Not Another Broken Doll

Chapter 23

When Chris woke up the morning after there was a light rain falling outside. He touched his lips with his left hand. It took him a moment to remember that he had not been dreaming, and that he had actually kissed Ruth the night before. She had kissed him back, and he still had a lingering feeling of her soft lips on his. But that was a bittersweet memory as she withdrew back into her corner right after. Looking at himself in the mirror, he replayed the scene in his mind.

Thinking back to the night before, Chris remembered how she took an instant and pulled herself away from that moment of intimacy he had sought out. She sat with her elbows in her knees for a moment. Chris looked at her, knowing that he had gone over the limit. He tried to touch her and she stood up, flinching away. She walked towards the kitchen and grabbed her bag.

“Are you alright?” he asked. She didn’t answer. He stood thunderstruck when she started putting her boots back on “I’m sorry, please, Ruth.” He approached her and she walked towards the door “I didn’t mean…” She walked out of his apartment and shut the door closed behind her. She left without saying anything, and he had been too scared to go after her. He sat back on the sofa and stared at the sky until he fell asleep.

Chris got angry at himself and at his cowardice. Last night he had decided to go all in and he hadn’t spared a thought to ask permission for anything, without even thinking that it could go south. She had told him clearly that she was not ready, or even sure she wanted anything. He had been friend-zoned, loudly and clearly. He stared at his own face in the mirror and he did not like what he saw.

“You’re an absolute fuckup” he told himself as he washed his face. He went into the living room and allowed himself to have a moment of pain looking at the clothes she had left behind, and the blanket that was hanging abandoned at the back of the sofa. He checked his phone. No news since he texted last night after she left. He tried to text her again. Just checking you got home fine last night. He wrote first and then deleted. Hope you got home fine. Hope? This was pointless, but he really wanted to know that she was fine. She had to be.

He checked the time and it was after ten in the morning. She had left around midnight. It seemed a reasonable time to call. He took a deep breath and he press the telephone icon under her contact.

One tone. Two tones. Three tones. He panicked.

“Yes?” a voice asked on the other side “what do you want?”

“Hi, is this Ruth’s phone?” he asked.

“What do you want, chef?” Ingrid asked coldly. “You have thirty seconds to give me a good reason not to find my spare guitar strings.”

“I..” he started. “Is she alright? Can I speak to her?”

“She’s asleep. You would do good to stay away for a while” Ingrid answered.

“I guess that is up to her to decide, don’t you think?” he asked.

“Don’t you dare get cocky with me” her voice was like a whip “You wouldn’t know anything about why she locked herself in when I got back this morning, do you?”  Chris’s heart skipped a beat.

“I didn’t mean to hurt her” he said.

“I know” Ingrid said in a low voice. “Look, Alaistar says you’re alright and he has never been wrong before, so I’ll hold off finding my strings for a while. But sort this out. She deserves as much.” She hung up.

Chris’ hand was shaking as he put his phone down. He noticed he was panicking. The last thing he wanted to be was another source of pain or confusion for Ruth. He had refused to listen to her story, not because he thought he already knew enough, but because he wasn’t sure he would be able to stomach what she had to say. His mind wandered off to the headlines he had read, and those few articles covering her story. He walked up to his punching bag and started letting off some steam. In his mind the lines of an article grew bigger. He let the anger flow to his fists as he hit the bag. He had been angry for quite some time.

He sat down exhausted after the workout. He had lost track of time. He checked again his phone and still there were no news from Ruth. Matthias had rang up but he did not hear his phone. Chris rang back right away.

“How was the night, Romeo?”

“Shut up” Chris said.

“That bad?” Matthias asked. Chris didn’t speak for a moment. “Please tell me you didn’t do anything stupid”

“I’ll be in the pub by Reeperbahn in an hour” he hunged up.

Matthias was already there when Chris arrived. He had already ordered a beer and was not waiting, as usual.

“The heck have you done this time?” he greeted, right to the point as always.

“I kissed her” Chris said “then she walked away and left without saying anything.”

“I tell you every time. Useless. Useless and hopeless.”

“I know” Chris agreed, and he drank from his glass. “I don’t think I’ll see her for a while.”

“Was she mad?”

“No. I don’t know. She just picked her stuff up and left” Chris shrugged his shoulders. “I tried calling and her cousin is threatening to kill me, so I’ve got confirmation I was a disgrace” he continued, a fully fledged member in his own pity party.

Matthias looked at his friend in the face. He noticed he was tired, and he found in his gaze a shade he thought he wouldn’t see again after Marie left. He could see him standing on the edge of a spiral of self-destruction.

“That’s enough” he said. “You could not possibly know it was going to go so bad, Christoff. Stop this bullshit and get your act together.”

“What’s with you?” Chris asked. Matthias had only ever called him by his full name a few times before. None of those carried good memories.

“Just promise you won’t do anything stupid” Matthias was serious. “You can’t start walking backwards because of the one setback.” Chris felt his neck tense up.

“The one setback? Ruth isn’t ‘a setback’” he answered. “She’s a human being.”

“I was not talking about Ruth” Matthias pointed out. “And I didn’t mean to use that word. But you’ve been on edge since Marie brought that stupid box.”

Chris tapped on the table. Finding out that Marie was pregnant was harder than he expected. He had kept his mind distracted, trying to follow on a feeling for someone else, but he was hurt, and in his stubbornness, he had hurt Ruth too. He never liked it when Matthias pointed out the obvious things that he failed to see about himself.

“I won’t be in the café tomorrow” Chris said.

“Whatever. Just make sure you don’t scare Kat to death again, will you?” Matthias said and left a ten euro note on the table. “Remember she still looks up to you, though I can’t understand why. Call me tomorrow, Okay?”

Matthias left the pub and Chris stayed on his own. He stared at his phone and thought of Ruth again. Maybe Ingrid was right. He needed to give her some space. Knowing that she was home and she was not alone would have to do. He put his phone in his jacket pocket and he felt a piece of paper. He read it in silence.

Today Chris is feeling great because he was reminded that life is unfair and things are out of  anyone’s control. On the plus side, he took an afternoon off and is having a nice time outside Hamburg and now he is sitting on the beach with someone he never thought he’d meet.

He never thought that he would sit on that beach with someone who would genuinely pay attention to him, without asking about his name or his past, or even asking about his future. He remembered how her interest in listening to his stuff made him want to stop time. Things were out of his control then, and now the idea of controlling anything made him angry. But he knew he had been in control the night before and he could not be trusted. He didn’t know what made him think he could be. Not a single one of his emotional decisions in the past six years had been good to anyone involved.