#edwardrose

We spend the next day doing as planned, searching for a place to meet both our needs as neither of us felt like a car was necessary. That put us at needing to be roughly midway between Henrik's and where Edward's looking at getting certified to teach. There isn't really a lack of options, more a lack of my personal confidence in the ability to pay for said options, though Edward seems to take everything into consideration...or maybe he's just being polite to the people showing us round?

We end up with a stack of business cards, all with a brief outline of fees on their backs, two dozen photos on cell phones, and starving. I lead the way to the chip shop and we find a place to sit in the crowded little space.

"I don't even remember what place was where at this point, and I think they're all blurrin' into one giant flat in my memory," I shake my head and blink a few times, trying to recall any details that stood out and not being able to separate out much. Too many places in one day, but they'd all been in the same area so it'd seemed the thing to do at the time.

The flat is covered, paper bouquets in vases on the dining table, the living room's coffee table, the dresser...cranes and hearts and flowers strung up across the tops of windows, and mirrors all framed in photos. I surround myself with him as best I can, missing him every day.

I'm back at work, which helps pass the time, and organize his letters into a scrapbook of sorts, those that came with multiples of the hearts or cranes or flowers he and the kids have made, each get accompanied by one that I've artfully, and very carefully, flattened. The flowers get added alongside his sweet and generous words of love and of missing me. I take a few pictures of the different pages, sending those along with a letter about my return home, and about my mum being totally thrilled with the fact he trusted her to cut his hair.

I also throw in my two cents, that I should be allowed a brief moment to enjoy such long curls, despite the fact they're driving him crazy, because he looks quite handsome with that tan and all that hair, rugged and wild. Then again, he seems to always look handsome by my reckoning.

I send distinctly home-like things: salt and vinegar crisps and Mars bars, a box of good tea and a mug from the British Museum. I even stoop to such a touristy level as to take a picture with the Queensguard in their big fuzzy hats outside Buckingham. I add French copies of the Harry Potter series for the kids, as well as The Hobbit and a collection of Sherlock Holmes mysteries. 

I take an unplanned trip to Belgium after the girls talk me into it. It's only a few days, but it's enough that I know I love the food, love the people, and would happily return for an extended visit. 

From there I move on to Florence, Italy and it's the continued torment of overly romantic locations without the honey I'd be romancing. I laugh at Natalie's inscription on the photo of them, writing several letters now. One to Steve and Natalie, one to Sia Maria, and as ever, a lengthy one to Edward.

I tell him about Belgium and rooming with two of the three girls I'd met in Paris, adding that we'd have to go there at some point and really see the area because it was, by my reckoning, a more relaxed Germany. The place looked like a storybook and had some of the best food I'd had...until now.

Now, I live for eating, it's just true. The pizza and pasta and gellato...oh my god, the espresso! I could deal with the fact I'd be spending two and a half months in this country if this was what was to be expected. 

I send Edward a new journal, this one hand-bound in Italian leather, and tooled with his initials, writing on the first page: In case the others are getting full up. Halfway through, my love. I'll see you at home in no time. Love, Rose.

I send pictures from Pisa and the Duomo, some from the Vatican, and Assisi. I spend more time wandering from place to place here than I had in Spain or France, but it's like the closer I get to being back in London without him, the more I need to wander. 

I do end up getting pick-pocketed in the Vatican of all places, the police spatting on the ground and cursing gypsies when I report it. Thankfully, when I'm around town I travel light, so it was no big loss. It does make me a little less trusting in these crowded spaces, but better a pick-pocket than a mugger. 

I now have a box that most would consider silly or sentimental at best, but which is precious enough to me that it's my carry-on when I take the train from Barcelona to Paris. Inside was everything Edward had sent me, and I'm beyond protective of it all. Thankfully, I'd learned if you spray all the little paper creations he and the kids have made with clear acrylic, they're far more resistant to damage. I don't think my landlord had appreciated the tiny balcony being used as an origami preservation station, but he was a thing of the past now.

I'd elected to skip south France, it wasn't exactly beach or film festival season, and spend more time in Paris, and part of me loved it while part of me completely regretted that choice. Yes, I already wanted to take Edward to Barcelona, but Paris was worse by far. They don't call it the city of love for nothing, and I was keenly aware of the lack of him throughout the six weeks. 

The amount I wrote to him was getting toward novella-length, with pictures clipped on here and there, or little mementos clipped, glued, or stuffed in little paper pockets I'd learned to fold. A little rose I'd pressed that I'd swiped from inside the Moulin Rouge, a tiny stained glass replica of the rose window at Notre Dame cathedral, sketches of the gargoyles, of the arc du triomphe.

I'd been through museums and spent time lounging in cafes. I'd gone to the Paris Opera House and the Eiffel Tower, and I'd had to figure out how to find more film for the old Polaroid camera I toted everywhere. 

The city is...unbelievable. Everything functions at a vastly different pace from London, and I'm entirely sure people don't actually sleep on the weekends. Madrid is chaotic, filled with life and food and emotions that are bigger than any display I ever saw at home. Arguing on street corners? Sure! Passionately making out thirty seconds later when it's all resolved? No problem!

I makes me miss Edward immensely.

I laugh when his letter arrives and out come all these little paper hearts, all signed in different script by the kids he works and lives with. It's the sweetest gesture I've ever had made toward me. 

Already, I'd sent him a postcard with the arrival and departure date, a quick note that I love him, translated in both Spanish (which I was remembering somewhat from high school) and in English. Now as the days pass I spend some time writing about my adventures here.

I tell him about the bizarre schedule, how on weekends everyone's out and drinking espresso and having pastries by eight or nine, how lunch lasts for hours and has a siesta for two hours after in which the smaller shops all close down and people just...go relax, and how the whole city comes back to life around six. 

I write about Kapital, the seven story club I was brave enough to venture into one night, only to be totally overwhelmed by the wall of sound, the dim and colorful light displays, and stranger still, it wasn't even starting to get busy until around one in the morning, and kept going until six! 

The museums are amazing, and I spend hours wandering through, sketching out poor copies of a few of my favorite new finds which I enclose with the letter. It's so much time alone, which feels so strange to me, and I mention it to him in writing--the loneliness at times, but also the feeling of being surrounded by so much life, and so positive a culture, that it wasn't as though it was all bad. I tell him someday we'll come here together, that I'll show him what life as a Madrilleno is like, and together we'll watch this beautiful form of chaos unfold around us. 

Carefully, I slip each of the hearts he'd sent me onto a little florist's wire, putting the bouquet of paper hearts in a vase I found at the market I'd been going to most mornings. They'll travel with me the rest of my journey and I plan to add them to the string of hearts at home when I finally get there again. His picture, I tape to the vanity mirror, smiling at him each morning as I get ready, and every night before bed. His hair is getting so long, and it makes me smile, fingers aching to run through all that new softness.

I go exploring out to Toledo and have one of the master blacksmiths take a picture of me hammering a real Toledo sword, the man had found it bold and was amused at my interest in the process. 

I also experience driving, which is bloody terrifying and tell Edward I vow never to drive in this country again as people are maniacs. I send along a little box of Spanish sweets for all of them along with a basic phrase book so the kids can learn if they like, or the guys can pass time. I remind him by the time this gets to him I'll be heading to Barcelona, or near enough, and sign with my poor attempt at a line sketch of a matador and a bull.

The first day is...hard. I cry more than I have in, probably ever now that I think on it, and when I find the gift he's left my "Libraries...where shhhh happens" mug, a pink origami rose with little gold tips on the petals, I lose it all over again. 

I live off chamomile tea, coffee, alcohol, and crisps for a good two days. I guess it's sort of like mourning. When I way up on the third day, stretching and sighing at the alarm I realize I have until the fifth of September to be moved out before I have to sign on for another month. A glance at my phone tells me that gives me six days to have everything out of this flat and either sold, or moved into Edward's place.

Between that notion and work, I'm blessedly busy, though not too much that I don't think to write to Edward and tell him of this. It's pages and pages, a surprising fact since all I was doing was talking about the move and about missing him. About finding little origami figures all over the flat as I cleaned and tidied and thinking of him constantly. I sign it All My Love, and smack a red lip print on it.

I recruit help from Mickey, who also brings along his latest girlfriend, a nice girl called Alicia who I remember vaguely from school though she'd been a year or two behind us. They help me box up things for the short move, sell some of it online, and keep me sane for the low asking price of beer and takeout. 

Edward's couch was nicer than mine, upon inspection, though my kitchen gadgetry far outranked his. With the help of Mickey, Alicia, and Skye (and even on one night, Shireen), I'm able to get it all taken care of, and lo and behold, the night of September fourth I'm in Edward's flat, and completely surrounded by the scent of him, as if the whole place simply was a part of him. It's wonderful and awful all at once. 

I'd found an old Polaroid camera and film online while I'd been listing my bed for sale and had bought it without bothering to haggle on price. I make Mickey snap a photo of me sprawled out on Edward's bed...our bed, I suppose it is, laying on my stomach, feet kicked up behind me and posed like I'm blowing him a kiss. I sign the little white strip on the bottom 'Wish you were here, my love! XOXO' and include it in the letter I hadn't yet mailed.