Day 6.

IT HURTS TO THINK ABOUT IT. This is our last full day together. One week is all we get. Not even a full week, really. It’s closer to six days. Six days and six nights. Tonight is our last night together.

His arms are warm, and his breath is hot on my skin. We’re spooning, and I want to stay like this forever. We haven’t looked at each other yet. It’s still dark out — it’s early. I’m glad we haven’t slept in too late because I want to make the most of our last day. He drops a soft kiss between my shoulders and I smile. “Good morning,” he whispers. I’m not sure how he knows that I’m awake.

“Good morning.”

“What do you wanna do today?” he asks.

“I want to stay in bed all day.”

He laughs into my back. Just then, Floyd makes an appearance, like he does every morning. He shakes us out of our little cozy cocoon. Eli ruffles his furry ears. Floyd licks my face again, which I’m not particularly fond of, but it makes me laugh. Eli gets up to take care of him, and I catch a glimpse of his gorgeous ass before he slips into his boxers.

“I want to take you to Christhaven,” he says. “There’s a market there I thought you might like, and some old towers to see.”

Well, it’s not quite all-day lovemaking, but it does sound pretty nice.

“And then, I thought we could go to Paper Island to eat.”

“Sounds great.”

I make Eggs Benedict for breakfast; a specialty of mine, and then we’re off for the day. We walk Floyd and leave him with Evelyn again. Apparently, she’s a designer, and works from home. She loves to take care of Floyd when Eli is away, which apparently is not too often.

We begin our excursion with a trip to a little outside flea market. There are tons of vendors selling their wares: antique watches, vintage clothing, old records, worn books, small furniture pieces, art, old cameras, and so much more. I’m drawn to the cameras — they’re so cool. It’s hard to believe that not so long ago, cameras were this complicated. They worked around rolls of films, developed in labs by other people. The person who took the picture was rarely the first to see it. And now we snap quick shots with our phones, and we can take as many photos as we wish. I think we take that for granted.

I turn to Eli. “I still remember when I was a kid, and we had this old-school camera. My mom would scold us if we took too many silly pictures, reminding us how expensive each photo was.”

He smiles. “Oh, I remember. Wasn’t it fun going to the pharmacy, and waiting to see the pictures?”

“It was the anticipation that made it exciting,” I tell him. “Delayed gratification.”

“Yeah… there’s no more anticipation these days, no more delayed gratification,” he says with a hint of nostalgia. “Everything is so instant these days.”

I set the camera back down with the others. “You and I, we’re old souls.”

He smiles. “Yeah, we are.”

I end up buying a small glass elephant for my collection, and an old vintage leather purse, in mint condition, from the fifties, I’m told. I also buy some fun pins for the kids. Eli buys a paintbrush and a crime fiction novel.

Not one to ever let me rest, Eli convinces me to climb up this old tower, one of many in Copenhagen. It stands very tall, and is part of an old church. The church is just stunning inside; dark carved pews, al fresco religious paintings, and a massive organ.

At first, the climb is leisurely, but the higher we climb, the more exhausted my legs become, and my breath starts to come out in short puffs. It’s narrow and dark and quite rugged, but quite cool. Thankfully, we stop for a minute or two in a dusty room with broken plaster and cobwebs. A huge bell commands our attention — I feel like the hunchback of Notre Dame climbing up to ring the bell.

The higher we get, the narrower and narrower the steps become, I begin to feel a little claustrophobic. The old worn wooden steps are replaced by copper ones as we make our way to the very top. The view is to die for, and we take a few selfies.

Thankfully, the trek down is easier. We’re both tired and famished when we leave the church. We hold hands as we head toward the boats.

It’s a very quick trip to Paper Island, and although I was famished, I’ve lost my appetite. I can’t stop thinking about what I’m doing to Eli. He deserves to know the truth. I haven’t been completely honest with him because I didn’t want to ruin our short time together. But I’d told myself that I would be honest with him on our last day. Should I wait until tonight?

As we walk hand in hand, I take in the beautiful island and all the people around us. It’s a nice perfect day, which apparently is a rare occurrence in Copenhagen this time of year. It’s often rainy and overcast. I decide that I’ll fess up today.

We venture into the street food market. “This is the best place to get Danish street food,” he tells me. “Anything you can imagine.” Sure enough, the place is packed with all kinds of vendors: open-faced sandwiches, sushi, oysters, burgers... everything. When Eli mentioned ‘street food’, I thought it would be cheap, but that’s not the case. I opt for a sausage on a bun with cheese and pesto and a lemonade for a cool fifteen dollars.

Eli has lamb Moroccan stew and a foreign beer. We sit in open cafeteria style seating. The woman next to me is having sushi, and the man to my left is having what looks like a ham and cheese sandwich. The sausage on a bun was expensive, but it’s delicious. I’m all about the lunch and have almost forgotten about my worries. We people watch, and every once in a while, we smile at each other. We’re not very chatty today. I think the both of us realize it’s our last day together, and we’re both kind of upset about it. I wonder what he’s thinking. I want to know, but I don’t dare ask.

We walk over to the paper trees. “People from all over the world leave little notes and hang them in the trees,” Eli says. “Wishes. Messages of hope. Notes to loved ones. Goodbyes.”

“It’s easy,” he tells me as he takes a small white scrap of paper. “Just grab a pencil and a piece of paper. Write it down and hang it in one of the trees.” He scribbles something quickly, folds the small piece of paper, and hangs it. I desperately want to know what he’s written but I don’t ask.

I grab a small pencil and a piece of paper, and write down a wish. I fold it in two, and smile up at Eli. I hang it up in the tree, right next to his. He doesn’t ask me what I wrote. He simply takes my hand and leads me down the path, where we end up in a tiny little café, and share ginger cookies and coffee.

We’re tucked in at the back of the little café — there’s no one here but us. The day’s moving along nicely with more to come — Amalienborg, dinner, and a quiet evening at his place.

I don’t want to do this at his place. I want him to remember only the good memories when he’s lying in his bed, when he’s reading a book on his sofa, when he’s whipping up a meal in the kitchen. I don’t want him to remember this conversation, this revelation. Yet, I don’t want to be a coward, I don’t want to wait until I get back home, and tell him in a Facebook message. He deserves more than that. He deserves so much more.

“Thank you for everything, Eli,” I say.

He wraps a hand around his coffee cup. “My pleasure. Thank you for coming.”

“It was one of the best weeks of my life,” I admit. “If not the best.”

He smiles shyly, and then his gaze searches for mine. “For me too.”

Oh god, this hurts so much.

“One week,” I say.

“One week,” he echoes.

I want to cry.

“I’ll miss you like crazy when you leave,” he says, “but we can chat like we used to, video chat, send each other silly pictures and memes. We can video chat and you can be a pirate, and I’ll talk to you with a cat on my head.”

He’s smiling, and I just want to crumble. He’s completely clueless.

“The thing is,” I start. I don’t think I can do this. I don’t want to do this. “The thing is…” I just can’t. My pulse is racing. I rub my palms down the length of my skirt. I stare at my half eaten cookie. I stall.

“What?!” he asks, impatient. “The thing is what?!”

The words finally come out in a swift sentence. “The thing is… I didn’t tell you everything about my arrangement with John.”

He cocks a brow, confused. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I told you that John and I agreed on a week only, and that he was adamant that it would be a sexual relationship only.”

Eli nods, not quite following.

“Sex only,” I repeat. “That means… that means no more joking around, no long conversations, and no more silly messages.” Each word I utter brings me closer to tears, and by the time I finish my sentence and take a breath, I’m crying.

Eli’s face crumbles. It’s one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen. A heaviness fills me, and I fear I might be sick. I never imagined that hurting someone could feel this way. I’ve never hurt anyone before.

“You mean… this is goodbye forever,” he says quietly. “We won’t keep in touch?”

“John agreed to this only if I promised to say goodbye for good following our week together,” I explain. My heart sinks a little more with each and every word. “That means no messages, no emails, no video chats, complete blocking on all social media accounts.”

He looks wrecked, in shock. He can’t believe what he’s hearing. I can’t believe it either. I can’t believe that I’m uttering these words. It seemed so simple a week ago, back when I wanted Eli so much, I wasn’t thinking straight. Before I gave him my heart, and he gave me his.

He’s speechless. He closes his eyes and presses both his hands on the small table separating us. He draws a slow breath and opens his eyes again. His gaze is cold. He’s not the man I know. “You had no right,” he says. “You had no right to do this.”

I don’t know what to say.

“You had no right to bring me into this, and not even tell me the truth,” he goes on. “Don’t you think I deserve the truth?”

Before I have a chance to answer, he barrels on. “If I’d known the full consequences of this week, I would have never agreed. I would never have wanted to say goodbye to you, Gabriella.”

“I know… it’s why I didn’t tell you,” I confess.

He slaps a hand on the table. “Oh, I get it now,” he says. “You knew I’d say no if you told me the whole truth. You knew you wouldn’t get to come here, and have your little adventure. You knew you wouldn’t get to sleep in my bed and get fucked nice and good, sideways, and up on the wall. Well, I hope it was worth it. I hope I satisfied you, Gabriella.”

“Eli, don’t—”

“Now, you’re done slumming it, and you can go back to your fucking perfect little life, with your perfect husband, and perfect kids, your little house and your little picket fence, and you can tell all your besties what it was like to fuck the glass artist from Copenhagen, how hot, how fucking good.. Isn’t it great to be you!”

His words slice. He’s split me in two. I’ve never seen this side of him. I didn’t even know he could be like this. I’m shell-shocked, unable to utter a single word.

“How can you expect me to ever say goodbye to you? Do you realize how hard that’ll be for me? Do you even know what you mean to me? Did I even mean anything to you? Or was I just a fun lay? A midlife crisis?”

He’s speaking so fast, barking all these things at me, I don’t have the time to put a single word together.

“I thought you were better than this, Gabriella. You’re not who I thought you were. You’re a selfish and spoiled woman. I don’t even know what I ever saw in you.”

It hurts so much, I feel like I might break, but he looks even more broken than I am. He gets up to stand, but then falls again. “I’ve only ever loved two women in my life. The first one broke my heart, but then the second one mended it, made me feel like I could put myself out there again, made me think that I could give myself to someone else again.”

He gets up to leave, and grabs his jacket. “And then she destroyed me too. She was even crueler than the first.”

He shrugs into his jacket, and adjusts his scarf. His movements are slow and deliberate, almost robotic. His stunning eyes are dark with anger. “We’re done,” he says. “I have no problem with this arrangement of yours. No problem at all. We’ve had our week, and now it’s over. No more contact. I’ll be blocking you from all my accounts tonight.”

My eyes are wide. “But…”

“I’ll leave the door unlocked for you. You can spend your last night at my place… I know you have nowhere else to go.”

He drops a few Euros on the table. “I’ll be spending the night at my studio with Floyd. You have enough money to get back to my place?”

I nod, still speechless.

“Good.” And with a quick wave of his hand, he says, “Have a nice life, Gabriella.”

And then he’s out the door.