One day, the topic of my bunker comes up. Finn is really curious, so I take him for a little tour.
He is impressed, and when we climb back up to the surface, he says,
"You should build one of those tiny houses on top of this bunker. You could have your living space up here, a bedroom, a kitchen, and your training room down below. It would look incredible. Personally, I dream of building a mobile tiny home someday."
Since I still do not really know what exactly he means, he shows me examples of small but beautiful houses on his phone, and I fall in love at first sight.
That same evening, I show Alex a few of the cool designs and tell him what Finn suggested.
Alex gets excited too. He loves the idea of a tiny house, and for the next week we both search the internet obsessively, finding more and more amazing designs and getting fascinatedby all the clever and energy-efficient ways these homes can be arranged.
That is when I check the prices and realize that if my videos keep performing the way they do, I might be able to buy such a house with my own money around my eighteenth birthday.
Alex loves this idea, and he promises he will help me with the interior design since he always says that is his bonus passion.
I watch him getting excited over cute little bathrooms as he scrolls on the screen. I lean in, brush my lips against his temple, and say,
"You know, maybe we could live in that house together when you turn eighteen and can make your own decisions." I give him a meaningful, pleading look.
Alex smiles sweetly and lifts his head, our lips meeting for a moment.
"I would have to leave my dad alone, but it does sound tempting…"
"You are tempting," I murmur, pulling him closer.
When I tell my parents about this plan, they are thrilled and even offer to pitch in some money so I can decorate the house nicely. They are happy that I do not want to move to the city center permanently. Most of my brothers want to live away from home, but for some reason I do not feel that need.
My dad then suggests that the corner of their property can be surveyed and officially separated for me. I really like that option, and it is arranged quickly.
At the beginning of senior year, more changes appear in my life.
I start getting more and more offers to perform at local events, fairs, cultural shows, exhibits, trade events, and even bigger weddings, and I accept them because the money is good. People who hear me often later subscribe to my channel. Alex helps me a lot, even though he travels for chess tournaments.Any time he can spare, he dedicates to helping me with social media.
At the end of one fair, a slender beta around thirty approaches me and asks if I already have a manager. He introduces himself as Eric Garin and says that if I am interested in this kind of event work, if I want to keep playing at these gigs, he can arrange it. He supposedly knows people in the field and already manages several artists who always have a steady flow of cash thanks to the constant stream of bookings. He admits honestly that he cannot get me deals with big music labels, but locally he can help me get noticed.
For now, I tell him no, but I take his contact. Alex thinks I should consider working with him, but of course that would mean giving Eric a cut, and I am hungry for money because I want to finish my tiny house.
But that is not the end of my dreams. Alex and I are already making long-term plans, and even though it is only the beginning of senior year, we have already figured out all the college stuff. Our decisions were made at the end of junior year. We picked a college right on the border between the city and the suburbs. It is relatively close, exactly forty-five minutes from my parents’ home, which means we could commute, or we could live there on weekends and rent something locally during the week. We go over the pros and cons. I am more in favor of commuting, and Alex hesitates because once he looks at the schedule, he sees that many of the major math classes start early.
In the end, he convinces me, and we decide to live on campus during the week.
That does not mean my tiny house plans slow down. College will not last forever, and there are still weekends and summer breaks when we will come home. I manage to get invited to a few bigger music events, and my videos now get, on average,between seventy and eighty thousand views each, which gives me a nice income.
A certain idea forms in my mind, a little crazy, a little wild, but I really want to follow through with it.
I want to marry Alex the moment we are both adults. I want him to be mine because I have no doubt he is meant for me, that he is the perfect person, the one I want to spend the rest of my life with.
And that means putting a real ring on his finger, not a can tab. I even have an idea for a meaningful design.
LAKE
Twenty-eight years ago
I open my eyes.
Pain tears through my body, and I feel a thin stream of blood running down my temple.
I try to see anything around me, but my neck aches and my vision is blurry, a gray haze, and then a sharp contraction rips through my body, and I realize I have gone into labor.
