After Her Love

31. Between the lines

Iiris' PoV

Time has been going quite fast while just walking and thinking about life and all the problems I needed to solve. On the positive side, I managed to bury all the memories I had with Rauli, all the good and terrible moments, and it felt good. I know that they will be with me forever but I managed to lock them somewhere so deep that I should be safe from them. As soon as I had done that, I started to think about the situation with Aleksi, and those were the thoughts that kept me company until the very last meters of my journey. It has been a week since I reached Santiago de Compostela and I decided to take some time to recover from the journey. It ain't easy to walk all the way from southern France to here, but I felt that I needed to do this.

My flight back to Finland was supposed to be tomorrow and I was nervous. Aleksi had no idea that I was coming, neither did anyone else. It's not that I wanted to hide from them, but there were still some things I wanted to sort out before I could face Aleksi again. The moment my thoughts wandered to him, I felt his soft lips on mine. Was it wrong to feel all these feelings it created on me? Was it wrong to fall for him this fast after everything that happened? It was hard to explain myself that I had the freedom to feel whatever I wanted and I did not want to hide from those feelings. For me, everything I felt, felt right. But what was Aleksi thinking? From his messages I could read so many emotions between the lines, but what if he had already let go of them? What if he thought I would never return even though I kept on telling him that I would come back? What if he has found someone new, someone more emotionally stable than me?

The hardest part will probably be the talk we had to have. Honestly, I did not even know what to say to him.. I wanted to say so much, tell him how much he has helped me during my stay at his house and while I was taking this journey. He was the only one I kept in touch with. The closer to the end my journey came, the longer our talks became again, and the more I started to miss him. Of course I did not tell him that.. I figured it would be better not to talk about it until I was there, having a conversation with him face to face. It would feel more real and he could see all my emotions. Writing them down to him would not be the same, or Facetiming them. I wanted to be able to hug him, feel him close to me and kiss him if I wanted to. But those things could only happen if he was feeling the same. And my worst fear right now was that he would not feel anything anymore after being abandoned twice. He could write all those nice words just to support my journey and not break my heart, but I felt like I had already broke his... And it felt bad.

Either way, I was packing up the few things I had with me. I did not have much stuff in general. When I left the apartment I shared with Rauli, I took only the essentials and because I was not ready to go to the shops more than I did in Oulu, I did not have too many things to carry. When I arrived in France, I took a moment to sort out the clothes I had. Some I gave into a charity, some I threw away. I didn't need all of them and the less I had with me, the easier it was to walk. I had enough money to get some new things if I needed anything. That made packing a lot easier.

The butterflies were getting very active in my stomach. I had been away a little bit more than a month, so it was the first weeks of May. Here the weather was nice and warm but I knew in Finland it was just about to get warmer. I sat on the edge of my bed and I had a huge urge to ask Aleksi what he was about to do tomorrow, but I decided not to. I had booked an AirBnB for a few nights so I could acclimate and get used to the country again.

Just that, Aleksi seemed to have different ideas and before I managed to set my alarm for tomorrow, a message from him came in.

Aleksi: Hey,.. Just checking on you. How are you doing?

A mix of a smile and sigh was painted on my face, but while I was reading the message, the butterflies in my stomach made me realize how good it felt to receive a message from him.