Schritt für Schritt (step by step)

Knowing

Lia's going to the World Cup.

They find out the following day and the way it plays out is a bit weird.

Anne, the physio, calls Wally in the morning. Leah has assumed her role of breakfast-maker almost a bit too seamlessly. She can produce some decent scones (that's about the only thing she knows how to cook) and, although she still has a limp, she's better at walking than Lia. Leah can take care of her. She hears Wally's voice from the turquoise couch going "Yes, Anne?", quite anxiously. Leah hurries over to the living room to be there for Lia, whatever the news that are being delivered are. "Yeah?" Lia's eyes are still fixed onto a lint of the couch she is pulling at apprehensively. She then stops. Looks at Leah. "Yeah? And... you're sure?", Leah knows now, "yeah... yes, of course. Thank you so much." This is great. "Thank you, you are the best. I'll be coming in tomorrow. Yes. No, no worries! Thank you, Anne... goodbye. Bye."

Leah's beaming.

"You're going."

"Yeah. I am. Well, most likely, we'll have to see how rehab goes", she adds when Leah pulls her into her arms. "Congrats, love, that's amazing!" Too much? No implications. No consequences.

Leah pulls away. Lia is smiling. But she's not over-the-moon-smiling, Leah constates. Not overwhelmed with giddiness. Hovering ten centimeters over the ground at all times. When she says "yeah, it really is great", it feels somewhat distanced.

"What is it? I can see that you're not entirely happy about it – tell me? Please?", Leah asks, straight to the point, not being patient or unsettled or indifferent enough to wait.

"I don't think I can place the feeling yet", Lia responds. "It's just-" she breaks off her sentence. "It's just that – it's a lot. It's up and down. Never knowing what I'll have to do, what my life is going to look like for the next few months. And, frankly, I thought I wouldn't be going. I'd already kind of accepted it, you know." It would have broken her heart, not going. But at the same time – it breaks her heart now. That she can. "I think I might be getting too old for this", she says.

Leah sighs and lets her body fall onto the couch next to Wally.

"I think that too, sometimes."

"That you're too old?", Lia chuckles slightly. "You're what, like, fifteen?"

Leah opens her mouth in fake dismay. "Is that how you perceive me?"

"No", Lia says seriously. And then: "I perceive you as sixteen. Seventeen, maybe." She laughs as Leah starts tickling her in protest. Wally screams a high-pitched "ARGH!" (she did not know she could still produce a sound as high as this) and then continues laughing uncontrollably. It's just a tiny bit too much, Leah notices. A tiny bit too much to be exclusively friendly. Right? She pulls back when the sudden surge of confidence leaves her.

"No, in all honesty now. It's so incredibly exhausting, mentally I want to say.", Leah says when they've both caught their breath.

"Yeah." Lia then adds: "It's also – like – I would have loved to go, but it would have almost been okay." "Not going?", Leah asks. Lia is scared of the thing she is about to say. "Staying. Here. Like this, exactly like this." With you. She adds that only in her head, but she knows she said enough.

Lia's breath is trembling, and so is hers, she notices. This was a bold thing to do. Lia does not know where it came from. But she has said it now. She is not relieved, she does not regret it. She said the words out loud, and now the words are in this void, in a vacuum. Leah says nothing. Neither does Lia. They look at each other. They just look at each other, too long, way too long. Both of them know. They sit there, a few feet away on Leah's turquoise couch and know.