Let's Fall In Love And (Not) Forget In The Morning

It all started that one Friday night after a rainy day in early June.

As every Friday, I had spent the whole night in my favorite club called “Jewels”. But something was different that day. Usually, I would stumble out of the club around four or five, at least one pretty girl in my arm who I would take home and spent the rest of the night with. But that day, for some reason, I hadn't succeeded.

I had still been at the dance floor at a quarter to six, lethargically moving my body to the music that had gotten calmer along with the night.

As I had looked up and realized that there had been barely any people left, I had dragged myself to the bar and had ordered the last drink of the evening. Whiskey and Coke, like always.

“Next time”, the barkeeper Antonia had said as she had handed me the drink, that gleeful smirk on her face. Of course she knew me, and so she knew I took a lot of girls home with me. I hadn't ever thought she'd judge me for it. But that moment, I hadn't been sure anymore. There had been something dark in her grin, something telling me it might have meant more than she had let on.

Before the club was closing, I had gone to the bathroom. While washing my hands I had been watching myself in the mirror, thinking about that one question that I hadn't been able to get out of my head ever since that weird thing in Antonia's gaze. “Am I a bad person?”

I had never really questioned my hedonist lifestyle, my habit of having a different girl in my bed every weekend. I never made any fake promises, I always asked for consent, and I never took girls with me who seemed too drunk to know what they were doing. So morally, I did nothing wrong. But that day, where I left the club on my own for the first time in ages, I felt kinda empty inside. And I couldn't deny that this was definetely something to worry about.

When I walked down the street to the subway station, it started raining. First only a little, but it got heavier and heavier only within seconds. I started running not to get wet, but the rain was way faster than me. The sky above me slowly started to light up, and I needed to grin a little despite myself as I realized how epic that felt: me, running in the rain, the city around me slowly waking up while it felt like inside of me, everything was shutting down.

I stopped as I reached the roof of a little convenience store, finding shelter from the rain. I felt cold wearing my wet shirt clinging to my skin, but the skyline in the light of dawn reflecting itself in a raindrop everywhere I looked had something really beautiful to it. I grabbed for my back pocked and pulled my cellphone out to take a picture of the beautiful surroundings. Then, my eyes caught the cab app I had installed ages ago. Reason and comfort began to fight in my head. I would only save about fifteen minutes by taking the cab instead of the subway, but pay ten times as much money. Logically, it didn't make any sense. But it would take another ten minutes in the rain until I'd reach the subway station. I felt like such a loser already, and I really didn't want to feel like a wet loser when I was gonna get home. Some unreasonable, childish part in my brain thought that going home by cap was the only way to maintain my dignity, and after such a long night, I thought it was okay to let that part have it's will for once. A decision that I could never have known was gonna affect my whole life.

The cab arrived fifteen minutes later. I was really grumpy as I got in and sat down on the back seat. My clothes were all still drenched, which made the heated car uncomfortable nevertheless. It didn't feel dignified in any way, and I really wished I would have just taken the subway. On top of undesired I felt stupid, too, and all I wanted was go to sleep.

“Where are we headed?”, the driver asked me, his friendly voice colliding with my bad mood like a blunt knife trying to cut through a hardened loaf of bread. I named him my address in a strenuous tone, watching his reaction in the rear-view mirror.

He had a darker skin, short, gray hair and really deep wrinkles covering his face. He must have been nearly seventy, but his eyes looked so vivid like he had only been twenty. Just for the fraction of a second they met mine, and it was like they were sending lightnings through my whole body. My own eyes looked so tired in there, about to fall close any second, heavy bags hanging under them like I'd seen the whole world in just that one night. His had seen so much more than mine, and so much more bad stuff, too, but they were so hopeful it did something to me. Suddenly, I felt really stupid for being in such a bad mood. It was ridiculous! Just because I wasn't with a girl, I felt like I had nobody. My friends, my family – they all didn't exist on that morning. He probably didn't have much friends and family left, and yet he wasn't whining. At that point we had only known each other for three minutes. We had only talked two sentences with each other, and had shared one single look. And yet I already knew that he meant something. I just didn't know how much.