Disclaimer- the characters/world are not mine.
Enjoy!
An hour later, we're in bed—a proper one, this time. My head lies across his chest, my hair splayed across pale skin. He messes with the newly-cut ends, running his fingers through the longer strands like they were passing wind chimes; like he had all the time in the world.
I trace the bones of his rib cage, pressing them like piano keys. I have never been musical, but I can almost hear a melody now. It's high and lilting, like dust particles drifting in summer sun.
"Allyson," he whispers. The wonder in his voice makes me smile. My name has always been so ordinary and grounded in the way it sounds, the way it's said; now, coming from Willem DeRuiter's mouth, it's a prayer, foreign and lyrical in its cadence. A benediction; a magic spell. "I've been calling you Lulu in my head all year, but Allyson…"
"What?" I chuckle. "It's like all the other Sarah's and Megan's and Katie's of the world? Believe me, I know. I-"
"No," he says, voice quiet but firm. He props his head up with an arm, looking at me with the eyes of a gypsy, not a Dutchman. "I like it better. It's real."
Real.
How strange it feels, to finally understand the weight of that word.
Yet the past hour—being with him, making love like hours have passed between here and Paris, not a year… It feels like looking through a lens; a gossamer curtain of fantasy. Sometimes, I feel like burying my face in his neck, his skin, because smell is the only sensation I cannot imagine. I stop short of that, though; this moment is more delicate than every second of Paris combined. It may be real, but it is as breakable as the wings of a baby bird.
"Why are your eyes so dark?" I ask, out of the blue.
He gives me a surprised little half-smile. Something crosses his face—hesitation, uncertainty, then determination—and he settles into the pillows, pulling me closer.
"My mother. Yael. She's Jewish. She used to say that I got my father's face with her eyes sewed into the sockets."
His laugh reverberates through the hollow of his chest, making my skin buzz where it's pressed against his. Then a memory—fleeting, glazed with the diffused glow of passing time—crosses my mind.
"Wait. Yael and Bram," I say, craning my neck to look into his eyes, dark as night."They were your example. When you were talking about accidents."
He grins. Something deeper lights his eyes now. It's a light that's years old, born of a childhood spent seeing two people in love, a lifetime of basing his own view of love—deep-love, stained-love—off of that one inexplicably matched pair.
"Yes," he says. "I…" lips clamping shut, his gaze leaves mine.
This silence feels different from before. He isn't avoiding the question, I think. He just doesn't know how to answer.
"I understand," I say. "Tell me later."
He smiles gratefully, and that smile—the look in his eyes—says everything.
We're quiet for a moment, simply listening to Amsterdam, alive outside the window. Willem absent-mindedly traces circles on my back. I look up, smiling, as I touch my fingers to his face, tracing the contours—sharp cheekbones, puffy lips—with my thumb. He closes his eyes, sighing in relief like he's spent so many months without air and, finally, he can breathe.
"Are you real?" I wonder. It takes me a moment to realize I said it out loud, but I don't apologize, even as a blush sets fire to my cheeks.
He opens his eyes, endlessly dark.
"I wonder the same thing about you," he says, seizing my right hand. He kisses my palm, my wrist, my birthmark. I close my eyes, letting the shivers take over.
"You make me feel real," I say. I feel like I'm peeling back the skin of my chest; my organs hang out, exposed.
He's silent for a moment, simply stroking my wrist. His ribs dig into my skin, but I don't want to move, don't want to look in his eyes or breathe as I wait for what feels inevitable—the awkward excuses, the stilted goodbye, the letdown. At least I would get a goodbye.
Finally, after an eternity, he tilts my chin up. My eyes are closed when he kisses me, his lips soft, caressing.
"I wasn't real before you." His voice is thick, throaty. His words are whispered against my mouth, the words like wine on a white sweater; mud on the new carpet. The stain is here—a palpable, sizzling, effervescent thing between us, and no amount of time or distance can wash it out now.