30 reasons to stay || piszczek

reason four

10 June 2017.

In 2009, Rosie had just freshly turned twenty years old. Just two years prior, she left her home in Dubrovnik and her mother that couldn't care for her own damn self and literally moved a thousand miles away. To Berlin.

There, she worked at a small café that provided her just enough to make a living. But she was broke. Her heart broke upon the decision of leaving Dubrovnik—the city where her origins were buried in—and everyone and everything. All the memories, her one family member, the kids she played football with down the street in the empty lot that were entering university or moving elsewhere to fulfill their dreams, she left them.

She had left everything she earned and made for some city in a country whose language she couldn't understand. She came to Berlin with only a wad of money in her hands and the determination to find a job and a better life when in reality, she had nothing.

When there was nothing, there was Lukasz.

The Lukasz Piszczek that she had met at their mutual friend, Jonas, at a house party in Berlin. It seemed like not too long ago that Rosie and Lukasz ditched the party for some food because their German wasn't of that to be spoken. It seemed like they weren't rushing to his house on a Tuesday night from her work, him shutting the door as he placed kisses up her neck and unbuttoned her shirt, fucking late at night and first thing in the morning. Just one year later, she would follow the man of her life three hundred miles to Dortmund and go from full-time café worker to Borussia Dortmund's commentator.

From one year to two years, to three years and joking about the concept of actually getting married, to four years, five years, six and actually wanting to get married, to seven and almost eight. It didn't make sense.

And Rosie still couldn't believe how low their relationship had become within the past few months.

She couldn't believe that she was here, lying on their bed, while her boyfriend was in Warsaw for the Poland v. Romania match. She couldn't believe she wasn't out there supporting him rather than lazily being sprawled out on the bed with limbs outstretched like a sloth.

Rosie was always there for Lukasz whenever and wherever he played international for Poland. It didn't matter that she didn't have anyone else to talk to because she couldn't speak Polish, she was there.

And she should have been there.

piszczu
I'm coming home tomorrow, kochanie.

A wave of relief rushed through Rosie's body. Thank God.

The Croat didn't expect how much she would miss Lukasz. Even if he was gone for merely a day, and woke her up when he was leaving in the morning, their house felt lonely.

She was lonely.

And it wasn't that long after his text that she had dialed his number and had the little hope in her chest that he would answer.

"Rosie?"

"Luka—" Suddenly her mind came blank. "I-I watched your match today. You did good."

He chuckled on the other line. "Okay? Rosie, is there anything you want to talk about?"

Fuck, was she really this detached to Lukasz that she didn't even know how to hold a proper conversation with him?

"Rosie?" Shit, he sounded concerned now. "Kochanie, are you okay? It's nearly twelve o'clock in the morning."

"I—uh—I couldn't sleep."

"Well, if it helps, I can't find myself to sleep either." She could imagine Lukasz running his fingers through his hair and smiling only slightly. Sitting on the edge of his bed as Kuba slept soundly in the other bed, the lit skyline of Warsaw in front of him. "I don't know—I even requested a cup of warm milk to the hotel room, but my eyes won't shut."