EMILIE
FOUR YEARS AGO, JUNE 1938
Munich, Germany
With a finishing touch to my rose red lipstick, I stare into the mirror, my reflection backlit by a flickering candle on my dresser. I want to look nice tonight since it isn’t often that we get to go out and have fun these days, but it’s Danner’s eighteenth birthday, and there was no way we were going to allow this occasion to go by without a proper celebration. He just doesn’t know about it quite yet.
Munich hasn’t seen its finest days recently, but I’m hoping a celebratory distraction might be a good break, especially for Danner who rarely gets out anymore. It feels like there’s more than a street dividing our lives, and I miss my friend. It’s been two years of fighting how we feel about each other, and when we cross paths, he’s quiet, distant, and not the person I’ve always known. Regardless of all the rules we can’t break, I haven’t given up on keeping him a part of my life—our lives. I couldn’t. Until a month ago, I always told him he was on my mind and that I was thinking about him, even that I love him. Then, one night when we were all together, he pulled me aside and told me not to saythings like that anymore. He told me I was breaking his heart in more ways than I could imagine. He pushed me away as hard as he could. It hurt, even more than the last time he reminded me of what could never be.
It’s been four weeks since we’ve spoken but I wasn’t going to let his birthday pass by so I rounded everyone up and planned what I could to celebrate him tonight.
Felix is responsible for bringing him to the pub while Otto, Gerty, and I handle the cake, gifts, and confetti. Felix’s father knows the owner of the pub who was kind enough to let us section off a small area in the back to keep the setting more intimate, the way Danner likes.
“I should have gotten balloons,” Gerty says, pressing her palm to her forehead.
“Danner hates balloons,” I say, laughing.
“I didn’t realize,” she replies. “Interesting.”
“Plenty of people don’t like balloons,” I argue.
“I meant, interesting that you remember such a small detail like that about Danner.”
We’ve all known each other most of our lives. I know trivial details about Gerty, Otto, and Felix too.
A loud scraping noise startles me into spinning around, finding Otto pulling a collapsible folding wall panel across the floor. “Sorry I’m late. My uncle—the one who’s been staying with us the last couple of months—just informed my parents he would like to live with us permanently.” Otto lifts his brows and sucks in a lungful of air. “Anyway, my parents will be here shortly.”
“Your uncle is moving in with you?” Gerty asks. Otto never mentioned an uncle existing before he arrived out of nowhere, and we’ve all met him. He’s an interesting man, but a bit quirky, and he has a habit of mouthing the words we say back to us, as if he needs to speak to them to himself to comprehend. We’veall made mention of it, but we shouldn’t be so quick to judge. I know better.
“He’s my father’s youngest brother. He can’t exactly say no to him,” Otto replies to Gerty.
“Family is family,” I add.
She gives me a wide-eyed look before straightening the streamer she’s hanging up.
“I’m going to grab the other wall partition. They said we could borrow two tonight to section off the space.”
“That’s perfect,” I cheer.
Otto finishes setting the first one down in place and scoots toward me for a quick embrace. “You look stunning tonight,” he says, looping his arms around my back.
“You look quite dapper yourself,” I reply, my cheeks burning, knowing Gerty is eyeballing us with a giddy smile.
“You two are—” she scoffs. “It’s too much. It’s too perfect. It took way too long but thank goodness you both stopped being so stupid.”
Otto grins with a soft chuckle and leans down to kiss me—something we’ve been doing a lot of recently.
“You smell like vanilla,” Otto mutters against my lips, ignoring Gerty.
“It’s called perfume,” I tease as he flutters his lips along the side of my neck.
All the while, Gerty’s words trickle into my head, one by one, making me think about all the times Otto asked me to go somewhere with him or spend time with him because he had feelings for me. I turned him down with a dozen different excuses, but really it was because I was fixated on Danner until he closed himself up inside his house after pushing me away.
With all of us turning eighteen this year, we’ve become acquainted with beer and other spirits, giving us courage to do and say things we hadn’t before—also the reason Otto and me,me and Otto, us, became a “we” two weeks ago. It’s been a nice distraction.
A strand of hair comes loose from his slicked do and swishes between our foreheads, tickling my nose. I nearly headbutt him when I laugh from the sensation, but he holds me tighter, spins me around, and kisses my cheek. I fit perfectly in his arms with the back of my head against his chest. It’s comfortable—something I’ve always known.
“You’re making me wonder where Calvin is,” Gerty says, peeking down at her watch. Calvin and Gerty have been an item for almost a year and despite what he might know, she already has their entire future planned out for them.
