[This is the sixth chapter of a short story called “Seven Days”]

I was the happiest I had been since we met, yet I could not get rid of the clock ticking inside me. Everything that day was our first and last. First lunch just the two of us, first date in daylight, first time dressing up without any dress code. So common I had not realised until then that they could matter. Yet they did; we gained a whole new level of privacy. No more badges with our names on it, an anonymous couple in the crowd of tourists, just like plenty of others around us. We held hands just like them. We kissed just like them. We laughed just like them, maybe even brighter. I wonder how many of them had met five days prior.

If everything was to be erased from my memory except for one moment I would wish to keep us going down the icy hill. He suggested to use the funicular to go up the hill and see the view of the city from there. There were very few people who all seemed to disappear after we continued walking for a while. The view was incredible. Night had fallen, we couldn’t decipher the buildings but seeing the lights was fascinating. Full of life and movement, quite opposed to the quietness around us. We hugged for a very long time after that, without saying a word.

Instead of taking the same way back, we decided to just go down by feet. It wasn’t that far after all. The only negligible detail we had forgotten about was the snow a few days ago, which had not melted there. Worse, it had compacted and turned into ice. It went as well as you can imagine. On top of it all, I was wearing heels that day because my only pair of flat shoes kept on pressing where I had cut myself from walking too much a few days prior. We laughed about it the whole way, helping each other in the most slippery parts. My pride is to say that he struggled a lot more than I did and almost fell quite a few times, walking in a hilariously cautious manner the rest.

Yet, it would be quite a distorted portrait if I were to paint that walk only with bright and happy colours. The reason why this moment matters so much to me is that we shared thoughts I had kept hidden inside me for years. I do not know why he started this discussion, but I do remember we had stopped in front of a small pond. He asked me if I believed in God.

Difficult question leading to a complicated answer. I don’t discuss my faith much with people, it is quite taboo in France. I still tried to explain my relationship with faith, with God, with the church. I won’t detail it here, it would deserve its own story, but I ended up crying while I uttered “I want to believe, because if there isn’t anything else after that, if all we get is this, then so many good people will have suffered and died and that’s it. They will never get the peace they deserved. I can’t bare it. It is too unfair!” It was a painful confession to make; it made me feel vulnerable and weak. His answer was to take me into arms as I wept, whispering reassuring words.

Later he asked me if I wanted to spend the night with him. I won’t go into more details about that night, I trust you, reader, and your imagination, to compensate for the lack of description. I just want to emphasise how right and natural it all felt. How simple. How true.  In those situations, it is easy to feel pressured to act a certain way and forget what you truly want. I must remind you to always determine the reasons behind your actions, and the truth will come to you.

As I was resting my head on his arm the dreaded question arose. “So, what do you want to do about us?” I looked up, unsettled. I don’t know what I was hoping for. To never talk about it? We hadn’t really discussed our relationship, it just flowed naturally from one step to another. I liked the spontaneity of our interactions; all that we did was by instinct, not by convention. Still, the question was asked; I had to accept that time had come. I didn’t dare to say it though, so he did. I summarised it by “Either we agree to stop at one beautiful week but only one, or we chose to have a slowly dying relationship and probably spoil our memories here.” A moment of relief, we agreed, and the clock finally had stopped, followed by the frightful silence of certainty. I realised I had loved and, though he was still with me, somehow, he was already gone.

We held each other, bare skin against bare skin, always tighter, in a miserable attempt to stop the inevitable, and cried profusely. A loud and painful cry; a cry for help, a cry for Fortune to play one last trick on us! Our eyes turned red and itchy; we couldn’t breathe properly. Yet we still held each other closer, without letting go; two bodies in symbiosis. After a while, the weeping drew all our energy from us, and we stopped. I don’t know when or how but we ended up falling asleep, completely intertwined.