Endlessly

It seemed to Ville that the day had lasted an eternity.

After he’d called and arranged his plans with Emilia, he had spent the entire day mulling over how exactly he would break it to her that he was going to be away from home for some weeks while he and the band went out to tour. He knew that this inevitability would have come to test their newly formed relationship at some point but he hadn’t been ready for it to happen so quickly, nor for it to happen at such an inopportune time. Two weeks were all he had left to try and stabilize his world before he left it and the weight of that deadline was almost too much to bear.

As Ville stepped out into the evening and closed the front door of his apartment behind himself, he shivered and momentarily contemplated grabbing more than the sweatshirt he was currently wearing. Ultimately he decided against it, the anticipation of seeing Emilia having won out against his better judgment. Digging his keys from his pocket, he turned to lock the door when he felt a tap on his shoulder.

It was not uncommon for a fan to do enough research and dig up his home address, he was grateful that these particular encounters were few and far between. He would have to text Emilia and tell her that he would be along a little later than anticipated. Bracing, Ville turned and prepared to greet whomever it was that had approached him and nearly jumped from his skin once his eyes fell on the semblance of someone he’d much rather not see.

“Jonna,” Ville answered politely to the brunette standing before him, looking up through the long lashes that framed her eyes. She gave him a smile and turned her face to look at him more directly, defiantly almost, as she greeted him.

“How have you been?” She asked as though they were old friends. As though she hadn’t tried to singlehandedly sabotage everything with Emilia before it had even begun. He appraised her briefly, she looked well enough, if not overly satisfied with having caught him off guard.

“Well,” he answered, still highly suspicious of her presence on his doorstep. “And yourself?”

“Great, I’ve just gotten back from Thailand. Luckily, the movers took care of everything so I won’t be walking into a tornado after that flight.”

Ville regarded her curiously and then, like an anchor, his stomach plummeted to the floor. Had it not been earlier just last week when he’d noticed the sign indicating that the building had an available apartment had been removed? He marked the fact that she’d seemed to recognize the realization on his face and her smile widened.

“You rented the apartment.” Not a question, but just a statement of fact as he tried to maintain a mask to hide the calamity going on in his mind.

“I did,” she smiled happily. “Yours was just so charming and when I left I saw the sign for rent and thought it must have been a twist of fate. I’ve been looking for a change and Helsinki seems to have everything I’ve been looking for.”

Ville cleared his throat and nodded briefly. “Well, welcome to the building. If you’ll excuse me, I’m meeting Emilia for dinner and I’m already running late.”

She bristled slightly but recovered almost immediately. He was glad he’d mentioned Emilia, he hoped that it would eliminate any notions that Jonna had toward attempts at rekindling what had, for him, been only a fling. Clearly, however, the message had not been received.

“Please tell her hello for me, I regret that she and I got off on the wrong foot. You and I should catch up soon though, we’re neighbors now after all.”

“I’ll tell her,” Ville replied cautiously, she beamed at him and then turned to go into her own apartment. The door opened without having to be unlocked and Ville realized that it hadn’t been coincidence at all that she had happened to meet him outside his door.

Ville quickly descended the staircase and headed down the street toward the restaurant where he and Emilia had arranged to meet. A shudder ran through his body as the wind picked up and he regretted his decision to not grab a jacket before he’d gone. He fished around in his pockets for his pack of cigarettes and placed one between his lips before searching once again but this time for a lighter. He began to despair that he’d forgotten to grab one when he found it and braced against the wind so that he could light his cigarette.

Inhaling deeply, his nerves began to quiet themselves and he found himself better able to relax. He hated that Jonna’s sudden reappearance had him so on edge but history suggested caution when it came to her. His relationship with Emilia felt tenuous at best, although he couldn’t put his finger on the reason why, however he had no doubts that Jonna would find the fractures to bring them crumbling down.

Jonna’s move into his building did have one positive side, Ville thought as he turned the corner onto the street that he would be meeting Emilia on. He had been thinking about a change of his own for quite some time now and maybe his new neighbor was just the impetus he needed to start working on making that change a reality. Taking the last drag of his cigarette, he stooped down to extinguish it in the snow and then put the filter back into his pack to throw away later. A smile slowly crept across his face as he began to think of the future.

Emilia thanked the driver of the cab she was in and handed him an appropriate amount of money before she got out of the car and stepped into the cool, December evening. She stood on the sidewalk outside of the restaurant that she and Ville had decided on and inhaled deeply the smell of the yummy food within. Her stomach rumbled as she hadn’t had the opportunity to have anything to eat since breakfast, as caught up in her activities that afternoon as she had been. She turned to look down the street and appreciated the view of her hometown in the winter, everything was covered in twinkling lights and newly fallen snow bringing a smile to her face.

“Pretty, isn’t it? It’s been a while since I’ve been home for the holidays myself,” Ville murmured in her ear as a tremor ran through her body. His lips pressed themselves against the side of her neck and she inhaled the cold air deeply, trusting it to calm her nerves which had been set ablaze.

“You should know better than to do that to me in public,” Emilia warned as she turned to face a grinning Ville.

“I do know better, but that’s why I did it,” he answered cheekily. She hit him playfully on the arm as he bent to kiss her on the lips. She smiled, his kiss warming her body from within as he lingered for a moment longer than necessary.

She’d missed him, every moment without him was agony this past week and judging by the relief on his face he had been experiencing the same kind of torment. She brought a gloved hand up to push aside a curl that had nearly lodged itself in his eye and he leaned into her touch.

“Should we go inside?” Emilia asked finally as a breeze blew her hair.

“Or we could just go back to my apartment,” Ville answered with a wink. His smile faltered as he remembered that bringing Emilia back to his apartment wasn’t actually the best idea at the moment.

“As much as I’d love that, I’m starving and I’m really not the most fun person to be around when I’m hungry,” she laughed and took his arm. She didn’t miss the look he’d made when he suggested going to his place and wondered what the reasoning behind it could be.

As they stepped into the restaurant, the smell of warm food washed over them like a tidal wave. A waiter walked by with freshly baked bread for a nearby table and Emilia’s mouth immediately began to water. She regretted allowing herself to become so absorbed with her task earlier that day that she’d forgotten to eat as she was about to consume an almost embarrassing amount of food.

Ville turned to the hostess and asked that they get a table for two when the young girl looked up and released an inhuman screech. He offered the usual polite smile that went with these kind of encounters and shored up his grip on Emilia’s hand in case they needed to leave for any reason.

“Y-y-yes, of course,” the girl’s shaking voice and blushing cheeks gave away her nerves. Unsteady hands grabbed a pair of menus as the hostess practically sprinted away from the couple leaving them to follow in her wake. As they paraded through the restaurant, a few pairs of eyes turned up in either recognition or curiosity but none reacted like the girl currently seating them in a booth near the back.

“Hope this is okay, Mr. Valo. N-n-no windows so you’ll have more privacy,” the girl stuttered and Emilia could see her getting frustrated with her inability to calm down.

“It’s perfect,” he looked at her nametag. “Anna.”

She went pale as a ghost as he said her name and shuffled away mumbling something about that the server would be along shortly.

“That happen often?” Emilia asked in a teasing voice. Ville smirked and waved the encounter away as though it hadn’t occurred.

“Every so often. More or less they’re about the same. Some are more coherent or persistent than others though.”

“Persistent? How so?” Emilia asked though she knew perfectly well what he’d meant. Still the blush on his cheeks was reward enough.

“I’ve uh, had a few offer themselves to me. One girl made it so far as to be waiting in my bed when I’d had an apartment on the ground floor, hence why I’m up several flights of stairs now despite the asthma. Susanna had a fit over that one, as though I would have invited the girl there on my own.”

Emilia pursed her lips at the mention of Susanna, a ghost now long gone but still a ghost nonetheless. Having seen the photos of the two of them had been hard and a driving force behind a part of her absence and while Emilia harbored no ill will toward a girl she didn’t know, it still stung to think about Ville with someone else. Ville noticed the change in Emilia’s demeanor and reached out to grasp her hand. A smile was returned to him and the mention of Susanna all but forgotten.

The waitress appeared at the side of their table, a flush apparent on her cheeks but she was much better at hiding the fact that she knew exactly who Ville was. The heartagram tattoo evident on her forearm gave her away though.

“Hi, my name is Hana. Can I get you something to drink?”

“Whatever you have on tap is fine for me,” Ville said not even bothering to check the menu.

Emilia ordered an ice water and the girl went away just as quickly as she’d appeared. Flipping open the menu, Emilia perused the selection as she resumed the conversation.

“So, I had a job interview today.”

Ville’s eyes widened as a smile spread across his face. “Where? How do you think it went?”

“Just at the art museum, part time as a tour guide while I figure out what to do with this degree of mine. It’s a start anyway and they loved the fact that I’m fluent in four languages so I’m pretty sure I got it.”

“When did you add a fourth?”

“Spanish isn’t very hard.”

Ville chuckled, Emilia had always been an academic overachiever so it was no surprise to him that she’d probably picked up another language just for fun. Still, the thought that she was putting down roots in Helsinki by trying to get a job was thrilling to him. Part of the problem with his relationship with her, he supposed, lay in the fact that she could disappear without a trace again and leave him to his own devices for another decade.

“Well they’d be idiots not to hire you. I’m shocked they didn’t hire you on the spot.”

“It’s my availability I’m sure. They wanted someone who could start right away but I’m going back to Germany in little less than two weeks.”

Ville pursed his lips and was grateful for Hana’s reappearance with his beer. As soon as it was set down, the glass was in his hands and its contents being thrown down his throat. Emilia raised an eyebrow at him as he set the cup down, now half drained, and addressed the waitress.

“Could I get a cup of the lohikeitto to start, please?”

“And for you, sir?”

Ville looked at Emilia apologetically. “A house salad will be fine, thank you.”

“I still don’t know how you get away with not eating meat in a country primarily stocked with fish,” Emilia said as she set to work on the bread that had been left behind.

“You sound like my mother,” Ville commented dryly as he helped himself to the bread as well.

“Well Anita is a very smart woman.”

“Speaking of mothers, how are things going with Tatiana?” Ville asked as he took a bite of the warm bread, he hadn’t realized how famished he had been.

“Frosty as usual, though I did get her to speak to me when I dropped off Osku this morning. When I asked her how she was doing she said that she was fine, so there’s something.”

Ville frowned. “She has to forgive you at some point.”

Emilia shrugged. “It doesn’t matter, soon she will have a new child to mold into what I should have been.”

“You know that she cares more about you than to just discard you like that. She’s just wounded, she’ll come around though.”

“I’m hoping so, Elijah said they were going to be meeting with some agencies this week. I think they’re hoping to at least have a foster kid by Christmas and knowing how persistent my mother is I have no doubts that will happen.”

“Are you still upset about it?”

Emilia paused before answering. It had been a question she’d spent most of the week thinking about and getting to no real conclusions. She was happy for her mother to have another chance at raising a family less messed up than the one she currently had. She was happy for Elijah to get the chance to be a father to someone that hadn’t already been raised with one. But on the other side of the coin, she worried that her mother would never repair the broken relationships she had with her biological daughters in favor of the relationship she could have with an adopted son or daughter. She worried also that this new family would leave her feeling as though she were a fringe member more than she already felt she was.

“I’m not sure,” she said finally as she released a breath she hadn’t realized she had been holding. “I don’t think I’m so much upset as I am weary of the whole thing but maybe it’s just because Tatiana is still icing me out.”

Ville nodded and looked up as Hana reappeared to place their food in front of them. Emilia began salivating as she caught sight of the creamy soup placed before her. Ville wrinkled his nose at the scent of salmon but Emilia just stuck her tongue out at him in retaliation.

“Are you ready to order your meals?” Hana asked politely, now trying to cover her tattoo with her hand.

Emilia blushed and met Ville’s gaze. “Is it terrible that I’m more interested in dessert right now than dinner?”

Ville chuckled. “Could we see the dessert menu, please?”

Hana hurried away to procure the requested item as Emilia set to work on her soup. She was quickly carving a path through the long list of foods she’d missed while she’d been in Germany but the dessert list was about a mile long.

“Emilia, there’s something I need to tell you.”

She looked up and noticed that he had his hands around his cup once more and hadn’t bothered with his salad at all yet. She set her spoon down and straightened her back, not at all liking the tone he’d spoken with. He took another sip of his beer, preferring it to food at the moment for he wasn’t at prepared for the conversations about to take place.

“That doesn’t sound foreboding at all,” Emilia quipped in order to hide the uneasiness she now felt.

Ville cleared his throat as the dessert menus were placed carefully on the edge of the table by Hana along with a refill of Ville’s beer. He nodded thanks to the girl as he turned once more to Emilia.

“We’re leaving to go on tour just after the New Year begins,” he said finally as he braced for her reaction.

“So soon?” She asked quietly, her voice decidedly more monotone than it had been. She wouldn’t meet his gaze but reached across the table searching for his hand. He slipped it into her grasp and she entwined her fingers in the spaces between his own.

“The record company wants us to head out for a few weeks to help promote the new album. It’s a pretty short tour though, Linde made them promise he’d be back in time for Manna to give birth.”

“I guess that gives me time to settle things in Berlin before you get back,” she answered sadly.

“I hate that I can’t come with you, I know packing up your grandmother’s home will be hard. I’ll be in Germany for a few days though, we always stop there. So I’ll be able to see you partway through. And you’re more than welcome to join us once you’re finished there.”

“If I get this job then I would need to come home afterward. As much as I love building Lego castles with Osku, I need to be productive. And it’s not like this is going to be the last tour we ever have to deal with. I guess it’s good that we’re starting off small and not some multi-continental tour for eight months.”

With a furrowed brow, Ville nodded. “You’re probably right. As usual,” he smirked. “Still, you can’t stop me from finding you when we stop in Germany.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” she replied as she gave his hand a squeeze.

All things considered, this portion of the conversation had gone much better than expected. He’d been prepared to face a number of facets to Emilia’s personality but meeting an understanding Emilia had been low on his list of expectations. She relinquished her grip on his hand to reclaim her spoon and bring some of the contents of the bowl in front of her to her lips.

Now that he’d broken the news of the tour to her, there was one other bit of information he needed to break to her. He finished the remainder of his first beer and set the glass aside in favor of his second. Emilia looked up from her soup briefly to let her gaze linger on Ville’s second drink and realized that the news of the tour wasn’t all that he needed to share with her.

“There’s something more, isn’t there?” She asked finally as she finished her soup and set down her spoon.

He looked at her curiously and then noticed her gaze lingering on the glass in his hands. He placed it down on the table and then folded his hands in his lap, knowing that what he was about to utter would change the entire tone of the evening and likely not for the better.

“Well, uh…” he began as he tried to figure a way to say what he needed to in the gentlest manner possible. “I have a new neighbor.”

Emilia looked almost relieved and that was a signal to Ville that he had not presented this correctly. He swallowed deeply and brushed his curls from his eyes as he faced Emilia with a serious look. The concern returned to her face and he pinched the bridge of his nose.

“And?” She pressed, growing impatient.

“It’s Jonna.”