Milk with caramel liqueur

She:

It has now been 8 years since I saw him last. Feels like he has vanished from the face of the earth. I can´t remember our last meeting. I can't remember most of our meetings, but I remember some and I do remember what he was like.

We usually met at parties or poker games with friends. Once at a party he taught me how to make a cocktail that tastes exactly like Baileys, with milk and caramel liqueur. I remember thinking that it is so sweet of him to show me this amazing trick. I was not a hard 20 year old to impress, I guess.

I remember how he once asked for my help with decorating his apartment while knowing he wouldn't like my ideas. He was a lawyer with an expensive taste and I was an editor in a cultural newspaper with a taste of a 23-year-old bohemian. I still don't get why he asked me that, but I remember feeling appreciated. So it all went how I expected. I went to his place, talked about lampshades and the colour blue and he just wanted to play me some songs from Youtube, not even commenting on my ideas.

And once we met by accident in a cocktail bar where he was sitting with his brother.

He acted a bit different from how he was around our usual group of friends. He was more outgoing, friendlier and happier. Maybe I should have taken that as a sign.

And once, at a friend's birthday party he was very drunk and tried to kiss me. I did not let him and pulled away and he said drunkenly that If I was his girl, he would never let me out of his sight and just left the party.

When he started ignoring us, we thought that it was because of the death of one of our friends. He was the last one to see him alive. Might have been that our friend´s passing traumatized him more than the rest of us. Or that the rest of us had a different way of dealing with the grief.

Maybe it was us all along, maybe he didn´t ever feel like he fit in the group, though we all got along very well.

Now that 8 years has passed, why doesn't he still take our phone calls? Where is he? Googling doesn't give me any answers. I don't dare to contact his brother and I am afraid I will forget him soon.

So, not to forget him, I still sometimes drink caramel liqueur with milk. I hope he is still alive and well and living a good life somewhere. And also, that he remembers and thinks of me from time to time.

And when he does think of me, I hope he thinks of me fondly and not only as a girl who was too poor to buy expensive booze and had horrible taste in furniture. If so, then he is better off vanishing from our world. We were never going to make it.

Him:

I have been exiled and living in France for eight years now. I am already starting to forget my Estonian, since I can't contact anyone from my home country after the court case with the murderer I was defending. I have lived under a fake name for so long, that I actually think of it as my own. I still remember my life as the man I was, with my old name and friends and lovers.

Some of them still linger in my mind quite often. Especially one of them. She was the girlfriend of my friend. She was the strangest and most beautiful girl I had ever met. A strange creature with the most radiant smile. We didn't get to meet that often, but I do remember most of those times and I cherish them. We usually met at our friends' places for parties and poker games and what not.

This one time I remember, I was looking for some Baileys from the kitchen at my friend's place and she was there, smoking a cigarette and laughing about something, by herself. I asked if she knew if our friend had any Baileys and she said that it was all gone and that she would have enjoyed some of it as well. So I decided to teach her a trick that I learned from my time in law school, from the time we were young and did not have the money to buy expensive booze. It was no big trick really, but it meant something to us at the time. So I told her to mix milk and caramel liqueur together and that is, how one gets a drink that tastes exactly like Baileys. I think I had a strange obsession with that drink, when I was younger. I haven't had it in years now. Anyways, that was the first time I noticed her eyes. She had these deep brown eyes that lid up, when she was laughing. She had the face of a beautiful young thing, a pure face, that had not seen the things I had already by then, while working in criminal law.

So, because of that face and well, the rest of her attached to it, I really just wanted to get the chance to talk to her. But we were never alone at those social gatherings. So when I bought a new apartment, I decided to ask for her help with the interior decorating. My taste in that area was for simple minimalist things, but she kept talking about lamp shades and colours. So, not to confront her, I played some music from Youtube and talked endlessly, just to keep her there. I didn't have the courage to tell her how I felt. I adored her eyes and that radiant happiness and that pure joy she always had about her from a safe distance. She was so good to be around. So that was that, she left and I didn't dare to contact her anymore.

Luckily soon we met at this cocktail bar, where I was sitting with my brother. I was so happy to see her that I bought her drinks and was as charming and flamboyant as I ever had been. Time flew and she had to leave, but I'll never forget the way I was that night. Like a different person. Happy and calm and full of something I can't to this day even put my finger on.

And our last meeting, I remember I was wasted at this party at a friend's house where I didn't think she would show up to. I was feeling really low, until she walked in. It was an outdoor party that was held in a garden with tall bushes and plenty of places to hide. So when I saw her, I immediately walked up to her and pulled her aside, behind one of these bushes and tried to kiss her. I don't know what came over me. I just wanted to do it so bad and nothing was holding me back. She was caught off guard and jumped back and looked at me with her eyes so huge and questioning. I sobered up by that within seconds. I just stood there, looking at her and told her that if she was ever mine, I would keep her to myself and never let her out of my sight. After saying that I immediately felt that I had crossed some invisible line. She mumbled something about my friend, that she should go and I never saw her there again. Actually I never saw her again, because a week after that incident I had to go into the protection program and move.

So I moved, but they told me to keep my phone working for a period of time. It was so that everyone in my life, who could not be filled in with the information of my whereabouts, would just think that I didn't want to talk to them anymore. A cruel trick, but It was for their safety. Cruel in many ways, because I always knew, when they were calling and even when she was calling. Once I almost picked up the phone, but stopped myself. I couldn't let her get in any kind of trouble. The kind of people I was involved with would not be fazed by her smile, because they had killed too many times, to think of people as living, feeling things.

So now I hope she doesn't hate me. Because I still think of her as a happy memory. I hope that she still has that weird taste in furniture and that happy smile. And I am quite sure that she can finally afford that bottle of Baileys for herself.