Philipp

I sat on the couch and cried quietly into my knees as he stuffed his jeans into his backpack. He looked up at me and smiled kindly, his eyes twinkling but sad. I wiped tears on my sleeve as he removed his favorite button from his jacket and pinned it on my purse without saying a word.

She’d warned me about this. Lynn, the first person I met when I came to Europe had said, “Don’t fall in love,” as we munched on burgers in the restaurant next to the hostel. I’d laughed and shook my head saying, “Oh don’t worry. I’m not planning on it.”

But I never knew that weekends like this were possible back then. I never knew that you could meet someone who feels like a missing puzzle piece that’s been found after years of looking. Someone who kisses your nose and tells you things he’s never told anyone before and stares at you like you’ve just floated down from the sky.

And they always have to leave. Back to their own lives, back to their jobs and classes and families and friends with your perfect weekend now just a memory, dimming a little with each passing moment.

Philipp.

He makes me laugh. We wrestle on the floor and he never lets me win but every fight ends with kisses and my sides hurt from elbows and laughter. It’s just us this weekend. Felix is here but he gives us space and we fill the days lounging around the flat, wandering through the streets of Hamburg, ignoring the clock, eating salami sandwiches and drinking German juice. At night we flock to the Red Light District and play foosball against random couples in a bar and win every game except one. He stands against the wall nursing his drink as I dance next to our table, singing along to the songs that I know in English. When we leave he holds my hand tightly in his pocket and we weave through hundreds of people packed into tiny streets with peep shows all around and neon lights overhead. We go to a party and I’m cornered by flirtatious German men who want to practice their English, but it’s fun and Philipp give me are-you-okay looks from across the room every couple of hours before finally pulling me away at 4:00 a.m. when the party winds down. In the morning we drink Diet Coke and eat salami sandwiches and he strokes my cheek, not noticing the mascara smeared under my eyes and tangled hair framing my face. Then we watch a movie and go to the flea market just in time to watch them pack everything away and it doesn’t matter because nothing does and we don’t have to do anything other then be with each other and waste time talking about things like wet dog noses and how to correctly pronounce the word “exaggerate.” There are no jobs and no alarm clocks and no responsibilities and no consequences and nothing exists besides us and this town. We act casual and pretend that weekends like this aren’t secretly worth more than entire years of our lives but I can see it when he looks at me as I laugh and when he kisses the top of my head I know exactly what went into it.

I get sad too quickly because I know what’s coming. It’s difficult for me to stay in the moment and not worry about how much I’m going to hurt when it all ends. We only had four days together and by the second day I’m already counting down the hours in my head because I know that there’s no avoiding it and I can’t stop him from leaving.

“I’m not ready,” I whisper as we ride the subway home at 5:00 a.m. on our last night in Hamburg. My head is on his shoulder and I’m sleepy and cold. We’d just spent twenty minutes on a bench in the station waiting for the train to arrive, huddled under a sleeping bag that Philipp had brought to return to his friend. I sipped on a milkshake and laughed at how homeless we undoubtedly looked. He kissed my nose and I shivered, cold from the milkshake and freezing morning air.

I haven’t forgotten about Junior and I still care for him a great deal, but these adventures are like chapters in a book and it’s easy to separate them regardless of how many days apart they actually are. I leave one country and go to the next and set down my bag on a new bed and learn words in a new language and it’s as if my whole life has changed over the course of a five hour train ride. I start over in each place, making a tiny home for a few days, and sometimes I fall in love. It’s happened twice now and this last time was by far the deepest. Maybe it’s because we spent almost an entire week together including the two days in London when we met, and because we speak the same language, so by the end of the last day we felt like we really knew each other.

Philipp.

He’s gone now. Left a little over an hour ago. I asked if I could ride to the train station with him but he said no, that it would be better to say goodbye at the flat. And I was grateful for this decision because once he did leave and kissed my nose one last time and stared at me with his gentle, kind eyes, I shut the door and cried through my hands because once again, forever just started.