were ready to explode in there. We were so scared.
She was sitting there just smiling at us. We were quite relieved because it looked hopeful.
‚You look so cute together,‘ she told us and went back into the now-vacant bathroom. We stared at each other for a while dumbstruck and we didn’t know what to do. You gathered yourself first and you went to make something to eat. When Sabine returned from the bathroom, she was getting ready to leave. I had to force her to sit down, because we had to resolve the situation somehow. When I asked her directly, if she was planning to go to the press to sell the story, she looked at me as if I were nuts.
‚What?‘ she asked all confused and I didn’t know what to say.
‚What kind of person do you think I am, guys?‘ she asked, all terrified. ‚I´m not some kind of weasel or blabbermouth. Yesterday night I got quite annoyed because I was pushed aside, but you looked so nice together. It was a once in a lifetime experience,‘ she smiled at us and we were both really relieved. It really didn’t seem that she would want to gain something from that information.
‚Friends forever, okay?‘ She shook our hands when she was leaving and we just stood there, flabbergasted by the sudden realization that there existed someone who wouldn’t want to make a profit out of us. She has kept her promises so far, so we´re still friends. I know how she is, so when you are with her, I´m not afraid that something bad might happen,“ Tom finishes and I promise to myself that I won´t touch any alcohol or anything else of that kind again, because every time I do I end up making a fool of myself.
„Later on, when a problem with a paparazzi who took a photo of us kissing in the car surfaced, Sabine came to help straight away. The photographer was Russian, fortunately, so it was easy to bribe him. Twenty thousand Euros was enough to get the film, but he managed to spread some rumours, so it was a strange, guarded period for a while. We kept denying it all, but there were already so many doubts about your sexual orientation that people preferred to believe it. Since then we have got tinted windows in our cars. The band didn’t play for a while but when you started to be seen in public with Sabine, it calmed down and we could carry on. The journalists kept saying for a while that you were going out with your own copy and that you were actually in love with yourself, but it wasn’t important anymore. It saved the situation and we were grateful to Sabine for that,“ Tom finishes that funny but at the same time scary story.
How would it all have ended, if Sabine were a bitch? Better not to even think about it…
„You see, Sabine has a much nicer role here, compared to the murder in my other life. She is so better off,“ I say contently. „My journey in time made her some good,“ I comment on the fact that someone else rather than just two of us also profited from my time experiment.
Karin is probably the victim this time around. She didn’t survive. I didn’t even know her in my other life, so it is difficult to assess what kind of person she was back then, but I didn’t wish her dead. She sort of sacrificed herself so I could have Tom.
„It´s still early, would you tell me what happened after our hug at the party?“ I beg Tom with puppy eyes.
„Are you sure?“ Tom asks again, and when I nod my yes, he starts talking. „After we had hugged, people stopped paying attention to us and started having fun instead. They drank, danced, played roulette, and we waited for a while before we disappeared one by one in the direction of the bathrooms. When I got there, you were already checking out a little room across the hallway and when you opened its door to me I disappeared inside. There was no key in the keyhole, so I leaned my back against the door so that no one would surprise us.
„How should I describe it? Well, it was such a hesitant and timid moment at first. We were just holding hands, looking into each other’s eyes for a while and I could finally tell you. I wrapped my arms around your neck and I had to pull you closer to me, your body felt so rigid and tense. My courage was gone now when I was with you all alone. I was shaking violently when I whispered into your ear that I also loved you and then it all proceeded quickly. First you took off my cap, because it was in your way, then you started kissing me carefully, gently and I went along immediately. In the end the kiss was full of passion, but it also ended there. I was almost afraid our wildly thumping hearts would be heard through the door to the other side in the corridor,“ Tom says with a smile.
„That little room was a storage room for cleaning utensils, there wasn’t even a single chair inside, so we really just kissed, but it was beautiful and we took our time enjoying it. When we heard some people’s voices otuside in the corridor, we stopped. Except those three words I whispered to you, there was not a single word exchanged between us. It was all so tranquil, clear and understood. One after the other we slunk back to the party and the rest of the evening we were exchanging enamored, lustful glances. Nobody noticed anything though, only two of us knew what we needed to know. We didn’t even get very drunk, we were drunk on our newly found love. It was the most beautiful eighteenth birthday present that we could ever have wished for. We arrived back home first early in the morning, so we just went straight to bed and we each slept in our own bed until the evening. I don´t even remember if I had any dream that night,“ Tom finishes when he notices that I’m yawning.
My eyes are starting to close slowly, but I want to hear it all.
„Good night.“ Tom kisses me and helps me to undress. He rolls me over to my own half of the bed and pulls a blanket over me as if I were a baby. I am falling asleep immediately, but this I really ca… can´t… re… mem… ber…
