Saturday

We met on Friday, split up the next Saturday, and never met again.

When I first came to Budapest, it seemed very small. After gigantic Moscow, packed with 14 million people running their everyday marathons across the city, waiting for hours in traffic jams, exhausted from noise and half-year winters, every other European city would seem like a neighborhood. In metropolises like this, you never meet the same person twice. In cities like Budapest, chances of meeting the same person are at least 7 times higher. But that’s not the case when it comes to life. When it comes to love. When it comes to love, life has its own rules for placing and distancing people.

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We met at a Chinese tea house not far from Kalvin Square on Pushkin Street. Men meeting an Asian woman in Europe, always choose a tea house for a date.

“Is it because I am Asian?” - I would always ask.

They would learn later that I prefer coffee shops.

The house inside had a shape of a honeycomb with stairs leading to different corners. Every corner was staffed with a small table and cushions. In the center of the construction was a marquee. The place was packed until the ceiling. You could hear all the chatters. This is how close people were to each other. We left our shoes and climbed to our corner.

His name was Tommy. A 30-year-old aerospace engineer. He was wearing a shirt and a blue sweater, black jeans, and funny socks — a smart and tidy look. Lived in Japan for 1 year, constructed satellites, and played in a band. Black hair, light beard, charming smile. He was charmed by me, being a journalist, activist, and pursuing a Ph.D. I was charmed by him. We felt cool because we were.

We went for ramen and the rest of the evening we told each other stories and laughed. It never happened to me before, but it felt like love at first sight. He told me stories about people on the streets looking for cocaine. I told him how I ran after a boy who kissed me at the age of five, carrying the stones in my hand. We laughed again. 

There are several types of laughter: nervous and anxious, cheerful and open, and laughter demonstrating thrill and desire. We had it mixed.

When it was time to go, he asked if he could kiss me so that I wouldn’t run after him with stones. Of course, he could.

We met again the next day. And again. And again. We ate, walked, and talked every day. He would always ask how I spent my day; I would think that this is a boring question, but politely respond. When I asked him to a museum, he told me that he hated contemporary art and explained why classic art is better; We went to a movie eventually.  

He hated girls who smoke and dye their hair pink and violet; I loved their sense of freedom. He was always early; I was late. He carried an umbrella; I hated umbrellas. He was an early bird, waking up at six; I was an all-nighter getting to bed at six. “What an artistic soul”.

“I would love to go to France,” I once said to him on the tram. “Oh, I hate France,” he said. “Have you ever been there?” I asked. “No, but my dad was there, and he hated it, and I am like my dad.”

When Friday came, I decided to tell him that we are different and that we have to stop seeing each other until it is too late.

I was late for half an hour. He waited for me outside the café as he usually did as a gentleman and greeted me with a kiss. 

“How are you, my little bundle of chaos?”

I smiled.

“Let’s give it a shot,” I thought.

That was the moment he gave up. 

He told me that we are different.

There were too many reasons, and none of them was reasonable for me. Why refuse a person you like? Why not focus on the similarities we share? Why not listen to our hearts?

“You don't even want to raise kids in Hungary,” was his last argument. That was true. I wanted to raise kids in France, but if he could only ask me. “I don’t even know if I want kids,” I said aggressively. 

“I want to save us from pain,” he wrote me later on Facebook.

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That day he went home to see his parents. I went home and defrosted my freezer with a hair dryer. I had no family to go to and no friends, just a big hole in my heart. 

It was hard to explain why the person I knew for such a short period hurt me so much. There was no solid argument. It felt like someone shot me when I finally started to feel alive. 

I would go to places we walked and would sit at the café where we met last time. On the days when I felt beautiful, I would walk on the other side of the Danube, imagining how he would see me and regret our breakup.

I regularly checked spam waiting for his message with remorse since we were not friends on Facebook anymore.

We became just a couple of strangers living across the Danube. We were living in one city, living our parallel lives in parallel universes. And it was not the river that separated us.

I deleted my social media accounts. I was not sure if he could ever find me again. I don't even know if he remembers my name. He never pronounced it. I was just “the best natural disaster” he had ever met and a “little bundle of chaos”.

We met on Friday, split up the next Saturday, and never met again.

Today is Saturday…