"Erik, you're taking too long." She knocked on the bathroom door where her boyfriend had been cooped up in for a good thirty minutes getting ready for the wedding. Not their's, but he wished it was.
Meanwhile in the bathroom of their hotel room, Erik was silently panicking. Dressed in his nicest tux and red tie, his hair combed back nicely, was him leaning against the sink with his elbows propped up. He knows that he shouldn't be the one worrying about all of this, but he can't help but think about the wedding and its not even his wedding. Cathelijn and Thies' wedding seemed so important for Hanne to prove a point to her so-called "friends" that she doing better than she did when she left. And to explain this, last time Hanne saw her friends was in Nijmegen, she was single, she was there for less than thirty-six hours, she only saw them once and the only thing she said to them was, "Is it good? Because if it's not, I'm not paying for shit."
And Erik remembered what she told him yesterday about being constantly picked on by Cathelijn as a kid not only for the church school incident but for being herself in general. Everything she said about being treated less than a human being always involved Cathelijn up until the point where they were sixteen and the blonde girl had used Hanne to get what she wanted. That's when he noticed that anything Hanne had was forcibly taken away by Cathelijn.
Her youth, her happiness, her belongings. Nothing would be permanent in Hanne's teenage life.
So this was kind of a chance for her to show everyone that she isn't the same miserable kid that left Nijmegen to explore the world. And he didn't want to fuck it all up and let her down.
Just like he does with everything.
"Erik," she knocked the door again, pressing her cheek against he wooden door. "Erik? Are you okay?"
"Ja," was all Erik managed to stutter out. He looked at himself in the mirror above the sink, staring at how nice he was dressed but yet a mess in the inside. He stood up from the sink, and exhaled deeply.
But he was still in the bathroom, shoving his hands in his pockets and biting his bottom lip as he stoof in front of the mirror. Goddamn, how long does this boy need to stare at his reflection to get ready for a wedding?
Hanne, on the other side of the door, wad getting quite worried about Erik's wellbeing. During the first fifteen minutes, she thought he was just busy styling his hair. Twenty minutes, she thought he was still fixing his hair, adding some touch-ups there and there. But over thirty minutes, the poor girl thought her boyfriend was sick in the bathroom in which he locked himself in.
She knocked again. "Erik, it's been thirty minutes. Either open the door or tell me that you're okay."
The door opened, and Hanne to fell right into Erik's chest. Her eyes gazed up at him like he was something holy, but well, he was gorgeous. The hair, the face, the whole entire package, God knows what Hanne did to deserve a man like him.
And Erik was thinking the same, looking at her all dressed up for a day not for them but for someone else. Wearing that dress they argued about in the fitting room of a bridal store about who was going to pay for it, her hair was pinned up into a somewhat a bun with a braid along with several curled strands of hair around her face. Had she not been wearing the dusty pink dress, he would have thought that she was the bride.
Her hands went over to caress his face gently, resting on his cheekbone. "You look really nice, Erik. But are you okay? You were in the bathroom for thirty minutes, and I heard nothing from the other side, and I got worried and—"
"I'm okay." Erik took her hands from his face and held them. "I just zoned out a little bit."
No one liked it when Hanne was worried. Not even her brother, or Anneliese, or her parents, or even Cathelijn. Of course being a big cry baby in the inside, it made sense for her to have such a big and anxious heart. She just cared about everything a little too much.
