Chapter 52: The Prelude to the Goodbye
The dust from the day’s planning session felt etched into their skin, a gritty patina of plaster and unresolved tension. They left Joost to lock up the café’s main floor, the large table still littered with the artifacts of their collaboration: the painted plan, the coffee-stained sketches, the empty plates whispering of a temporary truce. The stairs up to Yvonne’s apartment were narrow and steep, a silent ascent.
Inside, the cozy clutter was a familiar embrace. The evening sun, weak and watery, filtered through the leaves of the sprawling monstera on the windowsill, casting lacy shadows over the faded U-Bahn map on the wall and the stack of unopened bills on the small kitchen table. Yvonne’s world was here, in the terracotta pots and the mismatched mugs waiting by the sink, the dog hair glittering in the last light, the scent of soil and yesterday’s coffee.Without a word, they moved to the bathroom. It was barely large enough for one, let alone two, but they navigated the space with a practiced, weary synchronicity born from many shared weekends. Victoria turned the taps, the pipes groaning in the walls before a hot, powerful spray erupted from the showerhead.Steam began to fog the mirror, obscuring their tired reflections.
Yvonne peeled her dust-stiffened shirt over her head, the fabric releasing a small cloud. She watched Victoria, watched the careful, almost methodical way she undressed, folding her jeans with a precision that contrasted sharply with the day’s chaos. The vine tattoo on her forearm, usually hidden, emerged like a secret tendril reaching for light. The sight of it, a delicate permanence on Victoria’s skin, sent a familiar, warm ache through Yvonne’s chest, followed immediately by a cold, plunging dread.The water was a near-scalding benediction. It sluiced over Yvonne’s scalp, her dreadlocks growing heavy, turning the dust to gray rivulets that swirled at their feet. She tipped her head back, letting the heat beat against her closed eyelids. Victoria’s hands found her shoulders, thumbs pressing into the knotted muscles at the base of her neck.The touch was firm, sure.
“Your poets and your pragmatists,” Victoria murmured, her voice soft against the drumming water. “They’re going to drive you mad.”
“They already have,” Yvonne sighed, leaning into the pressure.“But we have a plan. A real one.”
“We do.” Victoria’s hands slowed, smoothing over Yvonne’s freckled shoulders. The water coursed between them, a warm, shared current. The unspoken thing thickened the steam around them, a presence as tangible as the tile at their backs.
They washed each other with a slow, ritual care, as if cleansing more than plaster dust. The scent of Yvonne’s plain soap, rosemary and olive oil, filled the small cubicle. Victoria worked the lather through Yvonne’s dreadlocks, her fingers gentle on her scalp. Yvonne traced the soap over the sharp wings of Victoria’s shoulder blades, down the ridge of her spine. They didn’t speak.The silence was heavy, full.
Wrapped in towels, dripping onto the worn wooden floorboards, they moved to the bedroom.The air here was cooler. Hans was already sprawled diagonally across the bed, sighing in his sleep. They nudged him over, a familiar negotiation, and collapsed onto the sheets, damp and cool against their flushed skin.
They lay on their sides, facing each other. The weak evening glow from the skylight softened Victoria’s features, caught the subtle silver strands at her temples. Yvonne reached out, pushing a lock of Victoria’s short, damp hair behind her ear.The gesture was infinitely tender. Victoria caught her hand, pressed her lips to the palm, a kiss that was more feeling than promise.
The elephant in the room was no longer pacing the periphery.It was right there between them on the pillow, breathing the same air.
“Day after tomorrow,” Yvonne said, her voice barely a whisper. It wasn’t a question.Victoria nodded, her eyes searching Yvonne’s. The professional veneer was gone, entirely stripped away, leaving something vulnerable and raw. “The flight’s at 17:40.From Tegel.”
A hollow space opened in Yvonne’s stomach. She knew the details, had known them for weeks, but hearing them spoken aloud in the quiet of her bedroom made them newly, violently real. The flight number, the time—they were anchors dragging Victoria away from this.
“I took tomorrow off,” Victoria continued, her thumb stroking the back of Yvonne’s hand.“Completely.No emails.No calls from London. The whole day.”
Yvonne just watched her, waiting, the dread and love churning inside her like a storm.
“So,” Victoria said, a faint, brave smile touching her lips.“Chefin. What’s the plan?”
The question, echoing Yvonne’s own pragmatic words from downstairs, cracked the solemnity. A small, wet sound escaped Yvonne’s throat, not quite a laugh, not quite a sob.“The plan?”
“For tomorrow.My last day. Before… before it becomes calls and video chats and me counting weekends on a calendar.” Victoria’s voice was steady, but her eyes were glittering. “How do you want to spend it?”
The enormity of the question settled over them.A last day. Not a final day, but a last day of this particular, precious configuration of their lives: Berlin summer, shared mornings in the café, nights in this creaking bed, the easy assumption of proximity. How could you possibly plan for that?How could you distill a universe of longing into twenty-four hours?
Yvonne thought of grand gestures—a trip to Potsdam, a fancy dinner in Mitte.But that wasn’t them. That was a performance for a different couple.Their universe was here. In these streets, in this apartment, in the rituals they’d built.
“I want to make you breakfast,” Yvonne began slowly, the vision forming like a photograph in a darkroom.“The proper, lazy kind. With the good sourdough from the bakery on Treptower Strasse, and those white peaches that are just coming into season. We’ll eat it here, in bed, with Hans trying to steal my butter.”
Victoria’s smile grew more solid, reaching her eyes. “I want to read the newspaper.The real one. With ink on my fingers.”
“Then,” Yvonne continued, drawing closer, their foreheads almost touching, “I want to take you to the nursery. The big one out by the ringbahn. I need to choose plants for the new window in the café, and I want you there. I need your opinion on the light.”
“You don’t need my opinion on plants. You’re a genius with plants.”
“I want it anyway,” Yvonne insisted softly.“And then we’ll come back. We’ll walk through the square, and we’ll stop and talk to anyone we know. Frau Engelmann, old Herr Schmidt with his dachshund… we’ll let it take all the time it takes.”
Victoria nodded, swallowing.“And in the afternoon? When the light is long?”
Yvonne took a deep breath, the scent of Victoria’s skin and her own soap filling her lungs.“We pack a basket. Just bread, cheese, some of those terrible sweet Sekt bottles you like.We take the U-Bahn nowhere special.Just… out. To that little patch of grass by the Spree we found that one time.We sit. We don’t talk about contracts or long-distance or… or anything.We just be there.Together. Until it gets cold.”
Victoria’s eyes closed for a long moment. When she opened them, they were clear, certain. “And the evening?”
“Here,” Yvonne whispered, her voice fierce now.“Up here.No café, no builders, no poets.Just us. You’ll cook, because you’re better at it when you’re not thinking about it. I’ll choose the music.We’ll drink wine. We’ll be right here.”
She watched as Victoria absorbed it, this simple, ordinary, perfect blueprint for a goodbye that wasn’t a goodbye. It was a day of claiming their normal, of inscribing its every detail into their hearts to carry through the coming separation.Victoria leaned in, closing the final inch between them. Her kiss was slow, deep, tasting of shared toothpaste and the salt of unshed tears. It was a confirmation.A contract signed in the dark.
“That’s the plan, then,” Victoria breathed against her lips. “It’s a good plan.”
They held each other as the last of the daylight faded, the room sinking into a soft, blue gloom. The dread was still there, a cold stone in Yvonne’s gut. The uncertainty of Victoria’s contract renegotiation loomed, a shadow on the far side of summer. But for the next thirty-six hours, they had a plan. They had a day to live in the vivid, aching present, to store up the sensory details—the smell of peaches, the feel of sun-warmed grass, the taste of cheap Sekt—that would have to last them through the unknown number of days to come.
Outside, a tram clattered by on Sonnenallee, a distant, rhythmic sound. Hans shifted at their feet with a contented grunt. In the warm cocoon of the bed, they held on, already beginning the slow, painful, necessary work of memorizing each other by heart.