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120_minutenTitel: Ten Days
Team: Machine
Challenge: Angst – Etwas/jemanden vermissen (Für's Team)
Fandom: There is a New World Somewhere
Charactere: Sylvia, Esteban (mentioned)
Sprache: Englisch
Wörter: 1.100
Kommentar: Und ein weiteres MC-Fandom abgehakt… Aber das war vielleicht nicht das letzte, was ich zu diesem Film schreibe, denn die beiden sind ADORABLE.
She still misses him.
Ten Days
There’s a split-second, right when she wakes up and her body is still heavy with sleep, where she expects his arms to wrap around her. He would pull her close until her back is touching his bare chest, and he would press a kiss into her neck. And she would feel the warmth of his body surrounding her and smell that familiar scent that’s just him. The tickle of his beard against her skin. His hands, searching for the gap between her tank top and her underwear. The beginning of laughter bubbling up her throat.
Then she opens her eyes. Her hand is already reaching out behind her, fingers splayed over the cool, empty sheet.
Every morning, she’s left feeling like a fool.
She sits up and wipes a tear from her eye. Her gaze is mapping out her room to ground herself: The canvas with the half-finished painting at the far wall, paint tubes and brushes scattered on the floor around it. Yesterday’s clothes strewn around where she dropped them. Grey sunlight is leaking through the curtains.
She slips out of bed and opens the fridge, pieces together a breakfast from a cup of yoghurt and an old banana. The pile of sketches gets shoved to the other end of the table to make room. She sits on the chair like a child, with her bare feet on the seat and one arm wrapped around her knees.
In the light of day, her dream seems ridiculous. Esteban has never set foot into this apartment, nor slept in this bed. Their love had made its home in the in-between places, in the hotel rooms and the seats of his car. But when she returned, she carried it over the doorstep lodged into her chest, and instead of fading away like she thought it would, it burrows itself deeper with each passing day.
She doesn’t regret leaving. She went on this road trip for all the wrong reasons, running away from her problems. Facing them was the only way for her to dig herself out of the hole she’d fallen into.
When she came back to New York, she had been driven by an almost manic energy. She was so determined not to end up like him, giving up his dreams and aimlessly drifting through life. She scoured every art gallery in existence until she had found a new job. She painted like a maniac, sometimes deep into the night. And now she had finally achieved what she had always wanted: A spot in an exhibition. It wasn’t a very important one, and she only had one slot to fill, but it was hers.
And she still misses him.
His voice. His laugh. The way he had looked at her.
For a while, she had been able to tell herself that it hadn’t meant anything to him. That she was just a rebound fling, a way for him to fill that hole in his heart. Esteban the liar, who had picked up a girl at a party he hadn’t even been invited to. Who had been trying to escape much like herself, except that he had way more practice.
But then she remembers the way he looked at her on that last day, and she knows that she can’t lie to herself like that.
She forces another spoonful into her mouth and tries not to let her tears drip into the yoghurt. When she rinses off the bowl, her eyes wander over to the canvas with the half-finished painting. There he is, the way she sees him when she closes her eyes: Still asleep with one cheek smushed against the pillow, dark eyelashes fanning out over his skin. One arm is curled up underneath him, and she has just started on the tattoo covering his wrist. It’s harder than expected to draw it from memory even though she spent all that time running her fingertips over it.
Ten days. That’s all it had been. Ten days and a handful of nondescript hotel rooms and multiple state lines. Hours on the road in his beaten-up Gran Torino. Ten days with a virtual stranger.
Ten days to fall in love.
Because that’s what it had been, she has realized it now. Love. The right man at the right time, for all the wrong reasons. But peel each of these reasons away and the love still remained.
She has no way to contact him. Nobody in Austin knows him. They didn’t exchange phone numbers. She doesn’t even know his last name. For all it’s worth, he might as well be a figment of her imagination.
Sometimes she wonders if he ever made it to New York.
Mixing the right colors is a ritual. The light falling through her window might be grey, but in the painting it’s a warm and soft hue, turning his skin golden. She corrects his jaw line slightly and thinks about how she would sketch his face onto those little note pads the hotels provided. She wonders if he kept any of them or if they were all left to be discarded by the cleaning staff. She wishes she had held on to at least one of them.
Watching him emerge like this feels like magic. It’s a way to prove to herself that he was real after all. And with every brush stroke new memories surface: Dancing to Spanish music together. Getting drenched in the rain in that parking lot. Chugging cold beer from the can.
The brush slips from her fingers and splatters paint across her floor.
The article.
She doesn’t bother to wipe the paint off her fingers before rushing over to the table and opening her notebook. She manages three typos in less than ten words, but Google seems to know what she means anyway, because it’s immediately staring her in the face. “Five ways to chill a beer”, by Esteban Candell.
He had told her everything she needed to know about himself and she hadn’t even noticed.
She’s not surprised to find that he doesn’t have Facebook, or Instagram, or any other social media associated with his real name. So instead, she compiles a list of websites he has written for, and notes down their contact information. Then she picks up the phone.
“Yes, hello, my name is Sylvia Banks, I’m calling about one of your freelance writers. I’ve been wondering how I can get in contact with him, maybe you can help me?”
Maybe she’s being a creep, she thinks as she’s listening to the hold music. Scratch that, she’s definitely being a creep.
But he lied to her that day, to get her to come with him. So the least she can do for him is lie a bit in return.
Team: Machine
Challenge: Angst – Etwas/jemanden vermissen (Für's Team)
Fandom: There is a New World Somewhere
Charactere: Sylvia, Esteban (mentioned)
Sprache: Englisch
Wörter: 1.100
Kommentar: Und ein weiteres MC-Fandom abgehakt… Aber das war vielleicht nicht das letzte, was ich zu diesem Film schreibe, denn die beiden sind ADORABLE.
She still misses him.
Ten Days
There’s a split-second, right when she wakes up and her body is still heavy with sleep, where she expects his arms to wrap around her. He would pull her close until her back is touching his bare chest, and he would press a kiss into her neck. And she would feel the warmth of his body surrounding her and smell that familiar scent that’s just him. The tickle of his beard against her skin. His hands, searching for the gap between her tank top and her underwear. The beginning of laughter bubbling up her throat.
Then she opens her eyes. Her hand is already reaching out behind her, fingers splayed over the cool, empty sheet.
Every morning, she’s left feeling like a fool.
She sits up and wipes a tear from her eye. Her gaze is mapping out her room to ground herself: The canvas with the half-finished painting at the far wall, paint tubes and brushes scattered on the floor around it. Yesterday’s clothes strewn around where she dropped them. Grey sunlight is leaking through the curtains.
She slips out of bed and opens the fridge, pieces together a breakfast from a cup of yoghurt and an old banana. The pile of sketches gets shoved to the other end of the table to make room. She sits on the chair like a child, with her bare feet on the seat and one arm wrapped around her knees.
In the light of day, her dream seems ridiculous. Esteban has never set foot into this apartment, nor slept in this bed. Their love had made its home in the in-between places, in the hotel rooms and the seats of his car. But when she returned, she carried it over the doorstep lodged into her chest, and instead of fading away like she thought it would, it burrows itself deeper with each passing day.
She doesn’t regret leaving. She went on this road trip for all the wrong reasons, running away from her problems. Facing them was the only way for her to dig herself out of the hole she’d fallen into.
When she came back to New York, she had been driven by an almost manic energy. She was so determined not to end up like him, giving up his dreams and aimlessly drifting through life. She scoured every art gallery in existence until she had found a new job. She painted like a maniac, sometimes deep into the night. And now she had finally achieved what she had always wanted: A spot in an exhibition. It wasn’t a very important one, and she only had one slot to fill, but it was hers.
And she still misses him.
His voice. His laugh. The way he had looked at her.
For a while, she had been able to tell herself that it hadn’t meant anything to him. That she was just a rebound fling, a way for him to fill that hole in his heart. Esteban the liar, who had picked up a girl at a party he hadn’t even been invited to. Who had been trying to escape much like herself, except that he had way more practice.
But then she remembers the way he looked at her on that last day, and she knows that she can’t lie to herself like that.
She forces another spoonful into her mouth and tries not to let her tears drip into the yoghurt. When she rinses off the bowl, her eyes wander over to the canvas with the half-finished painting. There he is, the way she sees him when she closes her eyes: Still asleep with one cheek smushed against the pillow, dark eyelashes fanning out over his skin. One arm is curled up underneath him, and she has just started on the tattoo covering his wrist. It’s harder than expected to draw it from memory even though she spent all that time running her fingertips over it.
Ten days. That’s all it had been. Ten days and a handful of nondescript hotel rooms and multiple state lines. Hours on the road in his beaten-up Gran Torino. Ten days with a virtual stranger.
Ten days to fall in love.
Because that’s what it had been, she has realized it now. Love. The right man at the right time, for all the wrong reasons. But peel each of these reasons away and the love still remained.
She has no way to contact him. Nobody in Austin knows him. They didn’t exchange phone numbers. She doesn’t even know his last name. For all it’s worth, he might as well be a figment of her imagination.
Sometimes she wonders if he ever made it to New York.
Mixing the right colors is a ritual. The light falling through her window might be grey, but in the painting it’s a warm and soft hue, turning his skin golden. She corrects his jaw line slightly and thinks about how she would sketch his face onto those little note pads the hotels provided. She wonders if he kept any of them or if they were all left to be discarded by the cleaning staff. She wishes she had held on to at least one of them.
Watching him emerge like this feels like magic. It’s a way to prove to herself that he was real after all. And with every brush stroke new memories surface: Dancing to Spanish music together. Getting drenched in the rain in that parking lot. Chugging cold beer from the can.
The brush slips from her fingers and splatters paint across her floor.
The article.
She doesn’t bother to wipe the paint off her fingers before rushing over to the table and opening her notebook. She manages three typos in less than ten words, but Google seems to know what she means anyway, because it’s immediately staring her in the face. “Five ways to chill a beer”, by Esteban Candell.
He had told her everything she needed to know about himself and she hadn’t even noticed.
She’s not surprised to find that he doesn’t have Facebook, or Instagram, or any other social media associated with his real name. So instead, she compiles a list of websites he has written for, and notes down their contact information. Then she picks up the phone.
“Yes, hello, my name is Sylvia Banks, I’m calling about one of your freelance writers. I’ve been wondering how I can get in contact with him, maybe you can help me?”
Maybe she’s being a creep, she thinks as she’s listening to the hold music. Scratch that, she’s definitely being a creep.
But he lied to her that day, to get her to come with him. So the least she can do for him is lie a bit in return.
no subject
Date: 2023-09-11 09:01 pm (UTC)The right man at the right time, for all the wrong reasons.
Das (und so viele andere Sätze) ist so schön und auf die beste weise kitschig... Ich hätte dir nur nicht verzeihen können, wenn es ohne einen Hoffnungsschimmer geendet hätte.
Und die Tatsache, dass dieser Hoffnungsschimmer in Form eines Artikels mit dem Titel “Five ways to chill a beer” kommt, macht es gleich dreimal so gut. Ohne Kontext über die Regenszene hinaus, bin ich jetzt absolut on-board. =D