24 - Jonah
24
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Jonah
I ought to have been relieved that Lucien paid me no attention whatsoever. This way, there was no chance of succumbing to temptation. Crossing the line had done more damage to me than I wanted to admit, and as busy as I was with damage control, the sight of Lucien during our meal lingered in my mind. He didn’t need to articulate it; I could discern it not only in his eyes but in his entire demeanor. His body language screamed at me that I had deeply wounded him.
It may well be that his condition that evening, as Martin insisted, had nothing to do with me, but from my point of view, I was still a coward who hadn’t managed to apologize to Lucien. So I felt lucky to be ignored because a beating would have been well deserved.
To my surprise, the weekend passed quietly. I went to Mass on Sunday, but my thoughts weren’t even there. Since we had that meal together, the apartment has felt eerily deserted, as if I was living alone in the shared house.
Martin spent his time in hospital, while Lucien was likely in his studio. The apartment became my tiny microcosm where I felt more and more comfortable. The night sweats gradually subsided and I stopped listening at the door before leaving my room. Over the course of the week, the absence of my roommates had become so commonplace that I was starting to worry. I stared at Lucien’s empty seat and wondered where he was hanging out, where he was showering. Whether he was all right so far. All these thoughts made me tired. I didn’t even have the energy to run and spent most of my time at home doing nothing.
But my peace wasn’t to last a week. When Martin found me in the kitchen on Friday morning, he snapped. “That’s disgusting!” he shouted, pointing at the dirty dishes I’d been piling up in the sink for five days. “I live here too, and my busy schedule doesn't excuse you from neglecting everything here!”
I sat at the kitchen table with a cup of tea in my hand and faced him. “I can’t sleep,” I grumbled.
“What?” Martin’s voice cracked and he frowned in disbelief. “I don’t give a shit! You’d better clean up!” He snatched his bag from the floor and left the apartment in a huff.
That hit the mark. But for the sake of peace and quiet, I tidied up and cleaned. It was my first time running a household. With Christmas approaching, exams looming, and chaos in my head, a little support wouldn’t have hurt. Plus, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something else was brewing. Despite Martin and Lu’s absence during the week, the tension in our apartment seemed to increase exponentially.
***
“I’m going for a drink with Oliver and Thomas today,” Simon said during the lunch break. “Are you coming?”
It was as if God had answered my prayers. There was no one at home, and I desperately needed to distract myself. The only thing that prevented me from agreeing straight away was the question of whether I was allowed to have fun at all.
“Come on, it’s Friday!” Simon said, as if he had read my mind, and so I joined the guys.
First, we went out for pizza, then to Langstrasse. The positive effect of the alcohol came at just the right time. It carried me through the evening and into the night like a wave of lightness, and I enjoyed the time with my fellow students.
Unlike Martin and Lucien, who dragged me from one bar to the next, we only changed venues once that evening because Thomas was dissatisfied with the selection of women. Although he was a typical nerd, he had no problems chatting with girls.
By midnight, we found ourselves in a lively rock bar with an excellent atmosphere. It was the very same bar where I had been with Lucien that Sunday, where he had later showcased his poems in my presence. At that time, only a handful of people had been present, but now every stool at the bar was occupied—the place was bustling. Fortunately, as we walked in, a bar table next to the window happened to be vacant. While Simon went to the bar to get some beer, I took off my jacket and sat down on a stool. Thomas wasted no time and chatted up the first woman standing next to him. When Simon returned with beer, she was already rolling her eyes and left Thomas standing there.
After the incident with Daniela, I had grown more cautious. With my low alcohol tolerance, I was wary of subjecting myself to the embarrassment of failure once more. Consequently, I kept to the sidelines, observing from a safe distance as Oliver and Thomas took the lead. I talked to Simon about the latest movies. When we were on our second beer, Thomas came back to our table and sighed in frustration. “I really wonder what women desire. It feels like it's impossible to please them.”
Simon offered him an encouraging pat on the shoulder. “You’ll get there. Just keep going.”
“Well, there’s obviously hope,” Thomas muttered and pointed across the room. “See that guy over there? The one with the brunette? He made out with a blonde in the toilet an hour ago.”
I followed Thomas’s gaze to the other side of the bar. In a dimly lit corner, a woman with long, dark curls was wrapped around a man, pressing herself against him and engaging in passionate, deep kisses that threatened to devour him. When she turned her head to the other side and I saw the guy’s face, my breath caught in my throat.
Lu?
He put both hands on her head and kissed her just as passionately, obviously unable to get enough of her.
God doesn’t make a difference either , I thought again. The blood rushed to my legs and my heart began to race. I gripped the table, overwhelmed by a sudden wave of dizziness. I couldn’t fathom why the shock hit me so intensely.
“Ha!” Simon laughed. “Jonah, isn’t that your crazy roommate?”
I glanced at Lucien with a petrified expression and nodded, fearing that words would betray the depth of my distress at the sight.
Simon grinned. “Looks like he’s having fun, huh?”
“What does he have that we don’t?” Thomas inquired, shaking his head in dismay.
“He’s an artist,” Simon explained. “We nerds can’t compete with that.”
“Great … and I thought scientists were finally cool.”
“You’ve probably watched too many TV shows.”
I smiled casually, pretending to follow the conversation, but in truth, I couldn’t take my eyes off Lu. As the woman disengaged from him, she leaned in and whispered something into his ear, prompting him to lower his head and nod slightly. The shimmer of desire was evident in his eyes; he regarded her like a predator. I recognized that look, and unexpectedly, it pierced me in the chest. The woman helped him into his coat and buttoned it up. As she prepared to leave, Lucien tilted his head back, gazing at the ceiling, and took a deep breath. Finally, the woman linked arms with him and guided him out of the bar.
It was only then that I realized how drunk he was. He could barely walk straight, which is why he finally put his arm around her shoulder to support himself. An expression crossed his face that felt entirely foreign to me. Anxiously, I trailed them toward the exit. When I eventually navigated through the crowd onto the street, they were climbing into a cab.
No, that wasn’t fun , I thought, although I couldn’t even have said what else it should have been. Stunned, I rejoined the boys, downed my beer, and ordered another. None of this held any interest for me anymore—let Lucien do as he pleased with whomever he pleased. Even though we shared the same apartment, we lived in completely different worlds.
It didn’t take long for my thoughts to drift in another direction. What exactly is my role to him? Have I misread him? Am I just a toy for him? What’s the point of our night together and all the emotional chaos? Does it mean nothing to him at all? Am I just— a lump formed in my throat— a means to an end?