#pauldespijker

Le véritable amour résiste à toutes les tempêtes.

Short love story from everyday life.

Coincidence

The meeting was pure coincidence. A twist of fate I had not anticipated. I was walking through the city, and the late afternoon sun felt languid and warm on my skin, a golden glow that bathed the building facades in soft light. Just as I turned the corner, I saw you. You emerged from a side street, your black coat draped over your arm, your hair a little longer than I remembered. But it was that same confident rhythm in your stride that made my heart perform a strange, halting leap. My breath caught in my throat.

You saw me at the exact same moment. There was half a second of disbelief, a flash of recognition, and then a smile broke across your face that melted the years away like snow in the sun. The bustle around us faded.

We embraced awkwardly in the middle of the sidewalk. While bicycle bells rang out insistently and the voices of passersby hummed like a distant murmur around us, I held you close. Your body felt exactly the same against mine: soft, warm, and with that familiar pressure of your arms on my back. You smelled like the past, like a hint of vanilla and something spicy, mixed with the light, dusty scent of the city in the heat. It was as if time had stood still and we had never stopped belonging to each other.

“Coffee?” I asked, my voice a little hoarser than I intended. You nodded without a trace of hesitation.

On the terrace we found a table in the corner. The sun slanted across the weathered wooden planks, and the chairs still felt hot from the afternoon sun. Our cappuccinos were set down steaming, crowned with a thick layer of creamy foam that tasted sweet and bitter at once. At first we stuck to safe, surface topics. We talked about work, about the city that had changed beyond recognition, and about the trivial details of our current lives.

But soon the conversation sank deeper, as if we were breaking through a thin layer of ice into the warm current beneath. We laughed about the absurd quarrels from back then, about that one time I took the wrong train and you waited for me for two hours in the pouring rain, refusing to leave. We recalled the dreams we had once spoken aloud: that little house outside the city, the trips we had already taken in our minds but that never became reality. Your laugh was still infectious, low and a bit husky at the edges. It filled the space between us with a warmth I had not found anywhere else in all those years.

“Just imagine how things would have turned out,” you said suddenly, softer. You stirred the remaining foam with your spoon in a hypnotic, circular motion. Your voice was low and almost palpable in the sultry air.

I looked at your mouth, at the small dimples that always appeared in your cheek when you laughed, and felt desire spread through my chest like a slow, warm wave. Your eyes were exactly as I had seen them in a thousand nights: dark, lively, and with those golden specks that lit up in the last afternoon light. It was unbearably familiar. The distance between us, small as it was, felt like a cold draft along my skin, while every fiber in my body pulled toward you.

I wanted to reach my hand across the table, entwine your fingers with mine, and say that I still thought of you every day. That the love was still there, a quiet flame that had never been extinguished despite the distance. But I remained silent. We both knew that some doors were closed for a reason. Yet your shoulder accidentally brushed against mine as you adjusted your coat, a brief, electric touch that sent a jolt through my arm and made the air between us vibrate.

The coffee grew cold, and unnoticed the afternoon became evening. When the sun sank behind the rooftops and the lights above the terrace clicked on softly, we ordered a bottle of red wine. The liquid gleamed deep and dark in our glasses. The scent of ripe fruit and oak mingled with the evening air, heavy and enticing. Each sip left a velvety warmth on my tongue. We continued talking, softer now, about the breakup and the distance that had slowly grown back then until there seemed nothing left to bridge. But between the sentences something else trembled: a longing that had never been cut through, a chord that still echoed.

We both knew it made no sense to keep digging into what had been. The bottle emptied, and the evening air began to smell of wet cobblestones and the first sweet blossoms of the linden trees farther down. My heart pounded in a restless rhythm I could feel all the way up in my throat.

I paid, and we stood up, our legs a little heavy from the wine and the emotions. “Come,” I said, “I’ll walk you home.”

We walked side by side through the now hushed streets. Our footsteps sounded in sync on the cobblestones, a rhythm we had shared for years. Every now and then our arms lightly brushed each other, an accidental contact that each time triggered a wave of melancholy. The cool evening breeze stroked along my neck, but your nearness felt like a protective blanket against the night.

At your door we stopped. The air here was thick with the blossom scent and the light, damp chill creeping up from the entryways. You looked at me, a second longer than necessary for a farewell between friends. In your eyes I saw the same inner conflict that raged within me, a soft glimmer of tears that you bravely held back.

I pulled you to me one last time. I felt the warmth of your body through the fabric of your coat, the familiar contours of your back beneath my hand, and your breath warm against my neck. For a moment there was no time, no past, and no future. Only us, here. Then I slowly released you.

“Good night,” I said, and the word felt heavy in my mouth.

You smiled, a small and fragile gesture. “Good night.”

I turned around and walked away without glancing back once. Behind me I heard the door click gently into the lock. That single, final little click echoed in the empty street and marked the line between what was and what could have been. The longing kept burning, sharp and sweet at once, while the cold night air caressed my face. I put one foot in front of the other and walked into the night, knowing that a part of me would always remain standing there with you in that doorway.

A short story inspired by an experience of a good friend.

Everything I Saved for Later

I thought there was enough time. Time enough to reach for the warmth of your hand before the couch between us turned into an ice field. Time to tell you you were beautiful, especially on those gray days when you hid behind your exhaustion. Time to really listen to your stories about your colleagues or the flowers that refused to bloom. Those seemingly small words that, I realize only now, formed the very foundation of our life together.

You were always there. You were the oxygen in the room, unnoticed, until the air slowly began to run out.

Only now do I see it: how often you looked at me, begging for a sign of life. A word, a touch, a fraction of recognition that proved I was still there. Something that said: I see you. I did see you. But I chose blindness.

I kept my love locked away like a precious secret, deep inside, while you stood outside in the draft, waiting for the key. I thought that simply knowing the safe existed would be enough for both of us. What a foolish, arrogant mistake.

Love that isn’t spoken dies a slow death in the draft between two people.

I remember your soft sighs. They were words you swallowed because no one was listening on the other side. I heard them. I understood them. But I stayed silent.

Now that silence echoes louder than any scream. You were never out of my thoughts. You were the heartbeat beneath every day, a melody I hummed without honoring where it came from.

That’s the bitter truth: inside, I never let you go. But in the real world, I loosened my fingers from yours, one by one.

If I could turn back time, I would make the small things big. I would say your name more often, just to fill the air with it. I would grab your hand as if it were the only lifeline keeping me above water.

I don’t know if these words can still fill the emptiness. Or if they can mend the holes I let form through my own sluggishness. But if you ever wondered whether I loved you, then this is my answer:

Always.

My First Love

It started with a tape measure.

I had seen him properly for the first time on a Thursday afternoon in May, halfway through my summer job at the hardware store. Not on the first day we worked together. That had been weeks earlier, but that day he was simply a colleague, someone who knew where the anchor bolts were kept and drank his coffee without sugar. That Thursday I was standing in the stockroom looking for a tape measure that was nowhere to be found, and he appeared from behind a rack of PVC pipes, held it up and said: "Looking for this?" His smile was slow. As if he produced it rather than simply let it happen.

I took the tape measure. Our fingers touched a fraction too long.

After that, we talked. At first about nothing: schedules, which colleague was always late, which customers were friendly and which were not. But soon about other things. It turned out he read books I had read too. He was careless about small things and precise about large ones. He had a peculiar sense of humour that was a little too dry for most people, but which I understood immediately. We laughed often, but never loudly. It was always that suppressed laughter of two people who realise they share something others are missing.

In the weeks that followed, breaks felt shorter when he was not there and passed too quickly when he was. I started getting up earlier in the mornings. I chose my T-shirts with slightly more attention than was necessary for stacking tins of paint. One evening I lay in bed and realised, with a clarity that was almost painful, that I longed for him in a way that had nothing to do with friendship. That it had been this way for weeks. That I had simply not wanted to name it yet.

I named it.

So did he, a week and a half later, after we had stood outside together after closing time with coffee from the machine, the car park empty and gleaming after a rain shower. He did not say it with words but with the way he stayed when I was already almost gone, the way he said my name, just my name and nothing else, and the question that lay inside it.

"Friday?" I had said.

"Friday."

My heart had been pounding all evening, but now, as I pushed open the door of the cafe and the warm, humid air hit me from inside, it felt as though it might burst from my chest at any moment. Outside a fine drizzle was falling, the kind that makes everything glisten under the street lights.

He was already sitting at a table by the window, his fingers wrapped around a glass of red wine. When he saw me, that smile broke through, the slow, warm smile that made his eyes light up and my knees go weak. He stood up and hugged me briefly but firmly. His jacket smelled of rain and aftershave, a fresh, woody scent that reached me immediately.

"Finally," he murmured against my ear, his voice lower than I was used to, as though he too had been waiting for weeks.

We talked the way we always did: about books we had both read, about the ridiculous deadlines at school, about the rain that would not stop. But beneath the words lay something else. Something electric. Every time our hands accidentally touched while passing the bread basket, a spark shot through me. I noticed how he looked at my mouth when I spoke, how his thumb moved unconsciously along the rim of his glass. My own hands trembled slightly when I picked up my glass.

After an hour, or was it two, he leaned forward. The candle between us flickered.

"I don't want this to end here," he said softly. His eyes held mine, dark and open. "Come with me. No pressure. Just... us."

My mouth went dry. I nodded, without a word.

We paid, pulled on our jackets and stepped out into the rain. His house was not far, twenty minutes walking through the quiet streets of the old city quarter. The pavements shone wet, our shoes making soft, squelching sounds. After only a few steps he took my hand. Hesitantly at first, fingers finding each other and then intertwining firmly. His hand was warm, a little rough from working. I felt his pulse in his wrist, quick, just like mine.

At a crossroads he stopped, pulled me under the awning of a closed shop and kissed me for the first time. It was careful, almost shy. His lips were cool from the rain but warm inside. A hint of wine and something sweet, something that was entirely Thomas. I placed my hand at the back of his neck, felt the damp hairs there, and the kiss deepened. A car passed, headlights sliding over us, but I did not care. In that moment only he existed.

When we walked on, his arm was around my waist. I felt the warmth of his body through our jackets, the gentle pressure of his hip against mine. The rain grew a little heavier, but it felt good, as though the world wanted to shelter us, to leave us alone with this moment. At his front door he fumbled briefly with the key and laughed softly at his own awkwardness.

"Sorry," he whispered. "I'm a little... nervous."

I smiled and drew him briefly against me. "Me too."

Inside it was warm. He kicked off his shoes, hung up our wet jackets and led me through the narrow hallway into the living room. The space was exactly as I had imagined it: bookshelves reaching to the ceiling, a worn but comfortable sofa, a few candles on the coffee table that he now lit one by one. The light turned soft and golden. Outside the rain tapped against the window, a constant, soothing sound.

He turned to face me. We stood there in the middle of the room and looked at each other. The air between us seemed to hum. His eyes were darker than ever, full of a longing that had been smouldering for months. The same longing that was now burning inside me too.

I took a step closer. My fingers trembled slightly as I placed them on his cheek. His skin was warm, a little stubbled beneath my thumb.

"I want you so much," I whispered, and my voice nearly broke.

He smiled, that soft, reassuring smile that had always disarmed me, and placed his hand over mine.

Our lips met carefully, almost tentatively. At first it was only a gentle pressure, warm and dry. Then he opened his mouth slightly and I tasted him. A hint of mint tea and something sweet, something entirely his own. The kiss grew deeper, slower. Our tongues found each other, played, and a warm wave moved through my stomach. I felt his hands gliding over my back, slipping beneath my shirt, and my skin began to glow wherever he touched me.

We undressed each other slowly. Every piece of clothing that fell felt like a liberation. His chest was bare, soft down hair beneath my palms. I let my fingers slide over his nipples and heard him sigh quietly, a sound that went straight through me. He did the same to me, stroking my sides, my stomach, and I shivered with pleasure. Our bodies pressed against each other, skin against skin, warm and alive. I felt his heartbeat against mine.

We sank down onto the bed, entwined. His hands were everywhere: over my chest, my hips, my thighs. I stroked him in return, tracing the line of his collarbone downward, over his stomach, until I finally closed my hand around him. He was hard, hot, pulsing in my hand. A deep groan escaped him when I began to stroke him slowly, with long, tender movements. His own hand found me, and the feeling was overwhelming, his fingers so precise, so loving. We moved in the same rhythm, breathing into each other's mouths, foreheads touching.

The room filled with our sounds: soft breathing, wet kisses, the gentle sliding of skin on skin. I smelled his scent, musky, a little sweat, purely and boyishly his, and it made me dizzy with desire. His lips found my neck, sucked gently, and I felt the tension in my lower stomach building, tighter and tighter, like a spring being wound further and further.

Our hands moved faster now, almost desperately. The rhythm grew rougher, more urgent. I felt his body trembling beneath my touch, his muscles tensing and releasing in waves. My own breathing became ragged and uneven.

"Thomas..." I groaned, and he answered with a low, raw sound that vibrated through me.

"I'm so close," he gasped against my lips, his voice broken and pleading. His eyes bore into mine, wide open, vulnerable, full of love and pure desire. We moved now in perfect synchrony, hands gripping each other with an intensity that almost hurt, bodies pressing together as though we wanted to literally disappear into each other.

Then it came. It began like an earthquake deep in my core, a consuming heat that tore through my entire body like lightning. My muscles clenched, my back arched in a curve of pure ecstasy, and a deep cry tore from my throat, raw and uncontrolled, as though every part of my soul was pouring out at once. At exactly the same moment I felt him come undone: his body shuddering hard against mine, his fingers gripping into my skin, his warmth spilling over me in hot, pulsing waves. My own release followed immediately, wave after wave washing over him, mingling with his heat, sticky and warm and alive.

They were not waves of release. It was a merging. Every boundary between us dissolved in that one, blinding second, two bodies, two hearts, two souls that melted completely into a single trembling being.

Slowly the storm ebbed away. We lay still, sweaty, breathless, in each other's arms. My hand still rested loosely around him, his fingers stroking my back in slow, trembling circles. The rain was still tapping against the window, but now it sounded like a lullaby.

I kissed his forehead, his closed eyelids, his mouth that was still trembling slightly.

"I love you," I said softly, my voice hoarse with emotion.

He smiled, his eyes half open, and drew me closer still.

"And I love you," he whispered back. His voice was thick, unsteady, full of wonder.

We lay there, entwined, while the candles burned slowly down. No more words needed. Only the warmth of his body, the quiet breathing against my chest, and the deep, safe feeling that we had finally come home.

The candles were almost burned out when I slowly woke again. It was still dark outside, but the rain had stopped. Only the soft ticking of a drop falling now and then from the gutter broke the silence. Thomas was still lying against me, his arm heavy across my chest, his face buried in my neck. His breathing was deep and steady, warm against my skin.

Carefully I let my fingers glide over his back, along the gentle curve of his spine. He sighed in his sleep and pressed himself closer to me. I breathed in his scent, that mingling of our time together, and felt my body beginning to respond again, slowly but unmistakably. Not the desperate hunger of before, but a deep, tender longing to feel him again.

His eyes opened. Dark, sleepy, but immediately full of recognition. That slow, intimate smile that seemed meant only for me.

"Hey," he whispered, his voice rough with sleep. "Are you awake?"

I nodded and leaned forward to kiss him. This kiss was different from the first, not hesitant, but full of knowing. His lips were soft, a little swollen from earlier, and he opened for me immediately. His hand glided over my side, stroked my hip, and I felt him growing hard against my thigh.

We rolled over gently, without hurry. Slower now. Deeper. My hand closed around him, felt how he was already wet at the tip, and I stroked him with long, gliding movements. He did the same for me, his grip firm but loving, his rhythm perfectly attuned to mine. Our breathing mingled, warm and damp. I kissed his neck, tasted the salt of his skin, bit softly into his shoulder and heard him laugh quietly, the sound full of happiness.

Our movements grew faster again, but still together. No rush, no desperation. Only a deep, pulsing need to give each other what we needed.

"Look at me," he whispered.

I opened my eyes and lost myself in his. Full of love, full of wonder, full of us. It was enough to carry me over the edge. The waves of release came like a tide, slow and overwhelming, my whole body tensing as I came in his hand. Almost simultaneously I felt him shudder beneath me, his groan deep and drawn out. We held on to each other, bodies trembling, mouths open against each other, breathing as one.

Again that magical feeling: two souls merging, boundaries dissolving, until there was only us.

This time it faded even more slowly. I kissed his chest, his collarbone, the pulsing vein in his neck.

"This... this is more than I ever dared to dream," I said softly.

Thomas stroked my hair, his fingers tender and slow. "And it's only the beginning," he answered, his voice full of promise. He pulled the sheet over us, even though we were both sweaty and sticky. It did not matter. Nothing mattered more than this.

The morning light crept slowly through the curtains. It was soft, almost shy, falling in thin strips across the bed. Thomas was lying beside me, his chest rising and falling in a calm rhythm, his arm loosely around my back. I breathed in his scent, warm, a little sweat, the remnants of the candles that had now burned completely down. It felt like home. Real home.

I lifted my head and looked at him. His eyes opened slowly, and that same smile broke through like the sun itself. No words at first. Only our eyes holding each other, full of everything we had shared that night. He drew me closer, kissed my forehead, my nose, my lips. A kiss that was no longer hungry, but full of a deep, quiet certainty.

"Good morning," he whispered, his voice still hoarse.

"Good morning," I said back, and it sounded like something new, a word I was hearing in his mouth for the first time and could already not do without.

He shifted slightly so we lay beside each other, foreheads touching, his hand intertwined with mine.

"I don't want to let go of this," he said. "Not you. Not us. I want to wake up in the morning with your scent on my skin. I want to come home in the evenings and know that you're there. I want to read books on the sofa while you lean against me. I want to argue about what music we play and then laugh and kiss until we've forgotten what we were arguing about. I want... to always be with you."

His words reached me more deeply than any touch. I felt tears prick behind my eyes, not from sadness, but from a happiness too large for words. I kissed him, slowly and deeply, tasting sleep on his lips and promise in his breath.

"Me too," I whispered against his mouth. "I want to grow old with you, Thomas. I want to choose you again every single day. For us. For this."

Outside the city was slowly waking: a car in the distance, the soft sound of a bicycle over wet paving stones, the first birds. But in here there was only us. His leg lay over mine, his hand on my chest, exactly over my heart.

Later, much later, we got up. We showered together, slowly and without hurry, soap bubbles gliding over our skin, laughing at small awkward moments, the shower head that was aimed the wrong way, his pine-scented shampoo that I used anyway. We drank coffee at his kitchen table, still in our dressing gowns, bare feet tangled together beneath the table. He read the news on his phone and read pieces aloud to me. I watched his face in the morning light and thought: this. This is it.

And when he looked at me over the rim of his mug and said, "Will you stay tonight? And the night after? And all the nights after that?" I could only nod, my heart so full it almost hurt.

We were no longer two separate boys. We were a story that had only just begun, but already felt like forever.

Happy. Unbreakable. Together.

And I knew, with every fibre of my body, that I had recognised him all those months ago without knowing it, in a stockroom, behind a rack of PVC pipes, with a tape measure in his hand and that slow smile on his face.

Sometimes everything begins exactly like that.

Bella Italia.